How to interview candidates in Hindi.

Many jobs in India are done in Hindi. Delivery leads, store staff, field sales teams and a large share of support agents spend their day speaking Hindi, or a mix of Hindi and English, with customers and colleagues. Yet first interviews are often held in English by default. That turns every interview into an English test without anyone deciding it should be. You end up hiring the most fluent English speakers rather than the people who are best at the job.

Why interview in the language of the job

A first interview should test the skills the job needs. If the job is done in Hindi, an English-only interview adds a requirement you never agreed to.

Take two candidates for a delivery team lead job in Lucknow. One has run a team of twelve riders for two years and explains, in Hindi, exactly how she handled a rider who kept missing slots. The other has no team experience and speaks confident English. An English interview may rank the second candidate higher. A Hindi interview lets you hear what the first one actually did.

Ask one question when you set up the interview: what language will this person use most in the first 90 days? Interview in that language.

If English is a real requirement, for example because the job involves writing to international clients, don’t hide it inside other skills. Make it a separate skill with its own weight (how much it counts), so it’s assessed openly and candidates know it matters.

Hindi, Hinglish and code-switching

Most people who speak Hindi at work also switch into English mid-sentence. This is called code-switching. “Maine customer ko call kiya aur refund process explain kiya” is ordinary workplace Hindi. So is a sentence that starts in English and ends in Hindi.

Treat this as normal, because it is. A fair Hindi interview:

• Accepts answers in Hindi, English or a mix. Tell candidates this before they start.
• Doesn’t mark down grammar, accent or word choice, unless the job needs a specific standard of language.
• Doesn’t care about script. Whether a transcript shows the answer in Devanagari or Roman letters says nothing about the candidate.
• Judges what they said. Did they describe what they did, why, and what happened?

Writing questions in Hindi

Write the questions in Hindi from the start, rather than translating English questions word for word. Direct translations often come out formal and stiff, and candidates answer a stiff question with a stiff answer.

Some practical rules:

1. Use everyday Hindi, not textbook Hindi. Where people naturally use English words at work, like “customer”, “order” or “shift”, use them too.
2. One question, one idea. When a spoken question has two parts, people often answer only the first part.
3. Ask about real situations. “Tell me about a time” and “what would you do if” questions work in any language.
4. Read each question aloud before you use it. If it sounds odd said out loud, rewrite it.

Here are three example questions for a customer-facing job.

एक ग्राहक बहुत गुस्से में है क्योंकि उसका ऑर्डर तीन दिन से नहीं आया। आप उससे पहले तीस सेकंड में क्या कहेंगे?

(A customer is very angry because their order hasn’t arrived in three days. What would you say to them in the first thirty seconds?)

अपने पिछले काम से कोई ऐसा समय बताइए जब आपसे कोई गलती हुई हो। आपने उसे कैसे ठीक किया?

(Tell me about a time at your last job when you made a mistake. How did you fix it?)

अगर आपकी टीम का कोई साथी रोज़ देर से आता है और इससे आपका काम रुकता है, तो आप क्या करेंगे?

(If a teammate arrives late every day and it holds up your work, what would you do?)

Each one describes a situation, asks for one thing, and can be answered from ordinary work experience.

Reviewing results in English

The usual concern is the people reviewing the interviews. The hiring manager might read Hindi comfortably, but the recruiter in another city might not. There are a few ways to handle this fairly.

• Review against the skills, not the sentences. A reviewer is checking whether the candidate took responsibility or stayed calm, not grading their Hindi.
• Keep the original words as evidence. A summary in English is useful, but a translation can lose meaning. When a decision depends on one answer, have a Hindi speaker check the original.
• Pair reviewers when you start. For the first group of candidates, have a Hindi-speaking reviewer and an English-speaking reviewer rate the same people, then compare. Big differences show where the English summary is misleading.
• Watch for extra credit given to English. If candidates who switched into English more often are always rated higher, check whether the job really needs it or the reviewer is favoring English.

Common mistakes

• Offering Hindi but scoring on polished English. The interview is in Hindi, but reviewers still reward the candidates who sound most like English speakers.
• Translating job ads badly. If the ad reads like a machine translation, fluent Hindi speakers may assume the job isn’t really for them.
• Mixing languages within one job. If some candidates for the same job are interviewed in Hindi and some in English, with different questions, they’re hard to compare. Pick the language of the job and use it for everyone, while still accepting mixed answers.

How LessRounds handles Hindi

LessRounds runs AI interviews in English or Hindi, chosen for each interview. Candidates can mix Hindi and English freely. Scoring is instructed never to mark anyone down for language, script, code-switching or grammar. Your team reads the scores and summaries in English. The quotes used as evidence stay exactly as the candidate said them, so a Hindi speaker can always check the original.