Yes. I also self-identify as a woman; gotta love intersectionality. Like most university students, I have filled out endless equal opportunity questionnaires throughout my job hunting journey. I had never had to proclaim myself as an East Asian Woman so often before coming to university and applying for jobs. I hear the term equal opportunity, the letters D-E-I and the faces of BIPOC plastered on company websites everywhere; but what do those actions really mean?
We all know the story of non-white sounding names on resumes and how they fare in comparison to a Charlie Smith. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if job hunting would be different if my name was Elizabeth Mcdonald; or better yet Elijah McDonald. I don’t know what goes through a recruiter’s mind when they see my name. I don’t know if that influences their perceptions of my qualifications and if it puts me at a disadvantage to my white peers. So the only option I have is to work harder.
Most first generation immigrants like myself don’t have parents who have built a life and network in Canada. Our parents have built their Canadian identity up from scratch. They probably aren’t family friends with the head of HR at Goldman or related to the VP at Deloitte. Personally, my mom works at Bento Sushi and makes those california and yam rolls you love at Loblaws. My mom is the reason I am at Smith, but she likely won’t be the connection I use or the name I drop in a job interview. Now I’m not hating on my mom, if anything I usually won’t shut up about her. My point is that as a first-gen gal, I’m just not born into the connections that my peers may have. So again, I work harder.
So let’s say that I work my butt off and land an amazing job that I put my blood, sweat and tears into. I see that “congratulations” in the subject line of an email and I’m quite literally over the moon. Wouldn’t it be soul-crushing if you heard a classmate of yours then say “oh she only got that job because she was a token hire, they just needed to meet their diversity quota”? Well that is something that I once heard one of my classmates say about someone else.
I guess we can just never win huh? We work hard and a recruiter might not even spend 2 seconds on our applications or we succeed and all our efforts are discredited by our peers.
How do I combat this? Well I start by telling myself that if an employer doesn’t hire me for my identity, then they are not an organization that I want to work for anyways. Regardless of their reputation, my future job must hire me for all of me. I remind myself that I am already very privileged to have access to an education and to try my personal best with the resources I have.
Not to get too heavy or cheesy with this post, Michelle Obama once said “there is no magic to achievement. It’s really about hard work, choices, and persistence.” and that woman speaks nothing but facts. Keep doing you.
Comments