…but I can’t understand you

It’s fortunate then, that we can.

Since Prestige started offering a language testing service, we’ve been inundated with requests for checking the proficiency of organisations’ staff in a surprisingly wide variety of languages.

When to test language proficiency

You may wish to assess the language skills of anyone in your organisation when:

Testing new staff

• At application stage – a written check or quick chat by Skype saves you time ploughing through all those CVs
• During the interview process – Any point convenient to you, either to weed out those without the necessary skills so that you don’t waste your time interviewing them, or once you have a shortlist of candidates in order to shortlist further.

Testing existing colleagues

• When you have a new project or client
• For colleagues who wish to relocate
• Promotions or job changes which may require multilingual staff

Testing students

• A quick chat to see whether your student applicants will be able to understand your lectures, or are likely to pick up the language sufficiently for them to get the most benefit is a good way to reduce drop-out later.

Selling your role / position to international applicants

It works both ways too. Your candidates will know that they are being taken seriously if you make the effort to really check out their language proficiency.

How does language testing work?

There are a number of methods we can use to assess language skills, and it really boils down to what suits you. Your HR team can provide their testing criteria, but typically it would cover:

• Basic understanding
• Written, spoken and / or aural comprehension
• Levels of proficiency
• Technical language and depth of knowledge
• Cultural empathy

And we can test your staff remotely, onsite, at our offices, by phone, video, Zoom, MS Teams, face to face. The tests can be formal or informal, group or individual, written or oral. And we can test just one or two people or even hundreds if you have a large contract to fulfil. You name it, we can do it.

Is it worth language testing?

The answer depends on how important it is to you to acquire and retain the most appropriate person for the job. You’ve already invested significant time in finding and interviewing them, possible even paid a recruitment company, so if languages are important, testing is a small price to pay.

Save your HR team time and let us do the language testing for you. Email us now for a quote, or to request a callback to chat about your requirements.