By STACEY MOHAMMED
What is one of the hardest things for a person to continuously undergo? Rejection. For the three years that I have been married to my husband, he has been applying for jobs. He knew he would find it hard but how hard wasn’t known until he actually started receiving rejection letters from jobs that were below his expertise.
We recently attended a job-seeking agency (they were unable to help us) where we were told the main reason for my husband’s rejection was that he was an immigrant. Not any immigrant though. The main reason is he is Indian and has a foreign name. Our surname is Mohammed and so it’s not your typical anglo-saxon name.
This means my husband doesn’t even get an interview. He can’t even get a phone interview. The most likely thing is that the recruiter sees the name and presumes that his English will be poor despite the fact he studied English and speaks a total of four languages. The recruiter fails to notice that my husband is an IT engineer who has worked for major companies.
They fail to see that with every job he has undertaken, he has progressed in his position and earned the praise of his employer. They fail to see that no matter what job my husband undertakes, he gives it 100 per cent This immediate presumption made by recruiters on the basis of his name is not only unfair but it also destroys you. Despite four years of study and working for big companies, he is almost unemployable.
My husband can’t even get a job at Woolworths. He can’t get a job at Caltex (despite managing a fuel station previously). He can’t even get a job in a call centre. The only job he can get is in an abattoir where racism is so common and the job slowly destroys his body.
Jobs are a sensitive topic in our house. We don’t know whether to be angry or cry in despair. My husband is confused about whether to retrain himself or continue busting his body at work. He knows he is being discriminated against at his current position but he cannot prove it. The mental pressure to support his family is the only reason he puts up with it. But I can see that, slowly, it is breaking his body and soul.
I want to cry when my husband gets rejected (numerous times) without an interview. I want to cry when he comes home from work tormented by his workmates. I want to cry when he hisses in pain due to his back, hand and arms doing strenuous work day in and day out. I want to cry every time I think about how his family invested tens of thousands of dollars of their hard-earned money into a degree my husband can’t even use.
But crying won’t help him. I can only encourage him to apply again and again, but even that is getting harder to do.
Have you ever had trouble with discrimination in the workplace?
Stacey is a country girl who moved to the big city, changed her religion, met a boy, married, and is now a mummy of one little boisterous boy. When not chasing him around she spends her time reading or planning her next overseas adventure. Stacey hopes to return to the workforce soon but in the meantime writes on her new blog here
Top Comments
Hi Stacey,
I have mixed feelings about this.The Job market right now is really tough. When I left my job that was part time we got over 240 applications via seek in 60 minutes. We read about 25 resumes, the first 25 we got. In the end it is quite likely the job did not go to the best candidate, or even the third best candidate but rather the best match for what we needed out of the resumes we had time to read. Because we found four out of 25 with relevance we didn't trawl further, it's unfair but no one promises to read your resume if you send it. 's
On one hand I have several friends with staggering qualifications and resumes who are currently unemployed, or working for minimum wage retail when they have impressive qualifications. Several of them are blonde, young, attractive women with "anglo" names. And yet for two years+ they have been knocked back from job after job without an interview, without any feedback. I only mention how they look because as a rule society places a higher value on a "pretty white girl" than many other groups.
On the other hand my husband has worked in many jobs in his life, probably ten jobs. One of the ten jobs was for a company who decided they would not be hiring any more "indians". it was a verbal order, and they were careful never to write it down. My (white Irish) husband tried on numerous occasions to get it in email or writing as he considered the man who executed the order as a ruthless racist and wanted him to be accountable for being an arrogant, mean racist.
I think you should find a new job agency. You keep repeating again and again that you know it is true because the job agency said so. My dad's Dr insisted, insisted he did not need hearing aids. Insisted again and again. Dad saw a different GP and was advised to try hearing aids as he could benefit from them. He subsequently bought some and is all the happier.
A professional gave an opinion, and THE ADVICE HE WAS GIVEN DID NOT HELP HIS SITUATION IN ANY WAY. He saw another professional who did not agree with the original opinion and the result is IT HELPED HIS SITUATION. It seems this job agency has not helped the situation, but rather made it worse because it has now made him feel powerless. And a weird a comparison I know, but the point is is the job agency cannot find a talented candidate a job, and will use this as an excuse as to why they cannot do their job, then they are not a good job agency.
The IT company that serves my company is NSW based and I actually thought this IT company was in India because everyone there (on the phone) was Indian. Until one day when I spoke with a Filipino and found out it was actually just a few minutes drive away. There are racist people in some companies, and there are companies so diverse you won't find two people with the same heritage in one room.
I hope he gets a job soon, along with all the other highly qualified individuals with sparkling resumes I know.
I'm conflicted about this. I can understand the writer's distress at being told outright about the "no Indians" requests of some employers. There is no doubt that employers making these requests to agencies are acting inappropriately, but I also struggle to believe they are the norm.
Apologies for my lengthy anecdotal evidence, but it seems particularly relevant.
A friend's partner has been applying for jobs for around a year. His qualifications are quite specific (and military-based) - he has a skillset that he could easily apply to a wide variety roles, but he lacks the direct experience. He applies for anything and everything that will allow him to leave his military life behind, but he gets precious few callbacks and even fewer interviews. He is unshakably convinced that the only reason for him being passed over for jobs, or even interviews, is his Middle Eastern surname.
After he expressed this, I asked why he thought I'd been passed over for even a single interview for over 2 years. I have a common Anglo name, over 10 years experience within the industry I was primarily applying for (although I did apply for a variety of roles), Masters level qualifications, stellar references and a brilliant work ethic. I was suitably experienced and qualified (sometimes over-qualified) for every single role I applied for, and yet I would be lucky to have even received the courtesy of a handful of rejection emails over the course of 2 years. Never a call, never an interview, never a follow up.
He reasoned that I mustn't have been qualified, I didn't have the experience, I didn't follow up, I didn't have good references. All of his suggestions applied far more to him than they did to me, yet according to him, it was ONLY racism that was limiting his job prospects, but inability and inexperience for me.
(I also can't help but mention that he followed up this lecture by insisting, no more than 10 minutes later, that Indigenous Australians get "too many handouts" and should "just get a job" - the irony was breathtaking. I had been pondering suggesting that maybe I wasn't getting any interviews in the construction sector was because I female, but I'm glad I kept that to myself in retrospect. [I don't believe that's the case either, for what it's worth.])
In short, I have little doubt that some employers and agencies have some pretty contemptible policies regarding how they screen candidates, but I believe that by placing this much emphasis on a name (and the background it implies/indicates) it then becomes so much more likely to overlooking other factors that are standing in someone's way of gainful employment, (e.g. once I optimised keywords in my cover letter and resume, the interviews and job offers began. If you're dealing with agencies, even resume formats and font choices can greatly impact the automated screening processes!)
Sorry, overlook*
Incidentally, spelling, grammar and editing are also huge factors to consider when applying for jobs, especially as many automated screening processes will exclude you if they can't find the words they're looking for! :)