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When do you put languages on your CV? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Languages & Work |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 25 of 86 10 April 2012 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | ||
I do it when I feel confident enough to use it on the spot for an interview. In my case, I only feel this way with English and French. Because of the common lack of familiarity with the CEFR, FSI/ILR and other related benchmarks where I live, I resort to listing the ability in most of my languages in vaguer terms, and where applicable my education explains somewhat how I got to know some languages. It's not a huge problem, and I list my Eastern European languages with "basic" qualifiers, thus reducing the urge for others to test my ability if I would have listed them in a way suggesting high and immediate applicability for the job. However even listing them at low levels has made for interesting digressions. I was once interviewed by a manager who turned out to be Slovak and we conducted a bit of the interview in Slovak. From the other side of the desk, I'm generally neutral about people's language abilities since I've never interviewed someone who knows a language that was not related to one's background (e.g. it's not surprising for me to see a candidate who knows at least some Japanese because he previously taught in Japan or another who is fluent in Spanish because she was on an exchange program in Chile). I did once discount a candidate when I got the cover letter listing multilingualism by virtue of knowing Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian in addition to English. That kind of thing is funny in private or outside work, but when it comes to making a good first impression for a job, it's never washed with me given how it earnestly preys on outsiders' ignorance, and can offend their intelligence. Edited by Chung on 10 April 2012 at 10:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4677 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 26 of 86 10 April 2012 at 11:07pm | IP Logged | ||
Not everyday, but I've applied a few times, and even successfully! I've had the chance to live in Shanghai and Beijing, and would love to spend some more time there! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mezzofanti Octoglot Senior Member Australia mezzoguild.com Joined 4747 days ago 51 posts - 112 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Arabic (classical), Arabic (Egyptian), Irish, Arabic (Levantine) Studies: Korean, Georgian, French | Message 27 of 86 12 April 2012 at 2:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Some employers like to have people with basic conversational skills in several languages (hotel/tourism jobs for example). No need for them to be advanced.
If you're in business or a technical field, I wouldn't bother putting an A2 language on your CV however. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 28 of 86 13 April 2012 at 10:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I may be a bit naive, since my experience with jobs has been limited so far(I'm a
student, having a second part-time job now), but I would never put there a language in which I do not have an official certificate. Of course, there could be exceptions, such as applying for a job right after coming back from a year abroad. The other question is, when to spend money for an exam. I think B1 or B2 is already good enough. Do really so many employers take languages as unneeded and worthless information? I was always told that putting there one more language than necessary can show diligence, will to work on further education etc. But it may be very different in states with a small official language, such as Czech, and those with a huge one, such as English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4638 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 29 of 86 13 April 2012 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't have a single official certificate for any of the languages I speak. However, I do not hesitate to put on my CV those languages I can use in a professional context. Whether employers value languages or not may depend on whether speaking other languages can be an added value in the job. I would guess a hotel manager in a major capital will see languages as a great advantage, whilst the same is probably not true in the corner shop of a small village. I work for an international organisation, so here multilingualism is simply a must. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6908 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 86 13 April 2012 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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English is useful in just about any job involving "contact with people" (any kind of store for example) but I don't know how often I really see it as a requirement in the ads. I think any employer just assumes that everyone has passable English. Therefore I also think it's quite rare to see English on the CV in Sweden, unless it has some point (or is specifically required).
If one has studied languages (or anything else) at the university, I see no point in hiding that information (imagine a translator who has also studied some engineering, economy and psychology; or a historian who has also studied Latin and Greek - of course it would be beneficial to put that on the CV). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5218 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 31 of 86 13 April 2012 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well I didn't put my language skills/interests on my CV for an IT job with a huge Japanese company and until I walked into the interview I didnt think it would be relevant. They weren't specified on the job description either!
As it turns out I was to be interviewed by the HR person, the Director of Finance and the Director of Engineering at the end of the interview, both Directors were of course Japanese. At the end point of the interview the British person asked me about my other interests so I said: "I speak a little Japanese." I didnt mention I was familiar with any others despite having finished the goverment courses in Arabic and Russian. I then gave a sample of what I could do which to be honest was not a lot; A1/2 speaking and listening. The engineer then asked me in Japanese how many characters I could read ~ 300/400 but slowly and hiragana/katakana quite well. He smiled. Four weeks later I was in charge of a factory build and sorting the 'administrative' issues of the transient Japanese workforce who didn't speak much English at all. We had the design centre and suppliers in Italy, the engineering centre in Germany and a raft of agreements with Polish, Spanish and other suppliers. So my advice is note that you have an interest in languages in any case but if you have some higher level skills, or better a certificate, or the job might benefit - get it all in there! edit for redundant words Edited by maydayayday on 13 April 2012 at 7:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 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 32 of 86 13 April 2012 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||
Edited by Serpent on 13 April 2012 at 6:48pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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