I have lost count of the times that I reviewed resumes for colleagues, friends, or family members who are applying for a job and asked me for feedback. At the bottom of each resume, under the “SKILLS” category and immediately after mentioning command of a variety of software programs, I often see written these three words: “Fluent in Spanish.” The first time this happened I had to pause, take a deep breath, and figure out how to address the importance of revising this statement on a resume. I found myself tiptoeing around the conversation of language fluency because I didn’t want to hurt the feelings of a person I care for; much less insinuate they were lying. However, I soon realized that because I really cared I had to tell them – “Darling, you are not fluent in Spanish.”
The Collins English Dictionary defines a person who is fluent as one that “can speak the language easily and correctly.” When a person proclaims that they are fluent in a particular language on their resume, it means (to me) that they can perform the job they are applying for with ease and accuracy in that language. This includes reading, listening, speaking, and writing with the proper terminology for the industry, and use of grammatical and punctuation rules. Unfortunately, language fluency is consistently hard to gauge as a person’s perception of his/her proficiency might not match what his/her true proficiency is when measured with a language proficiency assessment. A recent survey has shown that it’s easy to overstate one’s proficiency, and almost 60% of job applicants do so on their resumes, including their language proficiency.
Therefore, it’s very important for companies to assess their current employees’ and prospective employees’ language skills because it’s too risky not to do so. Through language proficiency certification, businesses can ensure proficiency and the ability to mitigate risks such as the following, to name a few:
- Complying with laws and regulations that require culturally and linguistically clear communication and understanding that will prevent accidents in the workplace (i.e., hospitals, construction sites, travel industry).
- Lackluster year-to-year revenue growth due to inability to adequately expand into diverse markets.
- Unsatisfactory non-English speaking customer experiences that will tarnish the company’s reputation and chances of building customer loyalty.
- Loss of valuable bilingual or multilingual talent that may decide to secure a better opportunity where their language skills are appreciated and incentivized.
It’s not enough or acceptable these days to simply believe what people put on their resumes regarding their language proficiency. Language Testing International (LTI) administers ACTFL language proficiency assessments—the gold standard in language testing—and a trusted, validated, and accredited remote proctoring process. For the past 30 years, LTI has assessed the language proficiency of over 5 million people around the world reliably and accurately. People that are bilingual, multilingual, or at any stage of their language learning journey are also able to retest periodically to qualify how much they have progressed in terms of their fluency. This can be done internally at any organization as part of its regular talent pool assessment process.
Language proficiency assessments also ascertain what type of tasks employees can perform at work based on their measured language skills. Our team of experts can help you determine the minimum levels of proficiency required for multilingual roles. Through an understanding of your goals, LTI develops the best language assessment plan to meet your assessment and reporting needs. We do this through our Task Analysis procedure to establish the minimum level of language proficiency recommendation to qualify talent for the multilingual role(s).
This can be instrumental as businesses grow their product offerings into global markets or incorporate new target audiences into their prospective clientele. The bottom line is that the multilingual capabilities of your staff and the accurate assessment of their language proficiency skills directly impacts the company’s outcomes. So, if a potential candidate or current employee says they are fluent in any language, mitigate possible risk as soon as possible with the help of LTI.
Interested in starting language proficiency testing at your company? Learn more here and contact us to get started.
