Like English in Colombia, Spanish is now a necessity in the United States

Bogota — The last 2 years, characterized by the pandemic, have reinforced a trend that has been observed for a long time in the labor field, and that in general it was not a secret: the vacancies where it is requested to be bilingual have grown, as documented by various sources and investigations carried out throughout the continent.

In Mexico, for example, according to the OCCMundial job exchange, its site registered a growth in vacancies of all kinds of 25% between 2020 and 2021, where customer service via telephone had an increase of 40%, a position in which proficiency in English is increasingly required to serve customers both from the United States and from other countries Anglo-Saxon speaking.

“Colombia experienced a similar phenomenon, as there is evidence that the opening of positions for bilingual call centers prompted greater enrollment in English courses, especially of those offered online”; Abraham Gonzalez, Marketing Manager for Latin America at EF English Live, points out in this regard.

In this sense, for example, at the beginning of this year a company of Silicon Valley (California) opened 150 vacancies for bilingual Colombians dedicated to software development and engineering.

In both cases, companies decide to settle in these Latin territories due to cheap labor and other advantages, including linguistic ones, such as having a neutral accent compared to other countries where the native way of speaking is more pronounced.

You need to speak Spanish

In the opposite case, where instead of learning English, candidates for a new job are required to master Spanish, the best example is of course the United States.

There, where 18.7% of the population are Hispanics (62.1 million inhabitants), the call centers are usually the first line of communication with a company’s customers and must solve the problems of English and Spanish speakers alike.

According to the University of Phoenix, in the American Union the languages ​​that are recommended to study are Spanish and Chinese, considering that Asians already make up 24 million people in the country; After those languages, the most prominent are Hindi, Russian, German, and Portuguese.

As the population of foreigners in the US grows, it will be necessary to accelerate efforts to eliminate language barriers with those who do not speak English; a factor that was relevant during the most critical moments of the crisis health, because there were many emergency calls from non-English speakers whose children do speak English, but not to the level necessary to correctly detail the symptoms and history, something that could be life or death in extreme cases to know what medical decisions to make . In these contexts, language becomes even more important.

Mastery of English

Outside of customer service, the “EF EPI 2021 EF English Proficiency Index” researchprepared by EF Education First (an institution of which EF English Live is a part), details that worldwide the 5 jobs where a higher level of English proficiency has been observed are:

● Marketing

● Legal

● Strategy and Planning

● Human Resources

● Information and Technology

While, by industries, the 5 leaders in language management were:

● Consulting

● Information Technology

● Engineering

● Fast-moving consumer goods

● Food and Drinks

All these data are just a sample of how globalization has penetrated such relevant countries in America as Mexico, Colombia and the United States, the greatest continental power.

The borders still exist, but the language barriers are dissipating more and more. Today, more than ever, English is shown as a skill that is necessary to study if it is intended to guarantee higher economic income and be up to date with the world’s cultural trends, as we see daily on social networks.

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