This was definitely a trigger for me.
A few years ago, I had some great email exchanges about a position. I was an experienced dev, and I knew what they were looking for. But to make it official, I had to go through their HR person.
This was the first time I was going to talk to someone from the company, live in a video call.
And the moment we jumped on a call, her first words were, “Do you have a green card?”
I was born here. One look at my skin color and that was her question.
No worries. I’ve seen plenty of job postings for POC LGBTQWTF “STRONGLY URGED TO APPLY.” You should be fine.
Alt+F4 pls
I used to work in HR. In my first week, the HR Manager walked around with me on the floor of our factory. We had a lot of Vietnamese employees. She wanted me to start learning people’s names, but the first time we encountered a Viet person she whispered to me “hey, between you and me, I can’t really tell them apart since they all look similar and have similar names, so if you can’t remember them then it’s no biggie”. Like what??? Ma’am you are the HR manager.
CAN YOU UNDERSTAND ME? YOU ENGLISH? gestures wildly
I have friend who told me that his father speaks broken english to non-native speakers. If they hire landscapers, for example, he’ll start mimicking a hispanic accent and dropping words and deliberately changing grammar. His entire family is terribly embarrassed by this behavior, even if he means well. What a tool.
As we’ve been told since at least the early nineties: if a non-native english speaker can’t understand you, just repeat yourself and ASK LOUDER. /s
But why aren’t potatos friends?
It’s a valid question. Not every job has Visa sponsorship. They ask white people too.
It’s not only not a valid question, it might not even be a legal question.
I’m a hiring manager for a very large tech company in California. I cannot ask any questions about age, ethnicity, country of origin, citizenship status, veteran status, marital status, health, and so on.
HR can ask if they’re eligible to work in the US, and I can ask whether they have the skills and talents I need for the position, but it’s tightly limited.
It still crops up all the time. There are decades worth of studies showing how having a non-white looking name or having age indicators present in work history or graduation dates influence reviewers to reject applications they’d otherwise accept.
Very clearly the ad was run including requirements that were supposed to be known only to the recruiter.
Remember this next time someone tells you there is no justification for affirmative action programs.
Only a sloppy (or maliciously compliant) person responsible for committing the ad copy exposed this for what it was. Had they done their job as intended, there would have been no evidence of these racist hiring practices.
And now all the non-bigots know that they don’t want to work for (checks notes) Arthur Grand Technologies Inc. based in Loudoun County, Virginia.
I certainly hope that when searching for this company, top google search results will show that Arthur Grand Technologies Inc. based in Loudoun County, Virginia was fined by the justice department for seeking to hire whites only, at the exclusion of non-whites and those born outside the US.
Minor edit to fix word choice…
Arthur Grand Wizard Technologies Inc.
I mean, it’s right there in the name…
