With recruitment at an all-time high due to the effects of the pandemic, many of our clients and candidates have come to us for our thoughts on the current market. Here are our observations:
- Employers still prefer native level skills, but we have noticed an increase in employers considering slightly less than this. Graduates/non-native level people sometimes need a few months ‘on the job’ to get their language skills to true business level, which can be difficult to obtain until they are actually in a working environment. To gain this work experience, candidates need prior experience – which, we know, doesn’t make any sense. Much like passing your driving test – you learn to drive more when you are out on the road, same with using your language at work.
However, we are finding that although employers are choosing to interview more graduates and candidates who are not quite native level, they are still rejecting based on their current language skills not being developed enough. So, we recommend that all candidates seek out any kind of experience before applying to jobs. This can include tutoring, translating, babysitting for a family who speak their second language – any experience is good experience!
- German language skills are still in as strong demand as ever, followed by French language.
- Customer service is the most advertised and in demand German language job. Candidates are choosing salaries and work life balance as main factors when weighing up customer service roles with languages, because they have more choice with them.
- Marketing jobs with German have had a huge increase. As technology and the online presence of businesses has evolved during the pandemic, we have noticed a huge boom in marketing job roles. These jobs are very popular with candidates, but we do find employers are still hanging onto prior marketing experience as a key requirement for the role. In addition, they always insist on native level skills for marketing jobs, when maybe it’s not necessary which can limit them hiring even though there’s strong interest.
- German speaking sales jobs are still very difficult to fill, even for us. We believe the ‘sales culture’ is a very UK thing with our strong service economy. Many more English speakers gravitate towards careers in sales more so than linguists or Europeans.
- Inflexibility with an office/split causes more candidate shortage for these employers. We’re noticing candidates are swayed more by remote working, with some even holding out for remote jobs and not considering otherwise. We have really struggled to fill German sales roles that have been solely office-based.
- Companies are still choosing the UK for their multilingual hubs. More shared service centres are opening, and international companies are deciding to support their European offices from the UK, meaning they need to hire multilingual talent. There is a steady demand for multilingual HR and IT people, who offer support to European offices.
- Multinational companies are still hiring German speakers/other linguists in the UK as it’s cheaper and easier to attract talent here than in Germany. In Germany, candidates require a higher salary and have more distrust about moving employers than in the UK. For example, a senior marketing executive salary would be £75K in Germany and £45K in the UK which is evidently significantly lower.
This is all what we have noticed ourselves however with the effects of the pandemic here to stay for the foreseeable, it is likely that the current market will remain as it is.