it's job hunting time. i never realized how stressful it would be. i never realized how calm i would be either, staring the very real possibility of having to leave the country in the face should i be unemployed next year.
everyone tells me to stop worrying, that there are plenty of jobs around, that nobody is jobless. everyone tells me i'll be fine, that someone will snap me up.
i spent the past week being very grouchy nevertheless.
what i can't reason out in my own mind is why they can get away with what i call discrimination. yes, i can play the devil's advocate and see things from their own perspective. it doesn't mean i agree though.
the policy states that visa holders can only be offered a job if all other applicants of the same job who are citizens or permanent residents have rejected their job offers - in other words, visa holders get treated almost as second-class, getting offered jobs that none of their own want. the scraps i tell you. the leftovers.
from their point of view, it would be less hassle to employ non-visa holders - less paperwork, protecting their own, ensuring a better guarantee that the person they choose wouldn't need to be suddenly deported or leave the country mid-contract and creating a position that needed to be filled. i get it. i just don't agree with it.
how is it fair that we go through the same education and training as the others, only to have a computer program shift us to the bottom of the list of applicants on the basis of our visa status and nothing else. it doesn't matter if we may be the best person for the job, that we might have more experience or qualifications. one of their own will get the offer first. all we can do is sit here twiddling our thumbs hoping one of them rejects their offer so we can move up a spot or two on the list and claim the position as our own. should we not be so lucky, we sit there twiddling our thumbs at a faster rate with the increasing frustration and angst building up at all this inaction.
to make matters worse, you hear stories dribbling in about others in the same situation. visa-holders. they were luckier. they were offered jobs. now, i don't hold anything against them - congrats to them for being able to find jobs with such harsh odds. my question would be to the employers of these aforementioned visa holders. how in the world did you manage to offer them jobs so early in the recruitment period? we're talking about the first week or so of interviews when some others haven't even gotten to that recruitment stage yet. do you mean to tell me that out of all the applicants you've interviewed that applied for that position (up to 75 in some cases) after culling some on the basis of their qualifications, visa status or both, that every single one of them rejected their initial early job offers knowing full well that might've been their one and only at the time? really now. how else would you explain offering the position to a visa holder so early on?
i knew the system wasn't perfect, i thought i had become cynical with low expectations but this..
tell me, have i been naive enough to be viewing the world through rose-colored glasses still? i thought i ditched those sometime through med school.
