The Hidden Job Screen

Mike Stolte knew all the traditional theories about getting jobs. He'd run a job-search agency in the Lower Mainland for several years, helping a wide variety of clients put together good resumes, find vacancies that fit with their skills, prepare for good interviews - and end up as part of the work force. He was well aware of the standard beliefs that, even if you have the right technical skills, getting a job depends a lot on other factors like your attitude, personality, life skills. Wanting to explore some of those factors in greater depth, Stolte started work on his thesis for his masters degree in counseling at Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C. Previous research had indicated that certain personality traits such as extroversion and conscientiousness shorten the length of time necessary to find a job, while traits like fearfulness or a feeling of inferiority made it harder for someone to become employed.

But when Stolte undertook his research, he found the traditional theories didn't hold true - at least not here in British Columbia.

One factor and one factor only consistently correlated with the length of time it took someone to find a job - a person's race and ethnic background.

Ten week gap in hiring

Someone who identified themselves as being from a "western culture," be that Canadian, American, Australian or from Western Europe would end up being hired for a job much more quickly and easily than anyone from a "non-Western background," which might be east Asian, south Asian, or even eastern European. Over-all, that person from a "western culture" would, on average, be hired for a job a full 10 weeks faster than someone from another culture - a huge difference by virtually any standard.

It held true for both men and women. It held true for young people just out of their teens and for mid-life job-changers in their 50s. It held true for those looking for jobs in the trades, for those looking for jobs just out of college, for those looking for jobs in the secretarial and administrative sectors.

It held true everywhere.

And, Stolte would like to make clear, the difference wasn't because the people from those non-western cultures were lacking in education, in technical skills, or in those more subjective employability factors. In fact, in many cases, the job-seekers from the non-Western cultures actually had more education than their Western counterparts, and also had more of the value-added skills that many employers want, such as good computer skills. Language didn't seem to be a barrier; most of the non-Western applicants were fully fluent in English.

All of which is enough to make one wonder if the blatant racism that characterized hiring practices in B.C. a few decades ago perhaps hasn't really disappeared after all. It's just become much more subtle and hidden. Before an employer would say openly, "I don't hire Chinese people" (or he might use some pejorative epithet for them); now he'd happily say publicly he was an equal opportunity employer, but the non-Western applicant would just end up not getting the job, being judged just "not quite as good" as the winning (and always Western) applicant.

Discrimination takes subtle form

But Stolte says to attribute his findings to hidden employer racism is way too simple an answer as well. In only a few cases, he said, did it appear an employer was actively racist in his hiring practices.

Far more often, he suggests, it's just that there's a huge cultural divide between the applicant and the employer. Take as an example, he says, the whole job interview process. Applicants who come from western cultures know that the whole point of an interview is to sell yourself, to tell the employer why you'd be exactly right for his firm, to brag a bit, maybe even to exaggerate your accomplishments with your past employer a little. It's a competitive process, and often a job will go to the person who gives the best interview.

But in some other cultures, bragging about your accomplishments is frowned upon as a serious breach of etiquette. A person is expected to be modest, if anything, underplaying his successes. The sort of selling of self that westerners take for granted in a job interview is seen as "almost rude" in those cultures, Stolte says. Little wonder then that someone with a good gift for self-promotion will get the job over someone who doesn't believe in blowing their own horn.

Stolte thinks that to begin to change the picture, new attitudes will have to be adopted on the part of both job-seekers and employers. The job-seekers may have to be persuaded, he says, that in the particular circumstance of a job interview, their normal reticence isn't necessary and will in fact work against them.

But the employers also need to realize that they may be missing out on some great employees if they just take the traditional interview at face value when some of the applicants are from other cultures. "They need to learn to dig a bit deeper, to work with those candidates to see what's really there, even if it doesn't come out first thing," he suggests. In other cases, he says, it might be possible to abandon the face-to-face interview altogether and set up some more practical test to allow a candidate from another culture to show that he or she can really do the job as required.

Foreign credentials give pause

One other problem often faced by new immigrants, he says, is that their foreign credentials aren't easily or routinely recognized in Canada, no matter how high their level of training abroad. That, he says, is something that can and should be worked on with various credential-granting bodies to ensure that people with the necessary skills can get their credentials transferred over so they can quickly get work in their chosen field in Canada.

For those of non-western cultures, the difficulty in getting a job is hard on them not only economically, but also psychologically, Stolte says. When someone is repeatedly rejected by employers, he notes, their motivation to keep trying decreases markedly with every refusal. In Stolte's study, the non-western applicants reported a significantly greater level of emotional pain and stress relating to their job search than did those candidates from western backgrounds.

Greater Vancouver prides itself on being one of Canada's great cultural melting-pots. It's just not acceptable that those from the non-western cultures of the melting pot can't get jobs equally easily as their counterparts of more traditional "western" backgrounds.

Barbara McLintock is Victoria-based contributing editor to The Tyee.