snowbunny

Before outsourcing came into being, employers would ask for candidates who were fluent in Hindi or Chinese. I'm not picking on these folks, but it was pretty obvious -- they weren't translating company documentation or speaking with customers.

Any foreign language skills? Any British customers so that your customer service skills would be of use?

I'm always hoping to work for a UK-based company cos travel there and dealing with customer issues would be my pleasure.

Lesley1020

Unfortunately not! But I took the advice of everyone and had a very frank discussion with him today, and we have arranged a meeting with the attorney on Friday morning and he said he will make a final decision and stick with it after that...

His main question is that, yes, he may find "qualified" people, but as with when you are interviewing people for a job under normal circumstances, there can be someone who is qualified but they may not have the personality or demeanour that you would like, he mentioned various things.... like on a couple of the resumes, they have the required experience, but made gross mistakes in spelling etc., which he said he would normally discount people for, but is afraid to do so blah blah.

So, we shall see what happens. Onward thru the fog as my mother would say! LOL.

snowbunny

If the INS would actually say that a person who makes gross spelling errors on their resume (which s/he could have spellchecked before submission) is more qualified than someone who he has worked with and knows can spell, then they are certainly interpreting things differently to workers in engineering and science.

Their stance on that issue has been that the US deserves to employ the world's "best and brightest" and that foreign workers often have a skillset and even a work ethic that US employees lack. It does not matter that you could remedially train a US worker (eg teach them to spell, or to use a new computer language) -- each worker comes to the table with the skills they have, no matter where or how they got them, and the employer judges based on that. Otherwise they'd have to guess at who they could successfully train to be better than you.

A business has the right to use spelling tests, typing tests and any other metric as long as it applies them to all applicants. If your other co-workers would sit down in the first round of a spelling bee, then your argument is not as strong, but otherwise, a business is well within its rights to reject someone whose resume and/or application is poorly written.

As to demeanour and personality.... that's a tough one because it's subjective. Stick with the objective and you'll have a much easier time making your case.