Will Learning A New Language Help Your Career?

You hear it cited time and time again: learning a new language will expand your career horizons. Is it true, though? And if it is, will the expansion justify the amount of time and resources you will sink into learning a second language altogether?

A lot of people seem to take the veracity of that statement for granted. It’s almost like people just assume that when you learn a new language, a whole world of opportunity drops in your lap. The reality is a lot less simple. Sure, a foreign language in your pocket can help, but you need the right situation to take advantage of it.

Career Myths

I’ve worked in five relatively large companies over the past decade, including two huge multinationals. And, to be honest, I’ve never seen language skills to give anyone an upper hand within the internal promotion system.

You can verify with your own company. How many of your vice presidents and high-level management actually speak a second language? How many mid-level managers? And so on. The reality is, careers are made not on whether you have second language skills, but on your education, experience and the kind of results you can get done.

Now, I’m not saying learning a second language is useless career-wise. It’s just that, foreign language skills should be an “additional skills” in your resume, rather than the highlight of it. Will learning foreign languages help your career? In some cases, it might. There’s no assurance of that, though, and, for all intents and purposes, you could very well end up in a field where second language skills don’t even matter.

Basically, what I’m saying is, second language skills doesn’t qualify you for a management position or anything similar. It’s the rest of your resume that qualifies you for that. What exactly will foreign language fluency qualify you for? Translator or interpreter work, mostly. If you can speak, at least, three languages, then you can be a conference translator. You can also be a language tutor, but that’s about it.

Why is that? For the most part, most companies don’t really place that much value in second language ability. While there will be instances when a specific company will want an employee with specific language skills for a particular position, it doesn’t exactly happen all that often. Many companies believe that, when the need to learn a new language arises, they can send their people to train for it without causing much problems in the organization.

Learning Languages For The Right Reason

In case you’re wondering, I do think there is value in second language learning as far as career advancement is concerned. That is, if you know which career path you want to take.

An engineer who wants to work in a Saudi operation, for instance, might gain a slight edge if they study Arabic, especially if the job entails working with plenty of locals. More importantly, though, they could have an easier time adjusting to the locale when they do get a job and move there.

Want to be a jet-setting freelance journalist? Then, some language skills will probably help you. Want to move to Japan and work for your favorite game company? Spending your time learning Japanese will probably get you closer to the dream.

What we’re saying is, don’t just assume learning a foreign language can help you anywhere you want to go. It may or it may not. Some career paths can benefit from foreign language skills; others can grow without it. Instead of just blindly learning languages, draw up a plan of what you want to achieve in your career, then try to ascertain whether a second language will genuinely boost your chances or if it will just be an unimportant footnote to the rest of your skills.

Learning A Language Takes Time

Why not just study a language (or two) then see where it helps? Sure, you can do that — if you have the time. Remember: time is the one resource in this world you can’t get back. If you use it to learn a language, that means you’re not using it to develop other skills, like interviewing (if you want to be a journalist), coding in Phython (if you’re a programmer) or practicing your drives (if you’re an aspiring ball player hoping to play for a Spanish league).

Before you commit to studying a language, make sure it’s beneficial to where you want to go in life, rather than because you heard someone say somewhere that language learning will open up wide career avenues. For all you know, the career avenues it opens up may not even be of interest to you. I’ve seen way too many people with second and third languages under their belt get stuck in admin positions at offices, primarily because they didn’t develop a lot of other skills beyond foreign languages.

Furthering A Career

If you have a good career going and simply want to get more opportunities in it, then consider whether a foreign language will help you. If you live in the US and do sales, for instance, learning Spanish on top of your English is almost always an advantage, since it expands your potential market. Same if you’re in customer service and work in an office where a bilingual position is treated as a substantial career advancement. Is your office opening a branch in Italy? Then talk with your superiors about the positions that open up there and see how you can squeeze in if you build up your Italian skills.

Working Abroad

If you have plans of working abroad, then figure out exact where and learn the language they speak. This is one of those instances where learning a language will be immensely beneficial, so don’t even think twice about it.

A lot of English speakers incorrectly assume that a large chunk of the world will speak English. While they’re right to an extent, there are a lot of countries where this just doesn’t apply. And if you intend to work in one of those countries, all the English in the world won’t help you get by.