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Employer Quotes
The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Engineering
They are talking about this topic: Occupation-Specific Skills
The quotes below are about this issue:
With more firms doing international work, candidates with international experiences are an asset. This includes travel experiences, fluency in other languages, and cultural sensitivity.
| "As we're growing, we're doing a lot more international work with technology. We finished a project down in Venezuela. We could do the engineering here, and just send someone down occasionally. We have a project in Turkey, and another project in Norway, and we're working quite a bit in Canada. So, the language skills are going to continue to be important. I don't know which ones because at least right now our projects are kind of scattered. The mining is the reason we get taken to other parts of the world, the mining tech projects." | Metro |
| "Certainly, they are going to need more skills as they look at expanding their market overseas. Someone else already referenced: When is a deal a deal in Hibbing? And when is it a deal in India? A lot of companies are taking advantage of distribution that works already in places in Europe, Asia, South America, and Latin America. Some are physically opening up a presence in other countries, which is a big jump and a scary process. Some have been successful, and some have not. Some have failed miserably. Others have somehow—maybe in spite of themselves—done it right." | Metro |
| "One of our big projects was with a company, which was bought out by an Indian company. So, we had to switch gears and quickly learn their culture and try to be able to serve them the same way we try serving our Minnesota clients." | Metro |
| "One project was in Venezuela, but another project was in Spain, so we needed both. And then there is the cultural piece. We brought someone in a year or so ago to talk about doing business in other countries, not just the language piece, but the protocol for who makes decisions and how they communicate about those things. Particularly, I think, in India." | Metro |
| "A few years ago, we got a request from some of our senior engineers in Miami saying, 'How difficult would it be to do an accelerated Spanish course?' But there are so many different dialects depending on where they're working." | Metro |
| "Yeah, I mean language skills, Spanish. Even in this area, when we go out, we regularly have to use Spanish interpreters. Or a lot of companies will have an employee who is very capable in doing the translations. Sometimes, we've had to bring in translators from overseas to help out because in Minnesota you get the full range. There are a lot of Eastern European languages that are spoken. And what a challenge that is to have a room full of people and have ten people that are Polish or Eurasian, and others that are maybe Hmong. You've got Spanish-speaking people, and then maybe Somali. How do you effectively communicate to a group with that kind of diversity? And, as engineers, who might have the need to talk to clients that may speak different languages, how do you bridge that gap? Those are all challenges." | Metro |
| "We do look for people that have had internships potentially with large companies, and maybe have traveled. We also get to choose from international students. Students that have come here, that have those skills, and that understand other cultures are a great asset to us." | Metro |
| "Being multilingual, we've started to put that on the project manager job description because they are the ones having most of the communication with the customer. But, if our engineers have that, most definitely that would be good because we are becoming more and more international." | Northwest |
| "Right now, we are pretty much just in the U.S. The European markets are very attractive to us just because of the growth potential, but right now we are solely here." | Northwest |
| "We've been in Canada for a while, but just in the last two years is when we've been starting to branch into other countries beyond Canada. I don't know the percentage. But it is new territory for us to start dealing with other countries." | Northwest |
| "I guess we need somebody that takes a history class and wants to learn about other parts of the world. I'm just amazed at how some people have not really been outside of their core area. To see what is happening in the rest of the world gives people a broader perspective. That's real critical for an engineer to have access to. About 26 percent of our sales are outside of the U.S. Canada is a big chunk of it." | Northwest |
| "Right now, we're seeing a need for Spanish for the most part. But then we're getting into Malaysia and Brazil, and there are so many dialects, and it can be very difficult. I worked with a company last year who needed an accountant based in the U.S. who spoke Portuguese because they had bought plants in Brazil. But they wanted a Portuguese fluent person here in Minnesota to communicate with the plant in Brazil. Language skills are going to be more and more important as we become more international for sure. We were trying to find a person more on the sales side. And we're going to Europe, so the person we will want to hire will depend on where we end up going. We're doing some things in Brazil, too. It's like, okay, Portuguese. Mexico is not a big market for us, so Spanish is less important. But to go into Canada and to speak some French would really be good. We have one engineer now that speaks French, but it would be nice to have somebody else." |
Northwest |