Me speak English well! Look paper!

October 1, 2008 7:08 AM

What language certs have been most useful to you job-wise?

I'm currently unburdened by employment (& money) and looking over my options. One of the stumbling blocks when applying for work in English speaking countries / positions is the necessity of proof of language proficiency.

Anyone in a HR position — or in an anecdotal mood — who can tell me which cert is the better one? CPE, TOEFL, IELTS, or CEFR?

I imagine that there's idiomatic difference between the US and UK tests - will a Simpson-damaged Queens English mark me down or doesn't style play into it at all? Would multiple tests be considered more awesome?

posted by monocultured to education (5 comments total)

I interview a lot of people that just have "Excellent written and spoken English" on their CVs. To tell you the truth, if the CV is well written and the interview goes well, I might not even notice if language skills aren't mentioned.

I'm not sure how familiar HR people as opposed to university admissions people even are with language certs. Looking at your comments, I suspect that you would max out any of these tests.

Oh, and multiple certs would just look weird.
posted by atrazine at 7:48 AM on October 1, 2008

Have you spent any time in English-speaking countries? I'd say that is more of a marker of fluent English than any test, though obviously having some sort of official or standard certification will lend credibility to a claim of "Excellent written and spoken English".

I think most U.S. universities require TOEFL (to study, not to work).

IANAHRManager but concentrate on having all things you write for your applications (cover letter, email correspondence, resume/CV) in good English. Might not hurt to have a native speaker look them over.

To answer your actual question I don't have any language certifications, though I've thought about getting them... might come in handy one day. In the U.S. it's frequent that people claim a much higher level of foreign language fluency than they actually command, i.e. people with a few years of Spanish in high school will claim "competence" when they couldn't talk themselves out of a paper bag. I think because of this, most people in a position to hire will tend to be more skeptical. That doesn't really apply to you though, since it's English in an English-speaking country we're talking about here.
posted by polexa at 9:27 AM on October 1, 2008

I recently did a round of hiring where all of my applicants were English as a second language folks. I can tell you I didn't look to see if any of them had certifications. I gaged their ability to communicate in English by how well they, um, communicated. I'm in the US if that matters.
posted by Wolfie at 10:01 AM on October 1, 2008

Well, applications can always be written or corrected by someone else – in a tight race I figure that a cert might get me to an interview before someone who merely has a well written letter.
posted by monocultured at 12:13 PM on October 1, 2008

IANAHRManager, but I am an IT manager, and certs (in my book) are somewhat of a red herring. An applicant could have CCNA, MCSE, PMP (Yes, technology certs, rather than language...) all over the place, but I'm more interested in their demonstration of the abilities. To me, a certificate just means you were able to study hard enough to pass a test. While that in itself has value (making and meeting goals), I don't give much weight to the certificate itself.

In other words, were I your interviewer, I'd be more interested in reading your writing and hearing you speak than whether or not you had a certificate.

*as an added bonus, here's a grain of salt, since we're talking about different kinds of certs.*
posted by frwagon at 1:48 PM on October 1, 2008