Why and how to attract bilingual job candidates

19 Apr, 2017

Our world is becoming increasingly globalised, which is why hiring bilingual or even multilingual speakers is becoming more and more necessary. How can your business go about attracting these candidates and bringing your company one step further into our interconnected world? And why should you make this effort? In other words, what will be the rewards?

Why? One word: Globalisation 

Your company can be made more competitive with the addition of bilingual employees because they can help write your content, Nathalie Jansen, the CEO and founder of The Matching Group PLC explains. For example, if your company is creating content for consumers abroad, bilingual employees can read research local to that region and determine the regions that will most likely respond to posts and graphics.

In fact, Nieman Journalism Lab found that geo-targeted posts are six times more successful than those that are not, so bilingual workers could be of enormous help in this respect. 

Another marketing effort bilingual employees can help with is analysing how readers are responding to content on a website in a different language. Bilingual speakers can better analyse comments and tailor it according to their responses. 

For those who have grown up in a different culture, they may be more weary of cultural sensitivities for your company to look out for when selling services to a particular target population, Jansen adds. 

Hiring bilingual employees will only become more popular because of how they improve a company's competitive advantage. Researchers at the University of Phoenix Research Institute found that demand for bilingual employees will increase in the next ten years, as 42 per cent of American employers believe that Chinese speakers will be more necessary for improving interaction with customers and 70 per cent believe Spanish speakers will be.

How to attract bilingual employees

If your company is looking to attract the attention of bilingual job candidates, you should consider hiring HR professionals who specialise in the eRecruitment of talented bilinguals, according to the Small Business CEO blog.

Software such as Recruitment Systems's Total Recruitment Information System makes it even easier to catch the attention of bilingual job candidates. Recruitment Systems's TRIS can conduct recruitment in a multitude of languages such as Mandarin, Spanish, Japanese, German and Sanskrit. This information system can speak to people from all over the world with a push of a button.

To internationalise your company, consider taking advantage of these tools that will land your company on bilingual candidates's radars.