{"id":5457,"date":"2011-07-05T15:16:17","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T15:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=5457"},"modified":"2011-07-05T15:16:17","modified_gmt":"2011-07-05T15:16:17","slug":"careers-with-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=5457","title":{"rendered":"Careers with languages"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day I came across an interesting piece in The Guardian about “Career options for foreign language speakers<\/a>“. The piece is just a short introduction to an online Q&A session that took place last Friday, and it claims that:<\/p>\n

The words “graduate with a foreign language” on your CV will have many recruiters going back for another look. That’s because a relatively small pool of Brits have foreign language credentials, so they stand out from the crowd and, consequently, have far healthier career options, according to a recent Independent article. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Many people have commented on this, and the general tone of the comments seems to be that foreign language skills alone are not sufficient to secure a job; that few employers value such skills or understand what it takes to acquire them; and that most jobs which require foreign languages are relatively low paid. Some comments mention that if you speak foreign languages and have qualifications and experience in other areas, such as IT, engineering, medicine, etc, you can probably find a job in foreign parts, though you may end up spending most of your time speaking English. Others say that some British employers prefer to employ native speakers of particular languages with the relevant skills, rather than Brits who have learnt those languages.<\/p>\n

There are some positive comments as well from people in language-related professions, but the overall tone is quite negative.<\/p>\n

I got my first proper job, with the British Council in Taipei, partly because I speak Mandarin, and I used my Mandarin a lot while working there.<\/p>\n

What is your experience? Are you in a language-related profession? Would you like to be? Are foreign language skills valued by employers in your country?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day I came across an interesting piece in The Guardian about “Career options for foreign language speakers“. The piece is just a short introduction to an online Q&A session that took place last Friday, and it claims that: The words “graduate with a foreign language” on your CV will have many recruiters going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}