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I fully admit to an amount of voicism when dealing with recruiters who’ve either emigrated from or are in a call center in India. Many times, I simply can’t par

I fully admit to an amount of voicism when dealing with recruiters who’ve either emigrated from or are in a call center in India. Many times, I simply can’t parse their English due to their accents, to the point where I just don’t respond to them, either in a phone call or even email (because they might call). Sad, but true.

samsari 6y ago
This isn't something I'd be happy admitting to. What steps have you taken so far to address this?
- curiousgal 6y ago
  I am not a native English speaker, why is it OP's responsibility to decipher what the recruiters are saying? It is their responsibility to master the language and to express themselves clearly.
  - yorwba 6y ago
    Those recruiters most likely have "mastered the language" and are expressing themselves clearly, just in a different accent. If someone interacts with Indian English speakers often enough that they develop a habit of avoiding Indians just in case they might call and speak with an accent they can't understand, it's probably time to do something about that, like getting more exposure in an environment where it's easier to understand (e.g. with subtitles) In the case of recruiting, where there's no obligation to pay any attention to recruiters at all, it might not be much of an issue, but it's only a matter of time until you get an Indian colleague and avoiding them is no longer an option.
    - harperlee 6y ago
      There is a big gap between being functional in a language and perfecting it. Each sound cue not mastered hinders information redundancy and thus increases risk of not being understood. It probably seems like percolation: small crevices that suddenly reach a critical point where comprehension is lost at the receiver side. Also way before that point, the receiver needs more subconscious effort and thus fatigues itself parsing the message.
  - lurtbancaster 6y ago
    It's the responsibility of both the OP's *and* the recruiters. We've societally conditioned ourselves through media that persons with certain accents - cough a very specific kind of British accent cough, are more "sophisticated", and a very specific kind of Southern USA accent as "unsophisticated"; even though logically, the manner in which a person speaks should neither validate nor invalidate the substance of what is being spoken. But implicit bias affects us all and so we have voicism. If we really want to break down voicism monetarily, it's a suboptimal way to work. It makes it more likely that you might reject a good idea because the person who expressed it didn't have the dialect/accent with which you're most familiar. Likewise it makes it more likely you might let a less-than-good idea or a straight-up bad idea get through your filter, because it's been expressed in an accent/dialect you've come to associate with "pleasurable". The OP is self-aware enough to know that this bias exists within them. This is already better than those who might reject any notions of such biases at play. The OP could, for example, to remediate this bias, watch YouTube videos where English is spoken by those from that given region. Whatever this "region" might be. This would help reduce the cognitive burden of parsing accents during any future interactions. So that your brain would be less focussed on the peculiarities of the accent and more focussed on *what* they're actually saying. It would make establishing rapport easier. It's just a better way to work. But like with most things though, practice makes perfect. Also personally I find it fascinating to listen to people speak the same language differently. So it's a fun cognitive exercise to train your mind to ignore the accent and listen to what they're saying. On to the recruiters-side now. Sometimes it's not just unfamiliar accents/dialects, for which they're not at fault whatsoever. Sometimes it's straight-up poor sentencing structure and grammatical errors. And that is obviously not the OP's fault. And is definitely the recruiters' fault. The recruiters stand to gain a lot from being able to express themselves more clearly. But language skill is a much more fundamental problem to address, that's endemic to the educational system and curriculum of that area. There's very little the OP could do, or any one person could do, to remedy that. To summarize, the barrier to de-biasing the OP is, at this moment, much lower than the barrier to fixing deficits in language skills of an entire people in any given region. Obviously things will need fixing from both sides, but let's try to fix what's relatively easy to fix first I guess.
pmiller2 6y ago
I wonder if maybe you're not being taken the right way in this thread. I've personally had a few experiences with professors, both in undergrad and grad school, in which I found them hard to understand because of their accents. Rather than dropping the class and complaining about that "foreign professor," I stuck it out and spent significant effort into trying to parse their language, because I knew there were a significant number of things I could learn from these people. What's more, they were actually people to me; I physically interacted with them multiple times a week, every week for a semester or more. If I were cold called by some random recruiter with a thick accent with whom I had no previous relationship, I can't say as I'd put the same amount of effort into trying to understand them. They aren't people I interact with on a near daily basis, and they probably don't have anything interesting to offer me, so I tend toward feeling it's not worth the effort to try and force my brain to hear the message through the accent. Although the Indian call center recruiter is a common stereotype, the thing is, I'd apply the same sort of logic with any accent, in just about any situation I can think of. That is, if the interaction is potentially significant, I'm inclined to expend effort. If they're people I'll be interacting with frequently, I'm also inclined to spend the effort. I've encountered Indian people I couldn't easily understand. I've also encountered Chinese, American, European, and South American people I had difficulty understanding. In each case, I applied the same logic to determine whether I would expend brainpower on understanding their literal words to get at what they were saying. Is this closer to what you meant to say?
drivingmenuts 6y ago
I will note that, in person, I don’t usually have a problem understanding Indians. I think maybe those I’ve worked with have had more time with the idioms of American English and practice at reducing their accent.
boruto 6y ago
I am an Indian, I struggled to understand Russian and Ukrainian people. After spending an year, I basically speak like them.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  "Not great, not terrible?" :)

samsari 6y ago

This isn't something I'd be happy admitting to. What steps have you taken so far to address this?

curiousgal 6y ago
I am not a native English speaker, why is it OP's responsibility to decipher what the recruiters are saying? It is their responsibility to master the language and to express themselves clearly.
- yorwba 6y ago
  Those recruiters most likely have "mastered the language" and are expressing themselves clearly, just in a different accent. If someone interacts with Indian English speakers often enough that they develop a habit of avoiding Indians just in case they might call and speak with an accent they can't understand, it's probably time to do something about that, like getting more exposure in an environment where it's easier to understand (e.g. with subtitles) In the case of recruiting, where there's no obligation to pay any attention to recruiters at all, it might not be much of an issue, but it's only a matter of time until you get an Indian colleague and avoiding them is no longer an option.
  - harperlee 6y ago
    There is a big gap between being functional in a language and perfecting it. Each sound cue not mastered hinders information redundancy and thus increases risk of not being understood. It probably seems like percolation: small crevices that suddenly reach a critical point where comprehension is lost at the receiver side. Also way before that point, the receiver needs more subconscious effort and thus fatigues itself parsing the message.
- lurtbancaster 6y ago
  It's the responsibility of both the OP's *and* the recruiters. We've societally conditioned ourselves through media that persons with certain accents - cough a very specific kind of British accent cough, are more "sophisticated", and a very specific kind of Southern USA accent as "unsophisticated"; even though logically, the manner in which a person speaks should neither validate nor invalidate the substance of what is being spoken. But implicit bias affects us all and so we have voicism. If we really want to break down voicism monetarily, it's a suboptimal way to work. It makes it more likely that you might reject a good idea because the person who expressed it didn't have the dialect/accent with which you're most familiar. Likewise it makes it more likely you might let a less-than-good idea or a straight-up bad idea get through your filter, because it's been expressed in an accent/dialect you've come to associate with "pleasurable". The OP is self-aware enough to know that this bias exists within them. This is already better than those who might reject any notions of such biases at play. The OP could, for example, to remediate this bias, watch YouTube videos where English is spoken by those from that given region. Whatever this "region" might be. This would help reduce the cognitive burden of parsing accents during any future interactions. So that your brain would be less focussed on the peculiarities of the accent and more focussed on *what* they're actually saying. It would make establishing rapport easier. It's just a better way to work. But like with most things though, practice makes perfect. Also personally I find it fascinating to listen to people speak the same language differently. So it's a fun cognitive exercise to train your mind to ignore the accent and listen to what they're saying. On to the recruiters-side now. Sometimes it's not just unfamiliar accents/dialects, for which they're not at fault whatsoever. Sometimes it's straight-up poor sentencing structure and grammatical errors. And that is obviously not the OP's fault. And is definitely the recruiters' fault. The recruiters stand to gain a lot from being able to express themselves more clearly. But language skill is a much more fundamental problem to address, that's endemic to the educational system and curriculum of that area. There's very little the OP could do, or any one person could do, to remedy that. To summarize, the barrier to de-biasing the OP is, at this moment, much lower than the barrier to fixing deficits in language skills of an entire people in any given region. Obviously things will need fixing from both sides, but let's try to fix what's relatively easy to fix first I guess.

pmiller2 6y ago

I wonder if maybe you're not being taken the right way in this thread. I've personally had a few experiences with professors, both in undergrad and grad school, in which I found them hard to understand because of their accents. Rather than dropping the class and complaining about that "foreign professor," I stuck it out and spent significant effort into trying to parse their language, because I knew there were a significant number of things I could learn from these people. What's more, they were actually people to me; I physically interacted with them multiple times a week, every week for a semester or more. If I were cold called by some random recruiter with a thick accent with whom I had no previous relationship, I can't say as I'd put the same amount of effort into trying to understand them. They aren't people I interact with on a near daily basis, and they probably don't have anything interesting to offer me, so I tend toward feeling it's not worth the effort to try and force my brain to hear the message through the accent. Although the Indian call center recruiter is a common stereotype, the thing is, I'd apply the same sort of logic with any accent, in just about any situation I can think of. That is, if the interaction is potentially significant, I'm inclined to expend effort. If they're people I'll be interacting with frequently, I'm also inclined to spend the effort. I've encountered Indian people I couldn't easily understand. I've also encountered Chinese, American, European, and South American people I had difficulty understanding. In each case, I applied the same logic to determine whether I would expend brainpower on understanding their literal words to get at what they were saying. Is this closer to what you meant to say?

drivingmenuts 6y ago

I will note that, in person, I don’t usually have a problem understanding Indians. I think maybe those I’ve worked with have had more time with the idioms of American English and practice at reducing their accent.

boruto 6y ago

I am an Indian, I struggled to understand Russian and Ukrainian people. After spending an year, I basically speak like them.

inglor_cz 6y ago
"Not great, not terrible?" :)