Zionism is Racist Always

NOVANEWS

Ethiopians need not apply

African immigrants entering the job market today face numerous barriers. Their skin color is just one of them.

By Ido Solomon

After completing her military service, 22-year-old Maayan Balata, like many women her age, began looking for a job. She noticed an ad in the newspaper for a salesperson at a shoe store in Holon and immediately picked up the phone. After a brief, friendly conversation with the manager, Balata was asked to come in to finalize the terms of her employment.

“Around 20 minutes after this phone conversation, I arrived at the store,” she recalls. “The impression I got over the phone was that there was a click between the manager and me. The conversation had gone smoothly, she sounded very nice, and it seemed that I fit the qualifications. But as soon as I got to the store and introduced myself she told me, clearly embarrassed, that she had just hired someone else for the job. It was a little odd. She didn’t say so specifically, but it was quite clear to me that it was because of the color of my skin. Otherwise, it just didn’t make sense that one moment she invites me to a meeting and half an hour later she suddenly doesn’t need any help.”

	David Maharat, Maayan Balata and Hadar Sanbeta. “Israel hasn’t embraced a multicultural approach,” says Maharat
	Photo by: Nir Keidar

Balata says this is not the first time she has felt her race was an impediment: “I know of similar stories also happening to my friends. People who look a little different encounter difficulties finding a job, regardless of their talents or motivation.”
The experience of Balata, who was recently hired as a service representative at a large credit card company, is shared by many members of the Ethiopian community. Their employment figures speak for themselves: In 2008, only about 30 percent of Ethiopian men and 46 percent of Ethiopian women were working (compared with 70 percent of men and 80 percent of women in the overall population ).
David Maharat, 42, is the head of the Education Ministry’s advisory body on integrating of Ethiopian schoolchildren, and himself a member of the community. He attributes the problem to the fact that most veteran Israelis are not personally acquainted with Ethiopians and are fed half-truths and stereotypes, which cause them to think twice when hiring.
“Israelis see reports on television about murderers and criminals who come from Ethiopia and apply this to 100,000 other people,” says Maharat. “Many times, even items motivated by good intentions focus on difficulties and perpetuate a problematic image of members of the community. Employers have to view us as individuals and not generalize.” Ethiopians, too, must become more proactive, he says. “Members of the Ethiopian community have to make greater efforts to integrate into workplaces where they will have an opportunity to advance, so that they are not stuck working in gas stations or in cleaning and guard work. These are jobs that may fill a specific need to earn a living, but will not advance them at all. In order to do that, more money has to be invested in their education, and efforts must be made to increase the number who have completed their [high school] matriculation exams and can pursue academic studies.”
Cultural biases
The barriers facing Ethiopians are many and varied. Their starting point is typically lower, since they are less educated, even when compared with other immigrant groups. The percentage of Ethiopians who have completed their matriculation exams, for example, is far below the national average (30 percent compared with 55 percent ). In addition, much like the ultra-Orthodox and Arabs, Ethiopians tend not to perform well on job entry tests, which usually do not assess intellectual or cognitive capabilities but only look at acquired skills.
“Even though Israel is a society of immigrants, we have not seen fit to embrace a multicultural approach and adjust these evaluation tools,” says Maharat, who himself has an undergraduate degree in education from Bar-Ilan University and is now completing a graduate degree in administration, policy and education at Hebrew University. “There are all kinds of shapes and games that recur in these exams that are based on the fact that as a child you played with Lego or did jigsaw puzzles, and you are meant to have acquired a basic skill as a result. Most Ethiopians don’t have these skills.” Beyond that, he notes, there are exercises employing devices like analogies, in which Ethiopians don’t do well simply because they are unfamiliar with certain terminology.
Hadar Sanbeta, 27, received an undergraduate degree with honors in behavioral sciences and works today as a placement adviser for the Manpower agency. Despite ongoing efforts to make employers aware of these cultural biases, she says, many are not prepared to replace the exams with personal interviews.
“Many Ethiopians have excellent records and tremendous motivation to succeed, but they don’t always know how to express this,” she says. “Employers, on the other hand, have a tendency to generalize, and our skin color helps them do that. I’ve had cases where I’ve sent someone for a job interview who wasn’t appropriate and afterward the employer would ask me not to send any more Ethiopians. We walk around with open identity cards. It’s enough to take one look at us to know where we’re from, so we’re eaten alive in these evaluation centers.”
Another barrier is the prevailing ignorance among Israeli employers about Ethiopian culture and customs, which also creates misunderstandings. “Members of the community have social obligations that are hard to say no to,” says Maharat. “For example, attending the funeral of a member of the community, even if he is not a first-degree relative and belongs to a more distant circle – there is no more powerful obligation. If a person has to choose between missing work and attending a funeral, there will be many people, mostly adults, who will choose to miss work, even without their employer’s consent. They then risk being fired.”
Do you expect employers to capitulate to every whim of the workers?
Maharat: “Immigrants need to become acquainted with the society they’re living in and integrate, but we expect the veterans of Israeli society to be aware of the fact that people from different cultures have different values, and they should learn to respect them.”
The emphasis on modesty in Ethiopian culture is another factor that affects job applicants. Ethiopian job candidates, for example, do not make an effort to stand out during interviews, highlight their accomplishments or even look into the eyes of their interviewer – something they perceive as brazen. This excess of humility also comes through in their resumes. “We are educated not to praise ourselves,” Maharat explains. “The more modest and low-key you are, the more esteemed you are and the better a person you are considered. But in the world where we live, people have to market themselves and say what they’re good at. Many times, you have Ethiopian job applicants handing in very short resumes, which only include the position they’re applying for, without a description or explanation of what they did in the past and in what capacity. By contrast, [veteran] Israelis describe at length even the simplest jobs they’ve done. Since resumes are the first filter, many Ethiopians are seen as unattractive and are disqualified right away.”
Time not of the essence
According to Sanbeta, staff in companies’ personnel departments, charged with conducting interviews with job applicants, often attribute the behavior of Ethiopian candidates to a lack of confidence, a lack of motivation or an attempt to conceal information. “This is a common mistake among interviewers,” she says. “As soon as you explain to an Ethiopian applicant that he has to adapt himself, and you train him to give the answers that are expected, it goes much more smoothly. On the other hand, if the interviewers were aware of the cultural issues and showed more tolerance during the interview, the vetting process would become a lot simpler for them.”
Another cultural difference is in the perception of time. While Westerners attribute great importance to being prompt, in Ethiopia it is unusual to find people who wear watches. “For Israelis, these are things that are obvious,” says Maharat. “If a job applicant is late for an interview, there are those who see this as a sign that he does not take the job seriously. There are quite a few Ethiopians who do understand this, but still, efforts need to be made to instill in them a sense of the importance of being prompt and sticking to a schedule. Of course, when it comes to adults, this is much harder.”
Another barrier is that Ethiopians tend to have very few social connections in the Israeli business community. “If your father has a friend who is a CEO or deputy CEO it will be a lot easier for you to get an interview,” says Balata. “But most of us don’t have those connections, which leaves us a bit behind, especially when the way people are brought into the cycle here is when one friend tells another.”
Orna Segal, the CEO of Manpower, says that, although Ethiopians face unique challenges integrating into the Israeli job market, she is optimistic. “The feedback we get from employers who have hired Ethiopians is amazing,” she says. “They speak of industrious, devoted, loyal, humble and quiet workers. Their biggest disadvantage is that they don’t use the ‘one friend brings another’ system, and we want to be there to fill that gap. We’ve taken it upon ourselves to prepare them for interviews and turn their liabilities into advantages.” The job market today, she says, is in need of skilled workers in all areas, and there happens to be an abundance of them in currently under-employed groups, such as ultra-Orthodox women and Ethiopians. Since August, when Manpower began working with the Ethiopian community, more than 300 Ethiopian job applicants registered at its offices, and of them, 50 have already found jobs, in areas as diverse as assembly lines and finance.
Another organization that has made inroads is Olim Together (Bandelay Woodelay in Amharic), whose mission is combating unemployment among Ethiopian university graduates in Israel. Indeed, figures show that fewer than 15 percent of Ethiopian university graduates – similar to the rate among Arab university graduates – are employed in jobs that correspond to their education, and the overwhelming majority are forced to make do with part-time or temporary jobs.
The organization helps find suitable jobs for Ethiopian university graduates through a network of 200 corporations and private businesses committed to hiring them. In addition, the organization offers these graduates the opportunity to participate in a yearlong excellence and enrichment course that teaches skills and provides guidance and personal coaching during the first year of work as well as personalized tutoring to improve their professional working knowledge of English. So far, 230 Ethiopians have been placed in jobs with the organization’s help.
Another organization that has been active in integrating Ethiopians into the job market is the Joint Israel, which has invested around one billion shekels to promote this goal over the past 13 years. Among the programs the Joint runs are Eishet Hayil and Avihayil, which enable Ethiopians to work in small groups and provide participants with individual mentoring as they make advancements in their careers.
To date, nearly 2,000 Ethiopians have participated in these programs, all but 400 of them women. Of the participants, 80 percent have found jobs and around 60 percent have kept their jobs for five years or more