<p>Does anyone have an opinion on this because recently I have noticed it somewhat. I go to a big state school in the Midwest and know a lot of people here and have loved my experience, but the only problem is I am a white middle class kid. I know about 4 or 5 kids that are great kids but they are Asian. They are 4.0 students, and I know it isnt all about GPA but these kids are Presidents and Vice Presidents and Secretaries of organizations. Flawless kids with more than just GPA's, they have clubs and experience in the field back in Asia. The problem is that none of them can land any internships/jobs/ or even interviews. Me and my friends feel this is because there English can be a little choppy or because they are different than us. Maybe it is because we are in the Midwest or maybe its because I am in the CivilE program here which may be a little more "prejudice". Can anyone give any opinions on this? Or experiences?</p>
<p>You never really know for sure about prejudices…</p>
<p>Can these students communicate well? How choppy is their English? Can you understand them? I don’t know about other fields, but there is a significant amount of communication daily in the civil engineering field, whether it be phone calls, e-mails, meetings, or just face-to-face conversations. Sometimes it’s with people on your team, sometimes it’s with contractors or consultants, and sometimes it’s directly with the client. Knowing the subject is very important, but so is the ability to convey it to others.</p>
<p>If they never even got to the interview stage, then I really don’t know… unless there were some obvious grammar issues on their resumes.</p>
<p>EDIT: I have a dumb question. I’m not very familiar with this but… are these international students authorized to work in the U.S.?</p>
<p>Don’t forget if they are international students, they are automatically not qualified for a certain subset of jobs. Anything that requires U.S. Citizenship (anything governmental and some positions at companies on government contracts) will be out of their reach. You also have to consider that companies have to jump through more hoops to hire internationals (like sponsoring visas). In some fields, this isn’t really an issue because it is cost effective for said companies to do so. In other fields, it can be a killer.</p>
<p>I believe international students that are holding F1 are eligible for the followings:</p>
<ol>
<li>on campus employments, or </li>
<li>1 year of practical training, or </li>
<li>no more than certain hours of part time employments…, or </li>
<li>Co-Op</li>
</ol>
<p>Maybe the employers prefer US citizens?</p>
<p>There English isnt “choppy” but their accents are very rough making them harder to understand. </p>
<p>And thank you for bringing up the eligibility of working I never considered this. It would be interesting to ask them because that would make the situation a little more justifiable.</p>
<p>@siobhandem
Why can I get an interview with a 2.5 GPA and being members of a couple clubs and these 4.0 students with far better honors not even get a callback. I dont like to think they prefer US citizens because we were born here</p>
<p>Most international students are indeed F1 visa holder. They must be full time student in order to qualify it. </p>
<p>Oh… accent… yes this is what might prevent a person getting hired… as the engineers above mentioned.</p>
<p>It’s not so much having an accent as being understandable, both in writing and orally.</p>
<p>Given the prevalence of Asians in engineering, even in the US, I highly doubt some type of anti-asian sentiment is to blame. There are plenty of other possibilities, I’ll name a few:</p>
<p>1) they interview poorly (this is a personality thing, not an language thing, necessarily)
2) little to no real industry experience in what they are going for
3) employers are concerned about the risk associated with hiring immigrants (will their visas expire, will I be required a year from now to pay for their health insurance, will I hire them and they leave back for Asia in six months, etc.)
4) licensing issues involved in civil engineering versus other fields where Asians flat-out dominate, being a non-citizen can complicate any licensing issues unfortunately
5) English fluency required for the positions they are applying for, cuz they might need to communicate directly with customers on specs and stuff
6) Citizenship (national or local level citizenship) a requirement for the employer’s business (f’instance, it may be for defense related projects or maybe you’re in a state that requires civil engineers to have lived there for a while or something stupid like that).</p>
<p>Racism is the last thing I’d think of. An employer who refuses to hire perfectly good applicants for no other reason than they don’t like the applicant’s race (I’m assuming the possible factors listed above aren’t a factor in this hypothetical situation) won’t last long in a competitive market. His competitors will hire the staff that he refuses to hire, and his inflexibility will cost him. If racism was at work here, then my automatic assumption is that it’s not a competitive market (i.e. all of these employers do government work so their positions are secure, political connections and so forth).</p>
<p>I’ve only seen genuinely racist management in the workplace once in my life (personally, not counting what I’ve read about). And it was in the government, where nobody ever gets fired. A competitive market deals with racism.</p>
<p>
Are you referring to the eye contact?</p>
<p>In Asia it’s rude to make an eye contact with elders!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Which is why, in Asia, I wouldn’t do it. You should tailor your behavior to local custom, not the other way around. That is something that Americans (and I suppose Westerners as a whole) sometimes don’t quite understand.</p>
<p>Kewl, you should go and flick boogers with the locals then too and let me know who wins. Since you wouldn’t want to be in contradiction of your ‘tailor your behavior’ moral/cultural relativist claim let us know when you come back from practicing customs in Papa New Guinea. Don’t forget to bring the wife and kids or they will miss out on all the fun! If wifey is putting up a fight on taking vacation there just go visit Turkey instead and beat the **** out of her there instead. That way you can get major props from the locals for seeing it there way instead of imposing your western culture viewpoint on them.</p>
<p>kmazza, sometimes I wonder if you just like picking fights for no reason. Clearly when I say that, any reasonable person is going to realize I am not going to move to Turkey and beat women or anything that goes against what we would consider morality. However, simple customs like how to act (not looking elders in the eye, taking off shoes before entering a home, not giving a thumbs-up) are incredibly easy to do and don’t hurt anyone.</p>
<p>What on Earth would possess you to make such extreme conclusions for no reason. Talk about missing the point…</p>
<p>Wow, km. That was irrationally inflammatory…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s what I was wondering. Might be time for another /ignore.</p>
<p>kmazza’s “interesting” posts have elicited similar reactions in other threads, not surprisingly. Yes, “ignore” seems an appropriate response.</p>
<p>that shouldn’t be that difficult for ya grandpa, you wouldn’t want hurt yourself. I’d rather people who still think critically and question things respond anyways so you can enjoy your ice cream</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In America employers think that interviewees who do not make eye contact are shifty, and hiding something. It looks suspicious. We may have hit the nail on the head.</p>
<p>I heard that big companies like Boeing took bailouts from the government and now they are asked to not hire internationals.</p>
<p>So, as an international, which type of companies would you recommend? Lockheed Martin etc do so much military and stuff that its not too easy to apply there. Im thinking small local firms who didnt take bailouts and are free? What do you think?</p>