Multilingual speakers in demand

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment - Aug 5 2007

Recruitment company Beeswax Europe claims that multilingual jobs are still in plentiful supply in Ireland, despite recent redundancies, writes Dermot Corrigan...

Ireland is now the number one location for multilingual jobs in Europe, despite the potential loss of up to 900 jobs at Xerox's customer support call centre in Dublin, according to the director of BeesWax Europe.

Reports last week claimed that the jobs, which had been transferred to IBM as part of an outsourcing agreement between the two IT giants, could be lost over a two-year period under a plan to relocate customer care operations to overseas locations, including Bulgaria, India, the Phillipines and Scotland.

Despite this, Gerry Rockingham said that multilingual jobs of the kind on offer at Xerox's Blanchardstown, Co. Dublin, facility are still plentiful in Ireland. This is not a particular boon to Irish people who speak more than one language, however as the majority of multilingual positions are going to overseas candidates who come to Ireland to work.

"Usually companies will be able to find a 'native tongue' fluent person here in Ireland," said Rockingham. "Irish society has changed hugely and pretty much 80 per cent of all the vacancies we have are for native tongue language speakers."


In general, Rockingham said Irish language graduates had weaker multilingual skills than graduates in other European countries.


"You do get graduates from Limerick or Dublin City University who spend a year abroad as part of their degree, which is fantastic, but many people will not have studied French in as much depth as a French person has studied English," said Rockingham.


A multilingual recruitment company, BeesWax recruits solely for multilingual roles in four areas: contact centres, shared services, IT support and sales. The firm sources candidates from all over Europe, placing them primarily with organisations operating in Ireland.


"It can be hard to find these people,” he said. “A lot of the companies that are hiring need someone to work in a trilingual customer service role, or do German technical support or do accounts payable in Dutch. We are basically specialists in where and how to find these people."


BeesWax employs ten recruitment specialists, all of whom are from other European countries and speak a minimum of two languages fluently. They liaise with partners abroad to source available candidates.


"We have a network of about 45 advertising agencies across Europe who we work with to advertise our vacancies and try and attract candidates for us through a range of methods including major European job boards, specialist publications, industry portals and offline advertisements,” said Rockingham. “A big thing for us has been the growth of the internet. Nearly all advertising for junior to mid-level roles has gone online.


Rockingham established Beeswax in early 2005. It had a turnover of about €1m last year.


"At the moment 75 per cent of our business would be in Ireland. 10 per cent in the UK,” he said. “The other 15 per cent is in mainland European countries."


Rockingham said multilingual jobseekers in Ireland, particularly recent graduates, were more likely to be placed in niche jobs with smaller firms.


"For the Irish graduate with language experience there is a huge increase in the number of Small to Medium Enterprises (SME) companies that are exporting around Europe,” he said. “A lot of SMEs are hiring people with languages because successful companies are not just Irish any more they are European. Small IT companies can be selling to France, Germany, Eastern Europe, Japan. The opportunities for Irish people, in a sales capacity or in a higher value job, are with companies that are exporting."


There were also some opportunities for multilingual Irish in international facing call centres, said Rockingham.


"An Irish person with French may work in a centre, say, managing the French speakers,” he said.


According to Rockingham, speaking another language can have a positive impact on the salary a candidate can attract.


"If it is a small company that requires many languages you will get quite a large language premium, because you might be the only person supporting customers in three or four languages and in those circumstances you could do very well,” he said. “You could be talking €3,000 or €4,000 more.”


"However, in a large (call centre) environment with a hundred people supporting German, they will not necessarily split the calls and interrupt the workflow processes, so speaking three languages is not really an advantage."


Rockingham said that many Irish recent graduates, who were armed with language skills, were going abroad and taking advantage of their native English language.


"The opportunities for Irish people are in other countries where people want English speakers."