I contacted a recruiter online with a message expressing my interest. She replied with a crisp- Sorry, we do not offer visa sponsorship. Funny thing is - I did not mention needing a visa sponsorship and did not indicate the same in my LinkedIn profile or on my resume. She just took one look at my profile: she saw a non-western name and profile pic and made an assumption that I would obviously need visa sponsorship. I brought this issue up with another manager on LinkedIn- she apparently had a talk with the recruiter and responded to me with this- The recruiter mistook me for an international application because my university has an international sounding name. I went to the University of Texas.