tantantan said:
Hi All,
I'm applying the BCpnp Express Entry-International student. But I got an e-mail of "procedural fairness", they are concerned about the job offer form information.
The reason is my boss can not speak English, so when she answered "Are there any language requirement other than English and French for this position?" She chose yes. She needs a person who can speak Chinese to interpret between her and employees. She also did an explanation letter to explain that only because she couldn't speak English, so she needed one person can understand and help her do the management. All of other employees are all Canadians. But the pnp officer still think that being fluent in Chinese isn't a requirement for this position and the pnp program isn't considering the business needs.
So will it inluent my application result?
OMG, someone has to deal with the Bona Fide Occupational Requirements again.... It is rather a very complicated issue. As a human Resources Management graduate, I was taught to use some sort of tests to assist company HR in determining whether a job requirement is Bona Fide or not. In general, a job requirement is considered Bona fide if it satisfies all of the following criteria:
1. The job requirement policy was adopted for a purpose or goal that is rationally connected to performing the job
2. The job requirement policy was adopted in good faith, in the belief that it is necessary to fulfill a legitimate work-related purpose
3. The job requirement policy is reasonably necessary to accomplish the work-related purpose. To show that the standard is reasonably necessary, employers must show that it is impossible to accommodate individual employees sharing the characteristics of the claimant without imposing an undue hardship upon the employer.
what I need to ask is, which NOC did you use and what are your detailed job duties on your employment letter?
To quote your words, your manager claims that
She needs a person who can speak Chinese to interpret between her and employees. With this being said, speaking Chinese would only be considered a Bona Fide Occupational Requirement to me IF your job title in the job offer is translator/interpreter (NOC 5125). However, she also said, I quote,
She also did an explanation letter to explain that only because she couldn't speak English, so she needed one person can understand and help her do the management. From this sentence, your job title could be one of 1241, 1221, and 1222; if this is the case, it is never easy to convince the officer that the job duties of such NOCs can ONLY BE performed and carried out by someone who has the ability to speak Chinese (i.e. a native English speaker will meet no obstacles when performing the jobs of an office administrative assistant); hence, speaking Chinese cannot be considered Bona Fide.
However, speaking Chinese does seem important in your case, since the person to whom you directly report speaks only Chinese. But again, if this is the case, we are back to the question concerning NOC Code choice... Because the majority of your daily routine and essential job duties would be translating your manager's ideas from one language to another in verbal and written forms for other coworkers of yours.
Anyways, in my opinion, when responding to this inquiry from the officer, you can use this format to explain your situation. You can write something like this:
In my defense, this job requirement was adopted for a purpose or goal that is rationally connected to performing the job. Since the person whom I directly report to does not speak English, speaking Chinese is definitely rationally connected to performing the job duties. For the very same reason, it is also a requirement that's necessary to fulfill a legitimate work-related purpose (i.e. facilitating the communications in between the manager and other co-workers).
In my own application, I did not put a foreign language as one of the job requirements, despite the fact that I, from time to time, need to conduct internal written and verbal translation from another language to English. In fact, 95% of our company's clientele are non-English speakers and I do need to communicate with clients on a daily basis; even so, I'm still not confident that I can convince the officer that speaking the language indeed is a bona fide job requirement.... For future references, one should never include a foreign language as a Bona Fide Occupational Requirement in the job description as it will no only complicate one's application, it may also put the employer in a dangerous position as they may be imposed questions from the labor department.
I sincerely hope it'll help in some ways. Again, never, never, never ever put down a foreign language as a job requirement unless you are a foreign langauge teacher or interpreter.
