Hello, my
name is Naomi, I am Belgian and have lived in Portugal for 15 years now. As I was
applying for my first “real job” here in Portugal, I found myself some
difficulties. I realised that Portuguese people are not that enthusiastic about hiring
foreigners. As I delivered my CV, they saw my name – that totally shows I am
probably not Portuguese – and they asked me right away where I was from. I told
them I was from Belgium. By the look on their faces, they were not too happy
about it. Finally, I got to do an interview with them and again the question “Where
are you from?”. Again, I got the same response. Sadly enough, when they
called me to inform me that another person had been chosen, I was told they
hired a “Portuguese girl”.
They
actually had to fire the other girl because she was a hard learner and couldn’t
speak English. They hired me as second choice because they had no one else.
I understand
that Portuguese people are going to
support Portuguese people, but what about our skills, in my case, my language
skills? What about selling skills or communication skills? Don’t they count to?
Isn’t that more important than my nationality? Does this happen everywhere else in the world too?
Naomi Seys
Wow, I think we have strongly opposite situatiion in the Czech Republic unfortunatelly...or.. it depends on where you come from and what profession you do. Ukrainian labourers are prefered to Czech labourers because they are cheaper (and they are willing to work illegaly..) Manager and higher posts of biggest companies usually occupie some Americans, Britishs or other European guys and a lot of our Slovak friends come to our country and win better paid jobs with their sharp elbows, drive and self-confidence. I don´t know if I shall consider this situation as good. Yes, maybe it is. It enables free flow on a labour market which sometimes help to discover new technologies or know how. However it would be great if other countries would be as nice to Czech people as we are to them. Because in several EU countries we are being considered as cheap labour from the east and some doesn`t even want to accept Czech employees. So we`re nice to foreign employees however we suffer from unemployment (maybe) thanks to that. So it might not be an ideal solution... which doesn´t necessarily mean that the Portuguese way is the best..
ReplyDeleteI think in Latvia it is not so important where You come from, if You know languages (languages, because mostly the cases You won´t find a job without knowing not only latvian, but also russian). I think language knowing is even bigger problem in Latvia, because everyone should know russian to get a stable, well-paid job.
ReplyDeleteThe other problem would be your belonging to specific ethnic group. I wouldn´t say that latvians are racists, but they definetly avoid something new and not well-known. That´s is why for dark-skinned people life in Latvia is very hard for now.
In general I would say that in your case the steps made by "superiors" were wrong (starting from asking your the question "Where are you from?", because it´s descrimination).