What is the importance of a foreign language in your career? Especially, English?
Well, in nowadays corporate world, speaking a foreign language is not something that can give you an upper hand. It is something that can prevent you from even being called to the interview in the first place...
Maybe knowing English and a third foreign language can make your resume standout amongst the rest of the candidates but as we all know by now; English is the universal language of the corporate world. So much, that Business English started being taught as a specialization for an employee to be able to understand colleagues / clients / suppliers from all over the world. English is known as the “língua franca” or ‘common language’ not only in business but in communication worldwide.
English is now the fastest-spreading language in human history, English is spoken at a useful level by around 1.75 billion people worldwide—which means one in every four people.
And, based on a study by Tsedal Neeley, a Professor of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School, there are three primary reasons driving the move toward English as a corporate standard:
Competitive pressure
If you want to buy or sell, you must be able to communicate with a diverse range of customers, suppliers, and other business partners. If you’re lucky, they’ll share your native language—but you can’t count on it. Companies that fail to devise a language strategy are essentially limiting their growth opportunities to the markets where their language is spoken, clearly putting themselves at a disadvantage to competitors that have adopted English-only policies.
Globalization of tasks and resources
Language differences can cause a problem when geographically dispersed employees have to work together to meet corporate goals. An employee from Belgium may need input from an enterprise in Beirut or Mexico, for instance. Without common ground, communication will sustain many difficulties. Better language comprehension gives employees more firsthand information, which is vital to good decision making. Swiss food giant Nestlé saw great efficiency improvements in purchasing and hiring thanks to its enforcement of English as a company standard.
M&A integration across national boundaries
Negotiations regarding a merger or acquisition are complicated enough when everybody speaks the same language. But when they don’t, nuances are easily lost, even in simple e-mail exchanges. Also, cross-cultural integration is notoriously tricky; that’s why when Germany’s Hoechst and France’s Rhône-Poulenc merged in 1998 to create Aventis, the fifth largest worldwide pharmaceutical company, the new firm chose English as its operating language over French or German to avoid playing favorites. A branding element can also come into play. In the 1990s, a relatively unknown, midsize Italian appliance maker, Merloni, adopted English to further its international image, which gave it an edge when acquiring Russian and British companies.
So, as multinational companies spread worldwide, it is only natural that English has become a mean to professionals not only in Brazil but in any country in the World. And in Brazil it is a little more of a necessity once education in schools fail to prepare kids for a professional life. According to studies, only 5% of Brazilian can actually speak fluent English which is a huge minority in a country with 210 million people.
As a language school, Brisk Languages has been teaching Business English for a long time, and professionals need it more than ever as globalization has put the country on the map.
The constant economic migrations to Brazil make it a center of business transactions. And amidst these transactions there are emails; there are telephone conversations, teleconferences, online meetings with customers, suppliers, etc. And they are costly! Knowing good English helps you to make your point faster, prevents delays or even embarrassments in meetings and allows you to buy or sell more clearly and profitably.
English has become the Business language. It is now the default choice for teams and executives meeting up online and in person across the world. For example, if a sales manager from Singapore needs to meet the head of HR from Berlin, they would most likely choose to speak English. People that can’t speak English may well find it hard to keep up with meetings and even get better jobs in the first place.
And, as companies become more global so does their use of the language. Corporate identity and language are becoming simpler and many big firms are choosing to use English. Nokia, Daimler and Renault are just a few big names that have done this. This not only means that, as mentioned before, all meetings and company literature uses English but also the values of the company and even names of services and products all start to rely on English and understanding it is critical.
And if you are still studying and focusing on your future, you are probably, already feeling how the best knowledge, articles, books of science and technology are always in English. Recent data suggested that around 95% of all scientific papers written in the Science Citation Index were in English. Nature is written in English as is the Lancet both of which are very important publications. What this all means is that when a publication or company wants to communicate with the biggest number of people possible, they use English and this is only going to get more popular.
Learning English is key, there are lots of ways you can do it. Brisk offers courses of all types, one of them will definitely fit your profile. You have a chance to do a personalized course but you can also do one only based on grammar, business English or even focus on that next interview.
Don’t postpone your future any longer. Your chances rely on learning English and the only thing that will stand out in your resume, nowadays, is if you have a third foreign language, which Brisk can also help you with. 😉
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