Shortage of Language Skills - Is it time for employers to pay up or shut up?

It seems that every week we either read a newspaper article or report bemoaning the poor language skills of graduates or the economic  folly of failing to teach languages in schools. Old news I’m afraid - stop telling me what I already know and start telling me what you plan to do about it! Don’t get me wrong - I’m all in favour of businesses employing language graduates but at the end of the day employers need to get real and put their money where their mouth is!

Employers - If you really do value the abilities of linguists, if you pay language graduate a decent wage that reflects their skills you will attract high calibre candidates. Let me give you an example, using a job advert I saw recently:

Senior Payroll Specialist
Assigned for a defined area of responsibility. (France/Italy/Spain/Portugal)
To ensure timely processing of the monthly Payroll to Payment for respective area of responsibility 

Education: Educated to standard grade equivalent
Languages: Good oral and written knowledge of English, Italian, French and Spanish.
Experience: 
Two (2) years related experience in a computerized accounting environment preferably within a payroll function or finance
Solid understanding of and experience with ADP Payroll System and or other Payroll Systems i.e. ADP, VISMA, Datev, SAP
Good attention to detail.
Excellent IT and communication skills.
A willingness to learn and develop.

Here we have a vacancy that expects a candidate who is “educated to standard grade equivalent”, roughly the equivalent of GCSE’s to have a “good oral and written knowledge” of THREE foreign languages! Are you having a laugh?

Firstly, unless you were brought up in a household where those languages are commonly used, no-one educated to GCSE level has that degree of competency.

Secondly, most undergraduate courses teach TWO languages to a high level of competency and perhaps a third language as a minor subject of study. So how many potential applicants will this job have?

But surely the wage must be fantastic? The salary range  is £17k - £20K, so a new start would more than likely start at the lower end of the pay scale - £17K. Shameless. How can this employer claim to offer a career to any of the job applicants? I used to earn £17k working in a call centre!

Part of the problem is that the employer needs to take a reality check. For example, payroll is not rocket science - believe me, if I can do it anyone can (and I have worked in payroll too!). After a month someone who has never done the job would be trained up. Compare that with a month of language instruction - how skilled would you be? It’s a point I’ve made before - it is far more effective to train a linguist to do a job (like payroll) than it is to take the job holder and train them to be a linguist!  So the emphasis needs to move from the job (payroll) to the skills required (the languages) and the wages need to reflect that.

Employers need to drop this fantasy idea that language skills are something that you just “pick up”. To achieve a “good oral and written knowledge” of a foreign language the candidate may well have spent five years at secondary school studying the language to A level or Higher Grade standard; four years at university honing their language skills and cultural knowledge of the societies where those languages are spoken; time spent abroad living in a country where those languages are spoken; and after graduation they will have spent hours maintaining their language skills.

The investment made by a language graduate is just as strong as the dedication of a medical or engineering graduate. Why does the wage not reflect that? When employers start paying decent salaries to language graduates, students will start to see languages as viable subjects to study. Employers: Stop moaning about the lack of language skills and start showing that you value them! Quite frankly: Pay up or shut up!