Employment – Candidate Selection Criteria

 In Australia, the recruiters tend to think their way of thinking is the only way.

The eastern cultures emphasise on academic qualifications. Asians reason that a person’s ability is proportional to the personal academic qualification. The higher qualification a person has, the more skills the person has.

Unlike the Asians, western countries emphasise on work experience and public speaking skills. The recruiters are not that interested in a candidate’s educational background anymore. They are more interested in how long the candidate worked in a similar position, and how well the person can communicate. They reason that a person’s skill is gained from work, not from studying. If a person has no work experience, the person has no working skills.

Ironically, in the past, the candidate selection criteria in the western world were identical to that of Asian countries. Educational background was highly looked upon. The selection criteria changed after the western world started education export. In the English-speaking world, it resulted in the mass intake of overseas students in the universities of US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, and these overseas students are mainly from north-east Asia and India.

The sheer number of overseas students in the western universities resulted in high marks are mainly achieved by overseas students from Chinese cultural background who have no interest in sports and are weak in public speaking. It seems to them that the only purpose of life is studying, whereas students from the western culture prefer a balance between study and sports.

As such is it safe to say that the western world changed the recruitment policy so as to demote candidates from the eastern culture? Probably not. It is more like demoting candidates who have excellent academic results, but weak in communication skills. Although the overseas students from the Chinese cultural background have been gaining good marks, they don’t have much extracurricular activities, except musical instruments (mainly piano or violin), and their public speaking skills are weak. Sports is the least area that north-east Asian students get involved in. But that doesn’t mean they will perform worse at work than the candidates focus on sports and public speaking skills. The working culture in western countries is still monocultural. It may be multiracial, but it definitely isn’t multicultural, especially in the management sector. I doubt multicultural working styles will ever work in a western corporate environment. That is why it is a lot easier for people with western cultural background to move into management positions.

The only time when recruiters do not concern with the work experience is during the graduate recruitment program, when recruiters mainly focus on the candidates’ language skills, and problem-solving skills.

Interesting to see what will happen when Asians are not interested in studying in western countries anymore, whether the candidate selection will go back to the previous way of thinking.