Nationality a factor for employment By IBRAHIM NAFFEE | ARAB NEWS
Published: Mar 15, 2011 20:46 Updated: Mar 15, 2011 20:46 JEDDAH: Your nationality is more important than your qualification and experience when some companies look for workers. In many companies workers of a particular nationality outnumber other nationalities in that company. Domination of workers of any particular nationality in a company is attributed to existence of pressure groups within the company that may influence the policies of that company. These groups gradually acquire influence in the company and apply pressure on the human resources department to recruit workers from their own community. Another factor is that workers of a particular nationality have some features that could be beneficial to the interests of a company. For instance there are many companies that prefer Lebanese and Syrians as salesmen or Indians as software engineers and as industrial workers. Egyptians are preferred in the field of sales and insurance. Some companies particularly in the petroleum and petrochemical sector prefer Westerners for executive positions. "I was surprised to see mostly Indians and Pakistanis around me and a virtual absence of Arabs when I joined the company a few years ago. The only Arab was a Jordanian who was the executive director of the company. I learned gradually that the company decided to employ workers of the same nationality to avoid mutual disputes and achieve harmony among workers" said Ahmad Saleh Aboud, a Yemeni working as a sales coordinator in a private company in Dammam. He added that working with workers of another nationality gives you the strange feeling that you are living in another country while you are in the office. Abdul Aziz Al-Amri, a Saudi accountant, said most of the workers in his company are Egyptians. "Higher executives of the company are Egyptians and they prefer to employ people of their own country even if equally or better qualified people of other nationalities seek work there," he said. "A foreign company's branch in another country will always prefer to employ the citizens of that country because that enables the company interact with the local people and serves the interest of the company better," said Abdullah Abdul Ghani, media relations director of the Saudi branch of Hill & Knowlton. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "newsline" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/newsline?hl=en?hl=en http://www.newstower.blogspot.com/
