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When do you put languages on your CV? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Languages & Work |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5524 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 65 of 86 09 January 2013 at 6:45pm | IP Logged | ||
Heh. I've seen a lot of those, too. That either means that (1) the hiring manager is ignorant and demands the impossible on a regular basis, or (2) that the HR department is a frustrating bureaucracy. If it's the former, it's a useful warning sign! The latter is just HR being HR. And of course, there's nothing wrong with sending an honest cover letter that says, "I only have 3 years experience, but I'd still be able to help you because X, Y, Z." Then there's all those jobs that want "bilingual English/Spanish" for something like a dental receptionist. Honestly, it's probably overkill. For a lot of these jobs, a solid B1 with activated speaking skills would be able to do the job just fine after the first few weeks. After all, a receptionist has the same conversation 20 times a day—it's not like they'll need to toss together slick sales presentations in multiple languages. I've seen plenty of retail workers with native/B1 language skills in Montreal, and they do pretty well. Near-native bilingualism is rarely necessary for basic commerce, though B2 is nice if you need to ask and answer lots of questions about products. Edited by emk on 09 January 2013 at 6:50pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5524 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 66 of 86 09 January 2013 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, does the employer have French customers or a division in France? If so, I'd err on the side of full disclosure in order to avoid nasty surprises during the interview. If the employer was relentlessly monolingual and I needed to keep everything on a single page, I might not mention language skills at all, because how's it going to help them? But as a general rule, I've found nothing wrong with including negative information in a sales pitch. In fact, if you're an honest person competing with lying salesweasels, it's one of the smarter things you can do. If I were looking for a translator, and a candidate told me, "I can do a great job with manuals, but I'm not really an advertising copywriter," that's going to count very heavily in their favor. If the other candidate says, "Oh, sure I'm completely fluent, and I can translate anything on any subject, no problems!", who would you hire? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5122 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 67 of 86 09 January 2013 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | ||
Most reputable translators do indeed list what their specialties/strengths are. It's usually only the ones trying to break into the field that say they can translate anything. Of course, they're found out soon enough, if they're even taken seriously at all. R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6589 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 68 of 86 10 January 2013 at 12:35am | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder if the "bilingualism" requirement is a case of not knowing what language learning is like (that it's not binary) and/or an inability to come up with a realistic and good-sounding description of the required level. An average monolingual employer won't think much of the level he needs nor would they mind if the requirement is an overkill.
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| Stefan Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 4319 days ago 22 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Swedish*, EnglishC1 Studies: German | Message 69 of 86 01 February 2013 at 3:11am | IP Logged | ||
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What's your thoughts on a language you haven't studied and can't speak but still understand almost perfectly thanks
to the similarity with another language? In Sweden almost everyone understands Norwegian (it's more like a dialect than another language) and I wouldn't dream about putting it on my CV when applying for a job in Sweden. However, maybe it would be a good idea to mention when applying for a job in another country such as USA or Germany? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5218 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 70 of 86 01 February 2013 at 3:24am | IP Logged | ||
Were you to reflect that on your CV, you'd list [much] higher CEFR or whatever scale levels for passive/comprehension skills (listening and reading) than for active/production skills (speaking and writing). Edited by mrwarper on 01 February 2013 at 3:26am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6901 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 71 of 86 01 February 2013 at 10:37am | IP Logged | ||
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mrwarper - the thing here is that we don't have to speak Norwegian to Norwegians (nor they have to speak Swedish to us) - we just understand each other more or less perfectly, so in reality one probably wouldn't have to state active skills. And maybe not mention even the passive skills, but that depends on the job description.
If it included something like "a large part of our customers are from Norway", and you were a native speaker of Swedish, I don't see why you couldn't mention that you understand Norwegian, can converse with them without major problems etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4631 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 72 of 86 01 February 2013 at 11:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Jeff is right. To give a concrete example: To work in the service industry in Norway (like in restaurants, shops or hotels) you obviously need to speak Norwegian. However, there are thousands of Swedes working in these places in Norway, and obviously they do not speak Norwegian, they just speak Swedish. After a little while they learn to replace a few Swedish words with the Norwegian ones in the cases where they are really different or could lead to misunderstandings (as Norwegian "tyttebær" for Swedish "lingon", means lingonberry, or "gulrot" for "morot", meaning carrot.)
Now if you are in Spain and apply for a job where e.g. Swedish is asked for, as a Norwegian I would make it clear in my CV that I understand oral and written Swedish and can communicate with Swedes without any difficulty. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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