Arabs in Hi-Tech

Six month ago I returned to Israel after living abroad for six years, since then I have been searching for a job, I expected the situation to be difficult but it turned out to be desperate.

I am software engineer, I got my degree at the Technion institute with excellence, started working already at a student in 1995, then joined the same company as a full time employee, when I graduated in 1996, in 2000 I moved to the US where I worked in Silicon Valley for two years, then I relocated to the Netherlands where I spent three years. In total ten years experience in software development, five of them as a team leader, tens of software project, two major software products released under my supervision.

When I returned here in May, six month ago I decided not to waste much time looking for a job, I mainly used the Internet, I checked the leading job assignment web sites in Israel, TripleTec, Nana, ManPower, etc. I applied for tens of positions that I thought were a good match for my experience. I did not get even one reply, not to mention being invited to interview, not even one ! I started asking my self why, was it the general situation of Hi-Tech sector in Israel ? was my field of specialization too foreign for the type of software being developed in Israel ? Was my resume badly written ? Or was it because I am Arab ? After a few conversations with friends, I became convinced it had to do a lot with the later.

One friend who is also a software engineer, now works as a web master maintaining a web site, he has been looking to progressive his career, and has been relentlessly looking for a new job, a few months ago he was invited for interview at a leading web services company in Israel, after he passed a two hour technical interview, he was invited to a second interview, where he was asked about what he thought of working with Jewish people. Then he was asked to express his political views of the government of Israel, the actions of Israel in Gaza. He did not get the job!

A second friend, a technician working as an operator of chip testing machine, also eager to advance his career, posted his resume on web sites for over a year, he received zero approaches. He decided to make an experiment, he reposted his resume, but this time he changed his name to a Jewish name, and changed his address to Kiryat Ata, a Jewish town, two days later he received a phone call from a company interested in hiring him, I was sitting next to him when his mobile rang and somebody asked if "Yoel" was available (the Jewish name he chose).

Things were different when I was graduated, I used to get calls into my office by job assignment companies offering me jobs, so what changed since then? Well first those were the years of the Hi-Tech bubble, there was a shortage of engineers, after hiring the Jewish and the Russians, and everybody else, the companies were still short of man power, and hired the Arabs as well, now that the Hi-Tech bubble had burst, and there is less demand and a sufficient supply of engineers the companies can get choosy and a lot of them choose not hire Arabs, the Arabs are the last to be hired and the first to be fired, as one friend put it. The other thing that changed since 1997 is the political atmosphere, then there was a peace process, optimism regarding coexistence, things changed since the second Intifada in 2001, resentment between Arabs and Jews grew stronger.

A third friend a graduate of business management, had a job in Hi-Tech company, in his position he got to talk to people in the HR department, and one of them explained to him how things are done, there is person in HR who does the initial screening of resumes, they receive plenty of resumes these days, much more than they need to hire, so they do this quick initial screening, that person would go over the resumes and choose the most promising ones, an Arab name appears on the resume, and he just skip to the next one, the resume doesn't go past the initial screening, no body will even examine it's content. My friend the technician , tried once to recommend an Arab friend for a position in his company, when his company was looking for people, he was plainly told that though they intend to keep him, they don't want hire any more Arabs.

I asked a friend of my who was a lawyer about the legal aspect, he told me that in Israel there are laws against discrimination based on race, religion, gender , etc. . But in reality there is little one can do, he can't just go to court and file a suit against all Hi-Tech companies for discrimination against Arab people, he would have to pin the case on one company , and even then you would have to present two comparable cases, one of Jewish engineer who was hired, and one of an Arab engineer with superior credentials who was rejected, and even if he does manage to prove that he was discriminated against, what will happen ? The court will force the company to hire him ? will he be willing to work for a company that does not want to hire him, no functioning work relationship can result from that, who wants to work in a hostile enviroment anyway, and this is no America so he can forget about getting millions in punitive damages, what he might achieve is ruin his career, if his case reaches the papers, who would want to hire a "trouble maker".

In the end I did get a job offer, from the same company I have been working for the last ten years, in Israel, US and then the Netherlands, and now again in Israel. They have a development group here but it is small, and they already have a manager for the group, but they said they could use my services on a project, and offered me a freelance work, with rather lucrative pay, the only problem , is that when the project ends, I would have to go on a job hunt again, or , something I have been giving some thought lately, give up on my Engineering career all together.

A few years back one could argue that the Arabs in Israel, benefited from living inside Israel, especially because of the access to high quality education, but thing are turning around, and I feel that we are reaching a tipping point, where living in Israel is starting to hinder our progress.