We give you some figures.
51% of HR managers feel that starters are insufficiently prepared for the job market.
And 84% of your new hires - regardless of their age and experience - do not possess the skills they need for their roles.
But what skills do they have? Which ones are they still lacking? And above all: how can you as an organisation accommodate them in this? We tell you all about it in this article!
Skills of your young talent.
Because young people remain firm that their education is not aligned enough with the real business world.
Why? Start-ups often lack important soft skills, such as communication skills. These are precisely the basis of all other soft skills.
Are your starters good at networking? Or do they cooperate well in a team? How do they deal with feedback? And are they able to give constructive feedback for themselves? Do your juniors communicate in a customer-oriented way? And do they convey delicate messages with nuance in their e-mails? How do they stand when leading a meeting?
You don't learn all these skills at school. On the contrary. You only learn them at work, through experience.
But that's not all. Your young talent still has to develop these skills in its mother tongue. Not to mention the foreign language. What if they suddenly find themselves in a multilingual team or context? Even then they need to be able to give their best.
This has an impact on your organisation. Because internationalising and globalising without knowledge of foreign languages is almost impossible.
A clear but impressive statement. And nothing could be further from the truth. If companies want to grow, they need to speak multiple languages.
Benefits of multilingual employees, young or old.
The customer is always right. Is your customer Spanish-speaking? Then you score best if you speak your customer's language. Literally and figuratively :-). Multilingual sales makes all the difference here.
Logical. They are the face of your organisation.
But it goes much further than that. Have you also thought about your after-sales service or your billing service? They too come into contact with your customer at some point. And what about suppliers? You will also give them a positive experience if you address them in their mother tongue.
So speak your customer's language. Or supplier.
Or anyone who comes into contact with your organisation. Why?
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Your customers and suppliers see your company as credible.
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Your customers are more likely to buy something.
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Your customers and suppliers spread good word of mouth advertising about your business faster.
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Your customers and suppliers contact your company more easily if you serve them in their native language. This only benefits your overall communication and relationship.
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Multilingualism contributes to 10-20% of your business turnover.
All these aspects support the long-term growth of your business.
Convinced of the benefits of multilingualism? You and so many other businesses. The war for talent shows that. The demand for multilingual employees is only increasing. A question that often goes unanswered.
Because recruiting multilingual professionals remains a challenge, we hear from various recruitment agencies. And also the language knowledge of the young blood on the labour market is often still inadequate.
Language skills of young potentials.
Students do master grammar rules, basic vocabulary and key phrases. After all, they were taught these at school. Whether they actually retain what they learn is another question.
As we often say: learning a language from a textbook is difficult. Learning a new language remains abstract, as long as you don't use it in real life. You only learn a foreign language when you apply it in spontaneous conversations.
Let that be the biggest bottleneck for starters: confidence and practice in the foreign language. They know the theory. Now they have to put it into practice.
What if they suddenly have a disgruntled customer on the phone whom they need to reassure quickly? Will they then still manage to use that subjunctive correctly? Your start-ups probably get an anxiety sweat just thinking about it. Especially if colleagues around the corner are listening in.
Want to find out for yourself whether your young employees' language skills are hindering your company's growth? In this whitepaper, we give you 5 signs that reveal the problem.
Structured language policy tailored to your start-up..
Especially if you know that language skills contribute to 10-20% of your company's turnover. And thus to the growth of your company.
In fact, this closing quote could not better capture our message:
CFO asks CEO: “What happens if we invest in developing our people and then they leave us?” CEO: “What happens if we don’t, and they stay?”
So why not get started right away?
A structured language policy tailored to your start-up will help you map out languages(t) of your new recruits. BLCC reinforces you in this. We guide and advise you in closing the gap between your company's language needs and the skills of your brand-new employees.
Strengthen your young talents thanks to professional language training from BLCC. And give them the boost they need at the start of their professional career.
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