Post
by zeke » Thu Jan 20, 2005 1:39 pm
Dear kcr,
Please accept my sympathies on having an uncooperative employer. However, you are getting wonderful support on the boards in the form of very creative "brainstorming" from your immigrationboards colleagues!
Yours is a governmental job. Maybe there is an elected official who has jurisdiction over your organization and who can advocate for you. After all, there are many many people from your country who are applying for HSMP -- just observe posts on immigrationboards.com--so your frustrating problem is one which could potentially be of interest to many of the official's constituents.
I do understand that the governmental organization is your current employer, and that getting an elected official (or maybe another advocate in the system -- are you part of a union or is there an employee advocate or grievance procedure?) may create conflict between you and the employer...but you were hoping to leave the country anyway, right? But still, I am not encouraging you to jepordize your employment in any way...only you can decide what risks to take...
Can you get in writing your organization's policy prohibiting the writing of duties and responsibilities? I would think that such a document would be essential to your application because you may have to show your duties and responsibilites in unusual ways, such as some of the suggestions made by our colleagues here.
Do you have a university degree? Is there a trade or professional organization that represents your profession or job? A union? If so, maybe a representative of the university or the professional organization or union could write you a letter on their letterhead which discusses typical duties/responsibilities for your job title, for your industry or area of expertise and for someone with your educational background, etc. What are industry standards for duties and responsibilites, if you are in a particular "industry"? (You yourself may want to offer a pre-written draft to these people -- which they would use only if they approved of its content. That way, you have at least some influence on assuring that the letter has the right kind and amount of information in it for HSMP purposes). OR maybe you could write a letter describing duties and reponsibilities and have one of the aforementioned people write a letterhead letter confirming what you have written.
Maybe you know other people doing work similar to yours either in your organization or similar organizaitons. If so, maybe you could write your own detailed "duties and responsibilites" letter, and these other people doing work similar to yours could swear in an affidavit confirming that what you have written is the truth. (In my country, such an affidavit can be sworn to in front of a notary public, who charges a nominal fee for the service). For example, someone you work with (not a supervisor or superior) who has observed your work and is familiar with some of your day to day activities could write a letter on his personal letterhead and/or swear in an affidavit that he has observed you performing the duties, responsibilities and activities that you have described in your letter. If you could get more than one co-worker to do this, so much the better. That, along with a copy of the organization's policy against providing writtten information about duties and responsiblities, may suffice for the HSMP evaluation team, I imagine.
When you were first hired, and when they give you a yearly performance evaluation, don't they give you a written list of duties and responsibilities?
Is the organization prohibited from providing duties and responsibilites information because of security or confidentiality reasons? if so, maybe your employer would be willing to explain that in a letter and could also say in the letter that your position does meet the HSMP criteria, according to their understanding of the criteria...
Be Well!
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) provide alternate ways of describing your duties, responsibilites, skills and knowledge and of providing verification of these (i.e., through a representative of your university or professional organization or through co-workers, for example). I think that the key for the specialist position is the skills and knowledge necessary for the job: are they rare or very specialized or unique in your line of work or industry or organization in some way? You can provide proof of that in the same way/s we have suggested that you provide proof of your graduate level standing in your posiiton.