Dear Urban Diplomat,
I’m a receptionist, and I’m helping hire a replacement for my upcoming maternity leave. My boss and I interviewed several qualified applicants who spoke English as a second language. Their English was excellent (certainly fluent enough to take messages), yet my boss hired a less qualified native English speaker. Is this discrimination, or does she have a right to demand perfect English from the person who answers her phone? Should I confront her?
—Assistant in need of assistance,
NORTH YORK
It’s a human rights violation to rule out job applicants based on ethnic origin, often apparent in people’s accents. If the ESL candidates clearly demonstrated their superiority over the final hire, it does sound like discrimination is rearing its ugly head, and you should take the matter to your HR reps. They’ve likely role-played this very scenario in workshops and will be eager to put their training to use. Unless you’re planning to make your mat leave permanent, don’t go all defender-of-justice on your boss. It’s next to impossible to prove your suspicions, and accusing her will only lead to excruciating office tension. Instead, ask her why she didn’t hire certain candidates. Frame it as a difference of opinion, and leave her not-so-latent xenophobia out of it.
Send your questions to the Urban Diplomat at urbandiplomat@torontolife.com
She should not hire her unless she can speak proper English. I worked for a company where the manager was from Columbia and she could not even spell a simple word and she was responsible for written reports. No ones English needs to be perfect but if a potential emploees English is so bad that they cannot even bother to use spell check then perhaps they should wait until theyt take a position that requires phone or wriiten communication.
February 16, 2011 at 11:53 am | by ScottSee what I mean, I also spelled several words wrong but I noticed my mistakes and I am correcting them: emploees is spelled employees and theyt is spelled they. Someone with a good command of the english language should not be lazy and fix their mistakes.
February 16, 2011 at 11:55 am | by Scott