We had an amazing Sydney testers discussion group today on sharing stories around our job hunting experiences. One comment that came up was on local experience and I wanted to elaborate a little more on it.
I would say there are atleast two ideas behind why someone would care about local experience. Unconscious bias and culture fit. I have helped with interviewing some people in my last company so I have some insights to share. I would say that unfortunately there is some bias against people who don’t have English as their first language. People will use the rationale of poor culture fit to justify their unconscious bias.
I would say that unfortunately in Australia we have a bias against people from India, the massive call centre outsourcing efforts have not left us with great impressions. So there is an association with strong accents and having many issues with communication. Someone who’s applying for a job here with an Indian background just has a few extra hurdles to overcome, it’s not really fair but by asking for local experience we can justify to ourselves that you wouldn’t be a good cultural fit. We also imagine that you might be coming from a larger hirachical corporate structure, where there is a lack of innovation/self motivation. We imagine that if you did have an issue with your boss here you wouldn’t let anyone know about it because that’s what we understand about your culture.