Date published: 01.09.08 - not release date

WAR FOR LANGUAGE TALENT RAGES IN CUSTOMER SERVICES SECTOR

Growing demand for language staff leading to wealth of opportunties for linguists

Learn a language – get a job! That’s the message from multi lingual recruiter Euro London Appointments who is reporting a growing trend towards the need for multi lingual staff within the customer services and contact centre sectors London and the south east Consequently, people with language skills, including modern languages students are now hot property.

“With more and more and more companies operating in a global workplace, customers can be based almost anywhere in the world”, says Clare Padgett who heads up Euro London’s call centre resourcing team. “Consequently language skills are becoming increasingly important. We are seeing a huge demand for linguists with fluent English as well as mother tongue level German, French, Dutch, Scandinavian languages, Italian, and to some extent Spanish. There's also an increasing trend for employers to look for multi-lingual rather than just bi-lingual staff driven by the need to review costs and efficiency levels. Whereas previously a call centre may have employed two English/French speakers and two English/German speakers, now they would rather employ three multi lingual English, German and French speakers so that they can all cover for each other.

Miranda Reid, associate director of jobs board multilingualvacancies.com agrees: “You only have to look at our current vacancies to see the level of expertise now needed. We currently have over 250 vacancies registered in the call centre sector alone – and quite a few of them asking for more than two languages. A quick trawl through some of those vacancies will reveal customer services roles requiring different tri-lingual permutations such as English French and German, English French and Italian , English, French and Spanish and English Dutch and Italian. However bi-linguists need not despair says Reid – “There’s still a wealth of vacancies asking for English plus one other fluent European language.”


For further info contact:

Tracey Dunn
BlueSky PR
Tel: 0845 3700125