Multilingual Canadians have more career options
Posted by Jaiken Struck on June 3rd, 2009Barack Obama’s change train also, as it turns out, includes a push for unilingual Americans to learn a foreign language. Specifically, Spanish. Americans are late to the realisation that the more languages you speak, the better for your business. It is, after all, a global economy.
The importance of a second (or third) language has long been viewed as a plus to help push forward your career, but a recent poll conducted by Harris/Decima for Berlitz Canada shows bilingual and multilingual Canadians have more career options, build stronger relationships with 
colleagues and clients and get promoted and move up the pay scale faster than their one-language colleagues.
In fact, 66% of respondents said they had a greater range of job options within their field; 62% said being bilingual or multilingual afforded them more flexibility in terms of where they could work; 48% said speaking another language accelerated their career rise; and 44% said speaking more than one language helped them earn more, quicker. This became more true the higher the tax bracket respondents were in.
The findings proved what Darryl Simsovic, president of Berlitz Canada already knew. In the past 10 to 15 years, as Canadian companies have matured and moved into global markets, they have come to accept they can be much more effective if their executives can speak the language when they hit foreign ground, Mr. Simsovic says. He says language goes a long way to building a relationship: “The effort you have made to speak with your host in their own language tells people you want to do business with them and you value the relationship you share with them.”
From a global perspective, “learning a language is as important as earning an MBA. Companies have smaller groups of people at their headquarters and more people going abroad. It gives you an edge. Language can be the thing that sets you apart,” he says.
Read more: Canada.com
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