Is this a double standard?

I grew up in the US so I speak English. If I go to a job interview and use bad grammar or the wrong words, etc. I am not likely to get the job.

However if a person from Japan, India, China, etc. goes to a job interview and screws up the language in many cases nobody cares. Especially for tech jobs.

Why is that?
BTW, I have not lost a job recently (or ever as far as I know) to a foreign person. I am just curious about this.

If someone from overseas demonstrates poor English, it usually suggests they didn’t grow up speaking it. If you, who presumably you had 12+ years of education to learn grammar and vocabulary, demonstrate poor English, it suggests you ain’t too bright. Someone can be taught a language, but you can’t fix stupid. :stuck_out_tongue:

In addition to this, someone who speaks English as a second language is presumably fluent in at least one other language and has a good understanding of a non-US culture. This could be an asset to the company that more than makes up for the occasional grammatical mistake.

But to write most software (for example) knowledge of another culture is not needed. The same is true for many tech jobs.

Also doesn’t apply too well after they’ve hired their 147th guy from Pakistan. To be fair, if I had to go to Pakistan and do my job in (urdu? Pharsee? whatever), I’d be screwed.

To write most software you need to use the right syntax too. If you can’t even speak your first language properly it wouldn’t be unfair to take that as a bad sign.

In many jobs, oral English is not a main part of the requirements. Technical writing and basic proper English grammar are far more important. The stress of an interview, while it may be the same in everyone, will show in non-native speakers by making mistakes more frequently than a native speaker would. Interviewers know this. If oral skills are not as important as their written ones, the gaffes will be more easily forgiven in a foreigner.

I’m talking about mistakes like pronunciation, verb conjugation, and proper use of various articles, adjectives, adverbs, and conjunctions.

Depends n the job. For some, having poor communication skills, regardless of reason, is a deal breaker.

Suck it up mate, of course it is.

I don’t think it’s a double standard. The interviewers can’t test the applicant’s fluency in their first language, but it’s assumed that they are smart enough to know ~1.75 languages (their native tongue plus 75ish% of English), whereas you are only responsible for 1.

As others have pointed out, it’s not really an isolated variable. If English is the only language I speak and I can’t speak it well, it doesn’t bode well for my general intelligence. If English is not the only language I speak, and I can’t speak it well, it doesn’t necessarily imply the same thing. I’m a computer scientist, so many jobs treat language skills as secondary under technical knowledge and ability and I’ve seen some people get hired with poor language skills as a result. But that’s not really any different that some sort of a manual labor job, like I had in undergrad, where language skills only mattered enough to communicate what task someone had to do, and they would also hire with little regard to language skills.

That said, I think it’s unfortunate that a lot of technical jobs underemphasize language skills. It may not be important to be fluent in English to be a decent programmer, but a large part of many programmers’ jobs is to be able to effectively communicate with coworkers, document, understand requirements, all that sort of stuff. In graduate school I met a number of non-Americans who were good coders but were terrible writers and, rightfully, it did affect their grades because, at that level, you’re no longer just trying to be a coder but really getting involved in developing complex designs and ideas, which requires good communication skills. In my current job, it would be impossible for anyone without excellent communication skills to do, even if they were twice the coder I am, simply because they wouldn’t be able to do that half of the job.

So, I guess my answer is that it might be a double standard sometimes or it might not, it really depends on the job requirements. Regardless, I think a lot of employers underestimate the importance of communication skills in some jobs.

It’s not a double standard, it’s a standard that has more than one factor. So you score a 10 in one factor, and 5 in another, for a total of 15. The other person scores 8 and 8, for a total of 16, and their score is higher than yours. You can’t complain it’s unfair just because you scored a 10 in one part, it’s the total that counts.

The way you’ve explained this gives me a great way to deal explain a decision completely unrelated to this thread. I am in your debt!

I’m not even sure this is a thing, letalone a double standard.

People write with gratingly poor grammar, but spoken interviews are different. Malaprops aside, people don’t make a lot of noticeable grammatical errors in conversational speech. Certain ones that do crop up, like, using “good” as an adverb or saying you’re looking for a “job pacifically like this one” might be an indicator of intellectual laziness and might stand out, but even these can be overlooked.

I talk to people for a living. I definitely talk to people who strike me as slightly-dumber-than-a-post or exceedingly unpleasant to be around. It’s not grammar that’s the tipoff, usually. I don’t think most interviewers really are looking for a great subject/verb agreement or ensuring that you’re not dangling participles.

Story told before:

My first trip to the US was with a summer job under a “cultural exchange” umbrella. Next year my BFF and her bf went with the same program, which required an interview in English - the interviewer was someone from our country who had traveled with the program several times. My BFF had always had great grades in English, but she almost couldn’t get placed due to horrible communication skills. Her bf had always been one of those people on the “I’m passing you because I’m tired of seeing you” list: no problem being placed.

When she hadn’t been able to find the right word, she’d spent minutes going “uhm… uhm…” When he hadn’t been able to find the right word, he’d defined it, he’d mimicked, he’d drawn: he’d made himself understood. She hadn’t.

I’ll take a foreigner who can make himself understood over a national who can’t communicate any day. I’ve had coworkers (and have one now) who, when you ask them “what are the steps of this process?” tell you the story of the process and how they found about it and whether it was raining: who cares whether their grammar is perfect? They’re unable to tell the rest of us what we need to know!

Just because knowledge of another language or culture isn’t a requirement of the job doesn’t mean there’s no way it could ever potentially be useful to the company. And if we’re limiting this discussion to tech jobs that don’t involve interaction with clients/the public, I have to say I’m skeptical as to whether people interviewing for these jobs are particularly picky about the speaking skills of candidates who are native English speakers.

From a linguistic perspective (or my understanding of one, IANAL), many of the “grammatical mistakes” that people make in everyday speech are actually perfectly consistent with the grammar of their native dialect. For instance, there are dialects of English where it’s common to use double negatives for emphasis. Where people tend to run into problems is when their native dialect, which may be specific to a particular region or social class, differs from the dialect that is accepted as the standard.

Frankly, if you dont know, I dont think you will understand the explanation.