Indian tech firm ad: No Arrogant Americans
By Ria Sharma

US-based VIVA was started by Indian origin techies and managers. VIVA describes itself as an ‘Information Technology Management and Consulting services firm with offices in the US and India. We specialize in IT staff augmentation, On-site and Off-site IT consulting, Turnkey Project Outsourcing, and eBusiness Solutions’

VIVA has offices in Chicago, New York and Chennai, India. It employs about 400 people.

VIVA has just walked into a public relations nightmare.  Without checking the text, it advertised a job for a Technical Writer on CareerBuilder.com for one of its Chinese clients Exelon which publicly stated ‘Arrogant Americans Need Not Apply’.

Foxnews which broke the story also published the entire VIVA advertisement on behalf of its Chinese client Exelon. "Exelon is looking to provide these proposals to Chinese businesses, so someone who is respectful and understands Chinese culture is preferred. An arrogant American will not work well in this role”.

Needless to say, this advertisement has angered many Americans who already felt that some Indian techies were taking their jobs by misusing the H1B Visa.

VIVA is has apologized profusely but some damage has been done.  This is the message published on their website

“
VIVA USA respectfully apologizes for using a poorly chosen language in a job listing it recently posted. We are an American company owned by American citizens and we have been in business for the last 13 years, and received several awards. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and employ large number of American citizens among others. We have anti-discrimination policies in our employee handbook and we are vigilant in enforcing our anti-discrimination policies. Unfortunately, we failed to correct the language before the job listing was posted. It was an oversight we regret. We apologize to anyone who was offended by the posting. 

Ms. Vasanthi Ilangovan, President
“