Bilingual Interview Guides That Work in Arabic
Build interview scripts that work in both English and Arabic without losing cultural context
Direct translation of interview questions often produces awkward phrasing that candidates struggle to answer naturally. Competency frameworks built in English don't map cleanly to Arabic workplace terminology, creating confusion about what you're actually assessing.
That is the gap this drop closes. It is a hiring & hr skill built for Claude, and it takes about ten minutes to set up the first time. After that it runs in under a minute.
Who should use it
HR managers and hiring leads in the UAE conducting interviews in Arabic, English, or both languages
How it works
The skill file does five things, in this order.
1. Define competencies in both languages first. List the skills and behaviors you need, then ask Claude for the appropriate professional terms in Arabic that match UAE workplace usage.
2. Build questions as pairs, not translations. Give Claude your competency and ask for an interview question in Arabic that feels natural, then request the English equivalent that assesses the same behavior.
3. Test for register and formality match. Ask Claude to review your question pairs and flag where the Arabic version is more formal or casual than the English, then adjust to match your company culture.
4. Create answer guides with cultural examples. For each question, have Claude draft what a strong answer looks like using examples relevant to the UAE context in both languages.
5. Build a scoring rubric that works in either language. Ask Claude to create rating descriptors that interviewers can apply whether the candidate answered in Arabic or English without needing to translate mid-interview.
What comes back
Interview guides where Arabic and English versions each feel native, with scoring criteria that assess competencies consistently regardless of the language used in the conversation
The mistake to avoid
Specify whether you want Gulf Arabic professional register or Modern Standard Arabic when requesting questions. Claude defaults to MSA, but many UAE candidates will expect more natural Gulf phrasing in actual conversation.
Running it
Save this as SKILL.md inside a folder named after the skill, then drop the folder into your Claude Code skills directory or upload it to a Claude Project. Claude reads the frontmatter to decide when the skill applies, so keep the description line intact. For a one-off run, paste the prompt block directly.
Where this fits
On its own, one skill saves an hour a week. The compounding happens when three or four of them run in sequence on the same input, the same transcript that produces a scope of work also produces the follow-up email and the project brief. That is the point at which it stops being a prompt and starts being an internal tool. If you want that wired into the systems your team already uses, that is the work 67 Digital does.
In the file
I need to create a bilingual interview guide for a {job_title} role in the UAE.
Core competencies I'm assessing:
{list 3-5 competencies}
Please help me build this in stages:
1. First, provide the appropriate Arabic professional terms for each competency that match UAE workplace usage.
2. For each competency, create one behavioral interview question in Arabic that sounds natural and professional. Then provide an English equivalent that assesses the same behavior (not a direct translation).
3. Review the formality level of each question pair and tell me if the Arabic is more formal or casual than the English version.
4. For each question, draft what a strong answer would include, with examples relevant to the UAE business context in both languages.
5. Create a 3-point scoring rubric (Strong/Adequate/Weak) for each competency with descriptors that interviewers can apply in either language without translating during the interview.
Our company culture is: {formal/collaborative/fast-paced/etc.}
Candidates will likely answer in: {Arabic/English/both}