Can Anybody Tell Me???

Hello Guest,

Not all potential vacancies are advertised in the way you state.

However, Engineering is an exact Profession, like so many others, and generally the potential employers wish to employ Engineers who are used to both certain recognised Standards, and also the various nuances of the English language, so no mistakes are made in Specifications, or the Engineering Works being done.

I have been in the fortunate position, over many years, of employing Staff at both Tradesmen and Engineer level, and by preference, I would employ people who were familiar with both the recognised Standards and also spoken and written English.

The loss of time, and misunderstandings, were not worth all the bother, although I tried many times, in my earlier years.

Having to do a job, or part of a job, three or four times, because of incorrect works, is a sheer waste of lifespan, money, materials, and penalty payments.

A simple mistake on a major Construction Job, may mean the loss of lives, materials, and huge Court Cases for damages, and I have seen that happen to unfortunate employers, who employed a new staff member, or two of them, and were "let down" on a crucial point, by that/those employee/s.

Common Standards exist to some degree between Canada, US, UK, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, (we do have generally a common Heritage), and most of us have met up with Standards, Equipment, and Specifications written and supplied from the above Countries, plus Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway, France, Finland, Denmark, South Africa, Argentina, Russia - in the course of a working life.

Please accept that the situation is not personal, but is something you can only achieve by being born in, living in, the similar group of Countries.

As you may be well aware, the English language has become the Universal language of the Internet, along with most Engineering and Medical fields, and even the people in the most populous Countries: China and India, realise the importance of good English Language written and oral skills - we currently have several thousand students from China studying English here in New Zealand.

So....where does that leave you, Guest, as I presume you are from somewhere else: Study English, both written and spoken, if possible, ensure that your "accent" is minimised, which you can only do by years of practice in an English-speaking country.

Try and get your qualifications there, because that will stand you in good stead.

I trust you don't take offence at the advice I have given above.

Kind Regards....

I disagree with the premise, many many engineers from Asia, and a wide variety of others are to be found in any engineering firm...

Most with education credentials from the US, Australia, New Zealand, or Europe.

Might help if you tell us where you are and provide some exxamples. I'm in the Northeast US and have seen NO such postings ever!

SA like most countries now have qualification standards in place. Over here the draft standard are published for comments and the level of our standard can be measured against the standard of other countries. The standard in SA are definitely below that of the USA etc but are higher than that of some other countries.

Employers are mostly looking for people that can produce right away and may therefore specify higher standards and thereby exclude people which they perceive as uneducated.

A mobile manufacturer may give preference to a person that can design a mobile above someone only capable of producing a mobile jammer.

I don't say there policy is right but the policy is their prerogative.

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I live a stone's throw from a major corporation that hires lots and lots of Indians and Koreans. I think it depends on where you look.

I thought it was illegal to specify age, gender or country of origin?

In the United States, the politically correct way would probably be to post the job, interview everyone and then discriminate internally.