Singapore jobs - culture and similarity?

[Darren Duncan]

Hello,

I've noticed during the last couple weeks two job postings ...

1. http://jobs.perl.org/job/13380

2. http://jobs.perl.org/job/8974

... and am wondering if any of you have experience concerning such.

For example, the above 2 have a number of similarities but talk like they are
unrelated.

Also, how appropriate is it to be asking an applicant for their photo, which
both of these do?

Maybe its a different culture thing with Singapore, but as far as I know in
North America it is inappropriate to be asking for a photo with an application,
same as it is inappropriate to ask questions on one's family status or religion
or politics etc in a job interview.

Do or have any of you worked for a Singapore company and do you have any
thoughts concerning these postings?

-- Darren Duncan

[Ask Bjørn Hansen]

On Dec 27, 2010, at 20:44, Darren Duncan wrote:

> Maybe its a different culture thing with Singapore, but as far as I know in North America it is inappropriate to be asking for a photo with an application, same as it is inappropriate to ask questions on one's family status or religion or politics etc in a job interview.

In the US some of those are illegal actually, rather than just inappropriate.

Some general notes as one of the volunteer moderators of the postings:

Unless we're alerted to something being illegal or particularly inappropriate we don't and can't filter on things like that when posting jobs to the site because it's basically impossible for us to know the culture and law all over the world. While we could reject things that just seem wrong to us[1]; it'd merely just make the poster slightly adjust the posting; but be unlikely to adjust their corporate (or national/cultural!) attitude so it seems like a better service to have the jobs go through as posted.

As examples everyone will understand: We wouldn't want to correct "PERL" to "Perl". When someone posts something that's clearly a PHP job (but with some reference to Perl) and we reject it for not being a Perl job they'll often just move a sentence around so Perl is listed first. Does that really change the job? No. Is the posting now more correct? Who knows.

- ask

[1] As a sidenote we don't read them in great detail actually; just scan for it looking like a real job and that it is a Perl job ("we know it when we see it")).

[Darren Duncan]

Ask Bjørn Hansen wrote:
> On Dec 27, 2010, at 20:44, Darren Duncan wrote:
>> Maybe its a different culture thing with Singapore, but as far as I know in
>> North America it is inappropriate to be asking for a photo with an
>> application, same as it is inappropriate to ask questions on one's family
>> status or religion or politics etc in a job interview.
>
> In the US some of those are illegal actually, rather than just inappropriate.
>
> Some general notes as one of the volunteer moderators of the postings:

<snip>

Ask, thanks for your response.

I just want to be up front and clarify that I'm not questioning whether the job
postings should have been allowed to be posted, or anything like that. As far
as a reading goes, they do indeed seem appropriate for postings. You're doing a
good job and I'm not suggesting anything different.

And so, the photo thing was actually a minor part of my question.

What I really wanted to know was whether anyone on this list had any experience
with Singapore companies, or what people's opinions were as to whether the two
job postings I linked to were from the same company or not.

Ignoring the photo thing, the desired skills descriptions and email addresses
and so on, as well as the timing and other details, suggests to me that these
might be from the same person, though other details suggest not.

-- Darren Duncan

[Ryan Yagatich]

I've come across this during recruiting from a few other countries as well. It's standard practice in some locations to incorporate photos, father's job and other details in which we may not request from US applicants.

[Greg Sabino Mullane]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160

Ask points out:

> In the US some of those are illegal actually, rather than just inappropriate.

The original posting did give me pause due to the picture requirement,
but because the job was in Singapore, I approved it. I would not have
had it been for a US job. All in all, I lean towards approval over
non-approval as an employed Perl hacker makes the world a better
place than a non-employed Perl hacker. :)

> [1] As a sidenote we don't read them in great detail actually; just
> scan for it looking like a real job and that it is a Perl job
> ("we know it when we see it")).

Yep. There is a suprising number of non-Perl jobs that try to get
through, mostly recruiters blasting their latest Java job to every
job-related email they can find.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane gr...@turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 201012281248
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iEYEAREDAAYFAk0aIwAACgkQvJuQZxSWSsggNQCg9/Rh0E3quGmRMcliMpBTpYpz
37cAoJcfsInqVV4TaOHLTwXFYs8ZtHCZ
=Rsn+
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----