I am a national of an Asian country who’s worked for public and not-for-profit organisations in a few different countries, including Australia and US. As an immigrant (affectionately known as an ‘alien’ in the US), I know how many hoops one must jump through to be able to live and work in another country.
One of the worst ones is having to re-apply for your own job. Australian and US laws (and presumably many, if not most, other countries) require that organisations wishing to sponsor a foreign resident to work and live permanently in that country prove that there is no current citizen who could fulfill the requirements of the job.
This means that, when the person is already in the role and the organisation decides to sponsor them, the organisation must go through the whole recruitment process again, which is usually lengthy and resource-intensive. Then there’s the requirement to complete the other visa requirements, including fronting a hefty fee.
So, managers and HR officers have to re-write the job description (typically tailoring it to suit the employee’s skills and knowledge), re-advertise the role, sift through resumes, and arrange and conduct interviews. All for the sole purpose of being able to declare that they have searched the market and this person that they have already hired—who has been successfully doing the job—is, indeed, the best and most qualified person for the job.
Not only is this a pointless drain on the organisation’s resources, the process is a highly stressful time for the employee. It is nerve wracking to go through alternative scenarios in your mind: “what will happen if there actually IS a better candidate for the job and I am shipped back home at a moment’s notice?”
It’s also demoralising interviewing for your own job, especially when the employer is happy with you and decided it’s worth investing company resources to sponsor your immigration visa.
It’s also highly inconsiderate of anyone else who may have applied for and interviewed for the job. They have taken time out of their lives (and possibly time off from their jobs) to apply for and attend an interview, only to deal with the inevitable disappointment of being rejected. What an absolute waste of time.
There must surely be a better way of requiring proof that an organisation believes that the employee they’re sponsoring is the best person for the job. Maybe a statement of job requirements and how the employee fulfills them?
In today’s globalised world where working and living abroad is so common you have to question the validity of this requirement. Surely the organisation wants the best person for the job the first time it hires someone for the position, wouldn’t they?
