Lin Yanbei unconsciously glanced at the time on her phone, her brows furrowing deeply.
Three minutes; she was afraid that before she could even finish reciting her resume, the time would already be up.
She wondered if Jiang Ran had deliberately made things difficult for her because she saw her weakness in eloquence.
During the past month of job interviews, Lin Yanbei had encountered all kinds of fancy moves meant to stump her. Instinctively, she felt that Jiang Ran was doing the same, just like the others, instructed by Li Shaoxian to humiliate her and make her back down. After all, Jiang Ran had also attended that wedding and witnessed the whole affair.
Had she known it would turn out like this, she definitely wouldn’t have come! After paying off Jiang Ran’s dry-cleaning bill, she didn’t even have enough money left on her to buy a single train ticket! Traveling thousands of miles to Jingdu only to be humiliated and then slinking back to Yangcheng like a beaten dog, she didn’t even want to imagine how badly people would laugh at her!
Just as she was boiling with indignation, she heard Jiang Ran’s cold voice say, “Two and a half minutes left.”
To hell with it! Lin Yanbei raised her eyes to look at Jiang Ran and clenched her back teeth.
Regardless of whether this was an attempt to humiliate her or not, she would simply do her best. There wasn’t enough time to recite her resume anyway, so she might as well skip it altogether.
After all, speaking wasn’t the only way to express oneself in this world!
Lin Yanbei glanced at the large screen that had been turned on. Resolving herself, she pulled out her laptop and, with a few quick seconds of operation, connected it to the display screen.
The screen lit up to show a video platform with the creator account 【North】, over one hundred thousand followers, and video views exceeding nine hundred thousand.
A triangular play button currently dominated the landscape screen.
Lin Yanbei gave a silent cue with her eyes, inviting Jiang Ran to focus her attention on the screen.
Then, with a gentle click of the mouse, she rolled out a bird’s-eye canvas of a city before her.
The image zoomed in rapidly; the colorful streets and perspective shifted into a black-and-white line-art animation, where the only colors laid out along the lines were the wandering red and blue traffic flow lines.
The target plot of land appeared at the final endpoint of the flow line, followed by an automatically generated spatial and location analysis.
The video’s opening contained no bloat or dragging steps; its pacing was exceptionally smooth.
Jiang Ran’s brow twitched slightly, and a trace of intrigued inquiry subconsciously seeped into her distant gaze.
The animation froze to showcase the main building structure. Daylight shadows, spatial effects, ecological design, traffic flow, and even the utilization of acoustics and wind energy were all covered comprehensively.
The transitions were seamless, and the black-and-white lines were stacked with incredible delicacy and fluidity, fully displaying her professional foundation.
Then the camera rotated, and the line artwork shifted along with the panning view, rendering and coloring as it went.
The real-scene animation brought the presentation to another level. Traffic, pedestrian flow, sound, light, and shadow all began to move, instantly breathing life into the building; even the tree shadows and material details were flawlessly executed.
The video ended on a small, blinking channel logo, and the triangular play button once again took over the landscape screen.
The entire video lasted 2 minutes and 09 seconds. Combined with the time Lin Yanbei took to connect her computer at the beginning, it took exactly two and a half minutes.
Jiang Ran’s eyes remained fixed on the screen, only slowly shifting over to Lin Yanbei’s face after quite a while.
The emotion in her eyes now, different from before, was interest.
The reason she had set a three-minute time limit was indeed that she noticed Lin Yanbei’s shortcoming in verbal expression and deliberately applied interview pressure targeting it.
From noticing her in the noisy crowd at the wedding to their meeting just now at the interview, Jiang Ran had heard her speak no more than five sentences. It was abundantly clear that the girl standing before her was not good at expressing herself.
In Jiang Ran’s critical eyes, a lack of communication skills was fatal for an architect.
Lin Yanbei was not qualified.
However, Jiang Ran truly hadn’t expected that she would be so smart, nor that she would deliver such a pleasant surprise.
Spoken language was one form of expression, but visual effects were a form of expression too. Even the active Visual Communications team at D&A couldn’t reach this level of execution.
As Jiang Ran pulled her gaze away from the screen with lingering interest, she had already given Lin Yanbei a pretty good score in her heart.
“How long does it take you to make a video of this standard?” she asked, throwing out her first interview question.
Lin Yanbei glanced at the time displayed on her darkened phone screen on the desk, the corners of her mouth curving up in a subtle, triumphant smirk.
The time had long surpassed the agreed three minutes, yet the interviewer was still interested in her.
Lin Yanbei said, “It depends on the level of detail required. If the standards aren’t too strict, I can finish it in a week. If it’s a higher-end visualization project that requires a more elaborate long video, that would involve more complex render commands and animation software. That would take about a month.”
Jiang Ran looked with interest at the girl whose words had noticeably multiplied once she spoke about her field of expertise. She raised an eyebrow and said, “It’s very well done, but you are more suited to work in the Visual Communication Department.”
Hearing this, Lin Yanbei froze. The brightness on her face vanished in an instant, and she asked with a touch of despondency, “Did the video effects overshadow the main topic? Um… I’m sorry… Or… my portfolio is included in my resume; perhaps you could take another look at that?”
She was an architect, and she wanted Jiang Ran to see her architectural design work, not her talent for making videos.
Jiang Ran let out a rare smile. She noticed that the slight complacency Lin Yanbei had just shown was tucked away again in an instant; she was far from being as thick-skinned as Lin Shiyu.
Humility was a rare and precious quality in young people.
With her fingers, she picked up the sheets of paper on the desk, sat up straight, and began flipping through Lin Yanbei’s design portfolio.
The video was Lin Yanbei’s gold-award-winning graduation project. The portfolio in Jiang Ran’s hands happened to contain a detailed breakdown of this exact project.
Even by her standards, the completion level of this design was remarkably high. Every detail revealed a personal style that had already taken initial shape; the structural complexity was sufficient, the spatial circulation was clear, and most importantly, it demonstrated an abnormal sensitivity toward the presentation of architecture under dynamic sound and light. As a result, beneath her raw and unpolished work lay a vitality that was impossible to conceal. Awarding it the gold prize for a graduation design was thoroughly well-deserved.
Compared to the mature architects at D&A, this level of work might still fall short in terms of project feasibility. However, for an Assistant Architect position, it was more than enough.
And she only had one year of internship experience. At twenty-three years old, her future was limitless.
Jiang Ran stared silently at the paper in her hands, the rhythm of her fingers tapping against the tabletop growing faster and faster.
She looked toward the projection equipment that had been switched on early in the room, understanding dawning in her heart.
Lin Shiyu’s careful selection hadn’t been without reason. She knew Lin Yanbei’s capabilities and had also guessed that she herself would intentionally make things difficult. Leaving the projector on in advance was a pre-placed clue to the answer.
Giving Lin Yanbei a job position wasn’t difficult, but an assistant… Jiang Ran still shook her head silently.
Seeing Jiang Ran shake her head, Lin Yanbei’s shoulders drooped. She let out a quiet, slow sigh, knowing she had no way back.
Yet she didn’t want to give up on architecture. She plucked up her courage, once, then twice, before finally speaking: “Can you really not give me a chance?”
Jiang Ran looked up from the documents and met Lin Yanbei’s eyes. The girl’s eyes were clear and completely sincere.
Within that pure hope, not a single trace of calculation could be found.
It brought to mind the sheer, unbridled relief in her eyes when everything had ended in a complete mess back then. It brought to mind that firm, rain-drenched silhouette as she walked into the downpour.
The pendulum swinging back and forth inside Jiang Ran’s heart shuddered in an instant, ringing out with a resonant hum.
Clack.
Slapping the documents down onto the desk, Jiang Ran stood up, looked down at her, and said, “Go to HR to complete your onboarding. You only have one month; whether you can stay or not depends on you.”