Dear jake3d

first of all we are not talking about you or me. We are talking about the people who are about to land or have already landed some and are struggling to get an office job in the worstever job market.

Without getting into the technical explaination of the terms discussed above, what we want to impress upon is the fact that the call centres(where most of the immigrants target as job bank) DO look into how the agent speaks, his listening and understanding skills, etc... Say someone manages to get thru the interview and gets on the phones. His calls are recorded and analysed. If the management finds the agent struggling or finds that the end customer has hard time understanding the agent within no time, the agent is sacked. There are no fist, second or third takes..... I can say this because my dept also has a technical support helpdesk and I can see hire and fire all the time. I often talk to the hiring managers. This does not only imply to desis, but orientals, europeans and francophones are also included. Most of the francophones hired for a bilingual job get fired due to their poor english and the typical accent which is difficult to understand.

As for Indians, it is a matter of effort, to keep their ears open and see how words like "schedule" or "competitive"...........there are so many words that they should know how to utter the n.american way. It makes easy for a customer to understand over the phone. Face to face is a different story. Most of the customer service centres/telemarketing centres serve the north american population. They do not call Europe. These phone agents have a very tough job to do as some get nasty over the phone, telemarketing in particular.

i dont think there was anything "technical" about what I mentioned. I did want to make a distinction about various terms that people seemed to be using interchangeably.
I was one of those who was struggling (inbetween labour jobs) to get an office job when I landed this job...accent and all. So I think what I mentioned does apply to people in a similar capacity. And 90% of my clients are from NAmerica too...majority from hollywood. Europe is almost always handled by our British colleagues. Though we still get the occasional Swede/German.
The North america we talk about itself is built on myriad peoples and accents. Like the teacher I was speaking to the other day who was explaining the strong Brooklyn accent of one of the students "This is America..what do you expect".
I'm probably being anal about definitions but I really do not feel accent is the problem when it comes to job opportunities. People in North America are used to numerous accents in everyday life. Most people I speak to, like this fact about North America.
Do you really consider accent the problem or is it diction and grammar that you refer to? You do know that it is possible for an Indian with accent to speak better English than a North American? I personally know quite a few such people ( fyi: they are professors at MC Gill and Concordia). Are you, by any chance, implying that an Indian(or any) accent and good spoken english are mutually exclusive? If not, then logic dictates that any educated customer would be happy to talk to the person speaking good English. Which brings me back to the point that command over the language, rather than accent , should be worked on.
Yes, i admit, if you are only going to be selling pig collars to a redneck then your Indian accent could be a problem.
I would like to point out that my daughter still corrects me when I say wednesday instead of wendsday

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I would fully agree with jake3d. Most of the indians are so obsessed with English (mothers telling their children - \\\"leg laao, shoe pahano\\\" and unnecessarily give extra weightage (is this spelling correct? I doubt!) to accent, and feel that their life depends on it. Like many other things, the Canadian way of speaking is an asset to have, but NOT NECESSARILY a liability if you do not have it - or meaning thereby, if you HAVE AN ACCENT. I have seen Chinese working in banks in my pre-dominently Jewish area with an accent which is difficult even for me, an Asian, and that too from Singapore (pre-dominently Chinese community) to understand. And my exerience is with customer service reps!

I am fortunate enough to live in a condo occupied mostly by the Rich people - and day in and day out I meet people in the elevators, lobby, gym, games room who have strong accents - whether it be Russian, or Polish, or Iranian and OFCOURSE chinese - both young and old. How come they are all so successful in their jobs with such heavy accents, IF that was a liability???

Telephone Customer service is a very small sector of the job-bank available to new immigrants, and so we should not be put off if we carry an accent with us. I am presently undergoing training with a company which has over 450 retail outlets and more than 80% of their staff is Retail Customer Service. Some of the persons in my class, as well as some existing employees are hired by the company MAINLY because of the accent they have - so that they can serve those customers who will undertand them better than a person who has \\\"Canadian Accent\\\". Would you prefer to talk to a person in English who speaks with an Indian accent or with one with Canadian accent (many a times not understanding what they mean!!). So, there are a lot of CSR jobs available to people with an accent!

that reminds me - a year back I was asked by a chinese friend of mine to attend a meeting of the \\\"Toast Masters Club\\\" in RHill. As you are aware, this is a club for people who love public speaking and hearing public speakers. This particular meeting happened to be an annual competition of a bigger district and had 6 different finalist speakers + one guy from the police dept. At the end of the speeches, they asked guests like me if we wanted to give a short speech too. God knows what happened, I stood up and rounded up all seven speeches in one 3 minute speech of mine - very much in my Indian accent. Result?? I got a standing ovation from the crowd of over 50 who were ALL good at public speaking, and later I got personal appreciation from almost a third of them! (I infact almost got a job with one of them - she wanted me to work with her to teach High level people protocols of local communities when they visit other countries on official missions!!)What I want to convey is that they did not mind my accent - they could immediately recognise that I could convey an understandable message to them!

Canada is a place full of different accents. What you will find is that people will avoid you NOT if you have a strong Desi accent - but most probably because you cannot speak to them about the hockey game last night, or why Raptors lost, or the fun of trekking and cottage living!

That's what is Canadian Experience!! And that's one of the reasons of struggle in Canada - though not the only one!

So just remember - American accent is an asset to have, but lack of it is not a liablity!

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Chandresh

Advice is free – lessons I charge for!!

Quote:

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Orginally posted by jake3d
BTW: has anybody noticed how South Indians and the Irish have similar pronunciations for the same words. Also the Swedes. Find many similarities in the accents of these peoples.

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Quote:

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Orginally posted by Chandresh
American accent is an asset to have, but lack of it is not a liablity!

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Are you there?

For once I don't agree at all with BlueL and Chandresh
The folks from Eastern Europe succeed because of other reasons such as upgrading of their skills when they come here. They have deep pockets as compard to desis and dont make a beeline to first factory near home when they land. besides their language skills have what Jake has mentioned...clarity. They don't speak at 150 words a second as we do.

I too hav eworked in tech. call centres and know very well how many desis work here...the fact that jake has mentioned that he is only desi in his call centre is a clear hint. Now a days, yes, many, telemarketing centres are hiring desis but that is because of booming desi population, not that suddenly Canadians have got used to desi accents.
Not yet.
Accent is a problem in gettting a job where you will be frontline interface to the clients....if you are a programmer/network admin/ technician no, it does not matter that much.

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DIE HARD !

and jake
parlez vous francais monsieur?

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DIE HARD !

je parle un peu francais, and not well enough...most of my clients are from south of the border.

The reason I am the only desi here(its not a traditional 'call centre') is because there are not many of us inthe field. Abhinav 3d is probably the only one I know after 7 years of being here. There arent even many visible minorities in this industry as a whole in NA. As Abhinav3d will attest, getting a job in this field even for north american kids is tough. As a matter of fact I am the 3rd one of a class of about 15 that has found a job in the field, the last time I heard. Again the only desi in the class in seneca, toronto.

Again are you implying that an Indian(or any) accent and good spoken english are mutually exclusive? Not all of us speak 150 words per second even in india. You generalise too much. Id like to know what, according to you, is a north american accent anyway? Is it the novascotian, or the quebecois, or is it that of someone from PEI, Brooklyn, texas, Arkansans.etc? These are all north american areas.

Like bl and chandresh indicated...confidence, clarity and command of the language are the important factors. If I had to choose amongst the three I would choose confidence and clarity. Definitely not a fake accent. e.g: Have you heard the hostess of the passionate eye (cbc), Michaelle Jean? She has a cute accent (Haitian i am thinking). That did not stop her from doing what she is doing.

If Canadians are that averse to the desi accent then they would not entrust people with such accents with the important job of instructing the future generation. Like I mentioned before friends of mine are professors (Business school amongst others) in Canadian universities

Ofcourse, If all these examples are not enough to convince you then I guess we just have to agree to disagree. The readers can decide for themselves.

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