Do employers discriminate based on language ability? Of course they do. Survey after survey shows that communication skills are at the top of the list of attributes that employers are looking for. The conclusion, in my view, is that immigrants need to work harder to improve their English skills. The government also needs to be more straight forward in pointing this out to immigrants. The idea that an "officially multicultural" Canada which supposedly "celebrates diversity" discriminates less than, say, a "melting pot" like the US, is just nonsense. The work place is a like a team, and therefore needs to be a melting pot.
A recent study reported that
"Across the board, those with English names such as Greg Johnson and
Michael Smith were 40 per cent more likely to receive callbacks than
people with the same education and job experience with Indian, Chinese
or Pakistani names such as Maya Kumar, Dong Liu and Fatima Sheikh."
"Sixteen per cent of those with English names received a callback,
compared with 11 per cent for applicants with Pakistani, Indian and
Chinese names who had the same level of education and job experience.
The callback rate dropped to 8 per cent for those with
foreign-sounding names who had been educated outside Canada but had
Canadian job experience. It dropped to 5 per cent for those who also
lacked Canadian job experience."
According to Globe and Mail writer Marina Jimenez, "The findings not only challenge Canada's reputation as a country that
celebrates diversity, but also underscore the difficulties that even
highly skilled immigrants have in the labour market.
"Moreover, there was nothing in the study to reveal whether the
“foreign-sounding” names were those of immigrants or of people born in
Canada, suggesting that the offspring of immigrants also face name
discrimination.
"
To me there is nothing surprising in the report. It has been my experience that immigrants tend to have poor English skills. What is more they are not motivated to put in the effort required to really improve. This kind of report, unfortunately, just reinforces that attitude.
I say this as an employer that has always had around 30-40% immigrants as employees. Nowadays the majority of job applicants for many jobs are immigrants. A few years we posted for a job and of over 40 applications received, entirely from immigrants, only 4 were in correct English. Most of the applicants were graduates of Canadian universities!
The fact that the report did not track whether the job applicants were immigrants or people born in Canada does not "suggest that offspring of immigrants face discrimination" as Jimenez suggests, it just means that the report did not track a very important bit of information. In other words are people being discriminated against because of their name or because they are immigrants and not likely to speak English well?
The author of the report, Prof. Philip Oreopoulos, a University of British Columbia economist , had the following to say
“Unfortunately, the study shows an applicant's name matters
considerably more than his or her additional education, multiple
language skills and extracurricular activities.
There was only marginally less discrimination for jobs with less of
a need for speaking and writing skills, such as accountants, computer
programmers and web developers. "
Well, in my experience, accounting, programming and web developing do require good communication skills in English. As for multiple language skills, they are not relevant to most jobs and probably best left off the resume.
As for discrimination, yes there is discrimination. If I go to a Japanese restaurant run by Koreans, I find only Korean employees. Minority employers hire their own, largely. This was once explained to me by a recent Chinese immigrant in these terms. "This is not discrimination. It is just the Chinese employer expects that a Chinese person will work harder". ( OK. Now I understand)
Large employers have their "diversity" programmers, but most small and medium sized employers hire people they are going to be comfortable with. It need not mean the same ethnic background but it does mean very good communication skills and the ability to fit in.
Larger "ethnic" employers may also want to give "their own" a better chance. I buy computer equipment at two stores here in Vancouver. London Drugs,
which is owned by a third generation Chinese Canadian, and Future Shop
which is owned by Iranian Canadian interests. Guess which store has
more staff of Chinese origin and which has more staff of Iranian
origin?
I think the average Canadian employer is, by and large, more open minded than employers in other countries. He has to be, that is the labour market here. In Toronto, people of part British origin are only around 50% of the population according to a 2001 census, but those of single English, Scottish, or Irish origin were less than 10%. This share would be even lower today. So the employers who were surveyed here are more than likely not to have an English name themselves. Certainly the vast majority of job seekers do not have English sounding names.
To me the only useful conclusion here is that immigrants need to work harder on their English, and need to accept that there may be some discrimination, but these are obstacles that they can overcome. They may want to consider taking on an English names, at least for work, but that will not help much if their English skills are not good enough. They should sign up for LingQ!
Here is some more information on the report from a CTV report with some additional comments from me in italics.
Oreopoulos said they used websites such as Workopolis.com,
Monster.com, Craigslist.com and Jobbank.ca to find the postings to send
resumés to.
"In that big pile of 100 resumés that they receive, two or three of
them in there are the ones from my study, so it doesn't disrupt their
everyday process of making a decision on who to hire."
But they still had 100 resumes to go through. That is an important point.
He found that resumés with foreign names could only improve their
chances of getting a job if they had Canadian or British work
experience.
In fact, callbacks nearly doubled with the addition of just one previous job in Canada.
So is it the name?
Twenty per cent of the resumés with foreign names even listed
fluency in English, French and their mother tongue, but Oreopoulos said
"it did not seem to make a difference at all."
No one is going to say they are not fluent in English. What does that mean?
Another interesting finding was that, Chinese resumes that had English first names increased the chances of getting a callback.
He said his study only represents a trend for small to medium sized businesses.
Bigger firms, such as banks, have their own application forms on
their websites and because of time restraints he could not include them
in his study.
If the opportunity presents itself, he said he would like to do
more research grouping businesses into categories based on size and
comparing English names to other European names.
He suggested the government could offer more help to recent immigrants "get their foot in the door" at their first job.
How about making the immigrants responsible for their own language skills? Fund them directly, reward them for success, publicize success stories and stop beating the discrimination drum. Stop funding surveys like this one that just cost the tax payer money.
