Highly-qualified immigrants forced into low-paid j

[ExPat]

Came across this interesting article in the NZ Herald today....

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/st...ectID=10397681

Rusty Kambata didn't come to New Zealand to cook chickens. He came to escape overcrowding and corruption in India, and ? with an MA himself ? to seek better educational opportunities for his son.

But, after months of searching, the best he could find was a job at KFC.

Rusty went from being an oilfield geologist with 16 years' experience and a comfortable life to working 12-hour days, seven days a week, to make ends meet.

[Pulsarblu]

I have seen and heard stories like this before.

I firmly believe that we can make impossible to possible. Like Rusty, he has already won the "battle" although he has not found his ideal job. In spirit he has already won the critics and other employers' barrier against foreigners.

Pulsarblu

[moggy]

I do think that imigrants can underestimate the influence that an accent can have on your employability. Some accents in the UK are seen as desireable, some are disliked.
I have interviewed one person and not employed them for 2 reasons - 1 they were over qualified and I didn't think they would stay - 2 their accent was so strong I struggled to understand them during the course of the interview. As part of the job was answering international help desk queries, there was no way he could be employed. It could be interpreted as racism of a sort but in my view in this case it was suitability for the job.

When I go out there, I will no doubt have an English accent, but if that is causing problems then I will quite happily try and lose it (actually I would like to lose it anyway but that is another issue)

I think it is unreasonable of migrants no matter what country they come from to expect to walk into a job at the same level that they were on immediately.

A good friend of mine came over from Poland - a qualified programmer. He was so confident he would find work over here that he didn't even save up for his trip. He stayed with us free of charge, but still ran out of money after 2 months. He had thought people would be falling over themselves to offer him a job. It never occurred to him that it would be better to take any job, just to keep the money coming in. Fortunately he eventually found one, but still struggled as he had no money till he got paid.

I am in IT, I don't think it will be too difficult to find something in a short space of time, however as soon as I land I will be signing up with temp agencies and will be quite willing to work in KFC in the short term so that we have no worry about money.