From seasonal farmhands to health care workers to high-level software analysts, immigrant workers play a significant role in companies and industries across Canada and around the globe.
But immigrants also face a host of hurdles as they try to translate their knowledge, skills and abilities in ways that employers recognize and value - and a ground-breaking review from the UBC Sauder School of Business examines that process, as well as how social networks and the length of time immigrants intend to stay affects their job prospects. Along the way, the team also developed cutting-edge machine learning models.
When immigrants arrive on new shores, they must effectively present their knowledge, skills and abilities in a way that employers can understand and appreciate; employers, in turn, have to determine how credible and transferable their skills really are.
But challenges on either side of that process can land immigrants in jobs they're overqualified for, which in turn can lead to lower income, stunted careers and reduced wellbeing; at the same time, companies - and entire economies - risk missing out on valuable immigrant talent.
When researchers Dr. Snehal Hora, Dr. Emily Campion, Dr. Sima Sajjadiani and Dr. Diana Lee decided to dive into the existing academic literature on the immigrant experience in workplaces, however, they were surprised to find just a handful of studies out of their home domain of management.
However, academics from fields including sociology, anthropology and economics had examined the broader immigrant labour market, and the movement of populations, but immigrants' everyday employment experiences had largely been invisible in the organizational psychology and management realm.
For the paper, Dr. Sajjadiani helped to create a machine learning model to review more than 13,000 research papers - dating from 1888 to 2022 - on the subject of first-generation adult immigrants. "We used machine learning to identify the studies most relevant to our research, narrowing more than 13,000 papers to about 5,000," says Dr. Sajjadiani, Assistant Professor at the UBC Sauder School of Business. "Then we used another type of machine learning to uncover the main themes across that body of work."
Of those, the researchers narrowed the search to papers that specifically involved immigrant employment experiences such as discrimination based on language proficiency, or navigating organizational constructs. They ended up with a final sample of 833 papers on 32 topics, from the challenges for immigrant nurses to discrimination in hiring to skill transferability.
They found several key factors that make it difficult for immigrants to effectively translate their human capital in the host market. First, it's the lack of recognition of degrees, certificates and licenses they obtained in their home country.
"Some companies, especially those that aren't as globally represented, might not know how high quality a degree is from a certain university," says Dr. Campion of the University of Iowa. "So immigrants face a kind of penalty from the recruiters not knowing how to understand or place or recognize their knowledge, skills and abilities."
What's more, immigrants are often unfamiliar with employment norms in their host country, such as resumes that don't include pictures or hobbies. As a result, their resume could confuse a recruiter.
"We found that immigrants who took the time to reframe their human capital and revise their resumes to look like what one would expect in the host country were able to overcome some of those challenges and legitimize their human capital in the eyes of recruiters," says Dr. Campion. "That then facilitated them finding employment - and critically, employment they were well qualified for, because underemployment and overqualification, two sides of the same coin, are a problem in highly skilled immigrant communities."
Dr. Snehal Hora of Drexel University adds that countries like Canada often don't have the human capital they need, especially in key areas such as healthcare - but they do have options. "Our paper shows there are some relatively easy solutions," says Dr. Hora, who is herself an immigrant. "If we give immigrants the tools to translate or present their human capital correctly and open the doors for certificates, we can benefit a lot from it in Canada."
Dr. Campion says one of the smartest things policymakers can do is create hypothetical "crosswalks" that allow immigrants to translate their skills and education in their host country; HR departments can also take steps to prevent losing out.
"In your employment interviews and assessments, you want to really focus on the core skills needed, and ensure that applicants have the opportunity to communicate the skills they have that meet the job," says Dr. Campion. "If you make assumptions in the screening process, you can end up screening out high-quality talent."
The researchers also found the social circles immigrants choose in their host countries play a role. They can often land jobs through their immigrant community, but they risk missing out on opportunities that come with developing relationships with people outside their social circles - especially if they plan on sticking around.
"It becomes a trade-off: do you want a job quickly, or do you want a job that matches your skills? And do you want to earn a quick buck and go back, or do you want to settle here?" says Dr. Hora, who also wants immigrants to understand there's a great deal they can do to control and improve their own paths. "The kinds of people you network and interact with govern the kinds of resources you're getting from them - and that helps you translate your skills."
That intention to stay can also evolve depending on what immigrants experience, adds Dr. Sajjadiani. "If we facilitate the translation of human capital, even those who didn't intend to stay for long may want to stay and contribute," she says. "And if someone wants to stay, but faces all these barriers, they may not see a path to contribute and decide to leave."
Societies have all the tools at their disposal to make clear paths for immigrant workers, say the researchers, but it comes down to motivation and resources from organizational and governmental leaders. Especially at a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric has gone mainstream in the United States and beyond, they warn that countries who alienate immigrant labour do so at their peril.
"Immigrants represent such a formidable form of progress for any country. They bring novel human capital. They bring culture and connections to other countries. They create pathways we could never achieve otherwise," says Dr. Campion.
"We're seeing very real consequences of taking a hardline approach in the United States, and I believe it will only harm us in the long run if we don't re-recognize the crucial role that immigration plays," she says. "The global competition for talent should benefit everyone."
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