Returning Singaporean shocked with Expats and Job Interviews here.

I am a returning Singaporean who has studied, worked, and lived in North America for a decade. I am amidst a job search now. They have interviewed me in the local job market for a while and I often get interviews from MNCs. The NGOs and SMES were kind to me, but in MNCs, I keep meeting insecure expat interviewers.

The moment I tell them I was in North America and have an accent while holding a Singaporean passport, I feel the interview becomes an interrogation session. The interview becomes unfriendly and the questions become condescending. I am not being xenophobic here, but I’ve seen this expats qualification and work experience in the Americas. They studied at mediocre universities in the Americas and the companies they worked for in the Americas are not huge either. They are just more politically correct and act more professional (Which sadly Singapore doesn’t teach in our schools).

I know am speaking from a bad experience, but the insecurity I see in the interviews from expats is obvious. And here’s the thing. A mediocre university degree in arts/sciences is very easy to get in North America. There is a reason why you get international students who don’t even speak English going to Americas and returning with degree in 4 years. It’s a cash cow for those countries.

Compared that with Singapore, we grew up with streaming education and PSLE from age of 10. We’ve been taught to compete for those 3 universities locally or spend money to go overseas for that paper.

Now coming back to interview sessions, it makes no sense to get a condescending tone from a non-Singaporean who just got a degree qualification scraping off and working in random companies in the west and just speaking in an accent. (It just takes 5 years to get that accent)

I assure you, they would not get this cushy job in the Americas. That’s why they moved here!

Are we being suckers here? The whole competition with the world talents is bullshit when we have saddles, hooked on to us.