“I have never been hired by a desi interviewer. Lets see how this one goes.” One of my colleagues repeated this mantra every time he was appearing for an interview for a new client project and got an interviewer with Indian sounding name.

“Desi” pronounced as “they see” is a common way the people of Indian origin refer to each other. Essentially anyone who has Indian origin irrespective of which passport they carry – they are desi.

One of the advantages of working for a consulting firm is the diversity of projects, but that also means a lot of interviews by every new client. We all accrued a lot of interview mileage in our work at a consulting company.

That was back in 2005. Since then we all moved on to do different things, work on different projects and live in different geographies. In my last interaction with my colleague I joked about his theory and asked if he still believes it. He reaffirmed by saying “Yes that is true even today…and even in this city.”

It appears he is not the only one who maintains this opinion. There are a growing number of colleagues of Indian origin who have opined this. Interestingly in the last few years I have heard more about this from a number of colleagues that the worst interviewers they get were mostly folks who were desi.

Couple of days ago I was with bunch of friends and we all started sharing our experiences of these interviews. One things lead to another, a little humour, with free form improv lead to some really funny stories. In a rare moment we all were laughing at selves and got some pretty good insights.
For the good of all of mankind that is deprived of humour and has a sense of humour. Here are our suggestions and predictions about your interview if you got a desi interviewer.

Beware these are stereotypical opinions…good news is that since I am criticizing the same group I belong to…so it is sort of okay. You will do fine if you take them with a spice of humor and do not consider them a Forester’s Report…

1. If your interviewer has a thicker accent than you. You will never be hired.
2. If the interviewer is an MS and you are an MBA. You will not be hired. (and if you do not know what is MS, well you will not be hired anyway.)
3. If you don’t wobble your head and the interviewer does. You will never be hired.
4. Desi interviewers philosophy: “You are guilty, unless proven otherwise.” Hence exceptions and edge case questions will be rolled to strike you out. The underlying thinking is probably that there are 1 billion of people just like you out there.
5. If you are dressed in a business suit and the interviewer has un-pressed shirt and three size large joggers. You will never be hired.
6. Class system though does not exist in US/Canada but you can not deny this fact that most of the Indian folks either practice it, or seen someone practice it or they have heard about it. They may have decided not to practice it, but they can’t deny that they infer a lot about someone from the last name.
7. Now the thorny issue of all. Indian people though called Indian could be from India, Pakistan, Nepal or Bangladesh. There is very interesting dynamics at play when you are asked to interview someone whose look-alike you were taught to hate all your early life.
8. Desi are generally very proud of their education system. Secretly and sometimes openly it is said, “our education is better than these American universities. Just look at all the top-performing students here. They are all desi.”
9. Common desi tech folks consider business, marketing, advertising, communication, and design like soft skills as inferior to programming, database queries, accounting, and econometrics. Being a lawyer is borderline acceptable. In a nutshell being technical is considered better than being communicative. So if you portray any of these soft skills you are at risk of being judged less technical. You will not be hired.
10. Programming is better than being a project manager. But having a PMP is better than being a product manager. Having an SAP skill is top of the line. Even in SAP…ABAP is superior than say business-y skill like CRM.
11. Most of the desi interviewers have one or two strike-out questions they ask. Mostly of these question are obscure …very rare and involves some kind of deep knowledge. Despite the fact that most of us can research and search in our day to day jobs…the emphasis is on rote memorization and not on ability to think through problems.
12. If you are white and get a desi interviewer – you are in luck. You will be reminded of Gandhi and his kindred spirit. If you look British or even have a little British accent then you get bonus points.
13. If you are a white woman then while you are mesmerized by your interviewer’s accent and shy smile. Just remember it was his people who wrote Kama Sutra. Don’t get too comfy.
14. If you are white but say have an accent and get a desi interviewer – good luck. It totally depends there is no theory here. He may treat you white or may treat you Indian. [Warning: these theories have not been tested with folks from Texas.]

I can go on and on and fill pages with even more of these inspirational thoughts …but the reality can be only judged by running your own numbers. So I will ask you to do a quick survey of your own. Analyze this…compare a candidate who is desi with a non-desi. See how different interviewers have ranked them. See who has given the harsher comments? Do you see a trend in these harsh comments across multiple candidates? Do you see a race bias?

If you see a little bit of bias, even a tiny bit. Then do another thing. Type the first and last name of those candidates in LinkedIn search and see where they work now. Now compare the revenue of their current employers with your own company. If you see more of those “rejects” working for better companies than yours. Then you have a problem.

If you don’t see any of these trends…then enjoy and smile you have a truly valuable group of desi working for you. Talk to them and get to know their food. Don’t forget to ask them when did their parents moved to Canada?