Paging expats

What sort of level of local language is expected to work in a foreign
country, say sys adminning? GCSE, A-Level, fluency?
Ta.

 

Depends on the company and the country. My experience in Italy was
that people insisted in inflicting their English on me, so I had time
to get my language level up (to fluent, once I'd refused to speak
English). In sys-adminning, you might find you can work largely in
English, as long as you're not dealing with punters, which will give
you time to get up to scratch in XXXish.

 

Here, they typically want French, Dutch and English but, if you're any
good, English will do.

 

"It depends".

As others have said, it depends on the country, the job, the company
etc. Is it an internal move? Are you looking to move then find work?
These also have an impact.

 

Depends on the country. Seriously.

If you were considering Scandanavia for example most people of working
age can speak fluent English, and it's a common language in business
generally - you'd probably not need any local language skills at all,
ever.

France OTOH you'd at least need to know enough to buy cheese and
negotiate surrender effectively.

Germany - You'd need German, plus qualifications in *everything*.

Luxembourg - maybe no language skills if you're working for something
EU related - everybody there speaks a random language.

Spain - it doesn't matter, nobody has a job there anyway.

India, just English would be fine in the cities, but it wouldn't
matter as you'd probably end up doing 12 hour shifts on the phone to
hillbillies with broken peecees.

Some of eastern europe, see India, but add rain and snow.

 

Might just be legging it after TOG. Not actually sure which country yet.
I suspect I'll need pretty strong Spanish, but I'm not sure how high
tech operates.

 

cat wibbled forthrightly:

Depends upon the country as stated earlier. In France, if it's an
international co, you're more likely to get away with English to start
off with as you pick up the lingo.

<fx: sigh>

I know I'm setting myself up here, but the above worked for me, when I
moved over to work for Lucent.

 

If you're thinking Cono Sur, drop me a line (address works). I might
know somebody who knows somebody.

 

Emailed, gratefully.

 

Depends on the company, of course, and whether you're thinking about
going somewhere first then finding a job or vice versa, but for the
most part English is the language most demanded, and in most
international companies really all you need.

If you're going to work in a non-Engish speaking environment, then you
need a level of fluency sufficient to do your job. Sounds simple, but
potentially you need to be able to work in meeting environments,
formal presentations, written documents, etc. etc.

Some of the people I work with, for whom English is not a first, or
even second language, really struggle in this respect, as they can
manage to a certain level, but will never be able to progress without
fully mastering reasonably grammatic English.

We, as native English speakers, are incredibly lucky in this respect,
as it's quite unlikely that, for work purposes, we'll need the same
level of fluency required by some, in a second or third language.

OTOH to _live_ in a furn country, for a long period, being able to
speaka da lingo, to a non-grammatical level, is a different kettle of
worms altogether. Inversely, my German really only started to improve
once we bought our flat in a German-speaking village, so living and
working in a big city can lead to a certain level of complacency in
some.

Living where we are in France is a little odd, given that for many of
the locals French is actually a second language; it's quite wierd, but
for example one of our next-door-neighbours, a 70+ y-o lady, is much
more friendly when I try the odd sentence or three in German. No, not
more friendly, just more open, as she feels happier being able to use
her mother tongue at least some of the time.

Anyway, A level or whatever is irrelevant, as, so far as I can make
out, it bears no relation whatsoever to how well you can actually
speak the language.

 

I don't speak it.

I was offered a job there once, admittedly only contract.

I didn't take it.

 

Yup, it was IT related.