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Employer Quotes
The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Engineering
They are talking about this topic: Industry Trends
The quotes below are about this issue:
Many engineering firms are experiencing growth in their work with international companies; this increases their need for employees with cultural and language skills.
| "One of our big projects is in northern Minnesota. The company was bought out by an Indian company, so we had to switch gears and quickly learn their culture so we could serve them the same way we try serving our Minnesota clients." | Metro |
| "Well, certainly they are going to need more skills as they look at expanding their market overseas. You already referenced the question, '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's already in place in Europe, Asia, South America, and Latin America. Some are physically opening up a presence in other countries, which can be 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—have done it very right." | Metro |
| "We find that just the ability to market in another country is a challenge. How do you adjust for some of the cultural things? Simple words that we take for granted have very different meanings in other countries." | Metro |
| "It used to be—and in many cases it's still fashionable—to outsource to China and to other areas: Vietnam, Latin America, South America. But we've also seen that some work is now being resourced and brought back to the U.S. And, in many ways, it is because the quality is superior. If you're a client that needs a quality product, then you're probably going to be looking at an American-made product. If you are making a million of something, then it may make sense to go to other markets." | Metro |
| "We're trying to get them to do business outside of the U.S. so that they can expand their markets and grow their business." | Metro |
| "As we're growing we're doing a lot more international work. 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." | Metro |
| "There is the cultural piece. We brought someone in a year or so ago to talk about doing business in other countries. So, you need not just the language piece, but also the knowledge of the protocol—like who makes decisions and how they communicate about those things. Particularly, I think, in India." | Metro |
| "It is interesting because, even if we weren't working overseas, we're running into more situations where we're working with companies that are owned by overseas entities. That wasn't the case ten or fifteen years ago. So, we're having to kind of work internationally even if we're working domestically." | Metro |
| "We're international, we're getting bigger, and frankly we have expanded our recruiting." | Northeast |
| "The multilingual skills, we've started to put that on the project manager job description because they are the ones that are having most of the communication with the customer. But if our engineers have those skills, it's most definitely a plus because we are becoming more and more international." | Northwest |
| "I don't know the percentage of international business, but it is very new to us. We've been in Canada for a while, but it's just been in the last two years that we've been starting to branch out beyond Canada. So, this is new territory for us to start dealing with other countries." | Northwest |
| "About 26 percent of our sales are outside of the U.S. Canada is a big chunk of it." | Northwest |
| "Employer 1: I worked with a company last year who needs an accountant based in the U.S. who speaks Portuguese because they had bought plants in Brazil. So, they wanted a Portuguese fluent person here in Minnesota to communicate with the plant in Brazil. Employer 2: It is going to be more and more like that as we become more international for sure. Employer 3: We were just talking about that not that long ago. We were trying to find a person more on the sales side. And we're going to Europe, so who you want depends on where you're going. We're doing some things in Brazil, too. It is like, okay, Portuguese. Mexico is not a big market for us, so Spanish isn't as important right now, but to go into Canada to speak some French would really be good. We do a lot in Canada, that's why we are number one in the national market, so French would really be nice too." |
Northwest |