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One of the most daunting aspects of jumping into the job market is presenting your background and skills effectively on your résumé, cover letter, and in interviews. In addition to highlighting your proficiency in specific platforms and tools, you also need to think about how other experiences—even ones you may take for granted—can advance your career.
Though 20% of Americans are bilingual and able to hold conversations in more than one language, they may not have access to opportunities that are designed to make use of this skill. According to Diana Sanchez-Vega, a career coach who specializes in assisting multilingual job candidates land positions, companies can get better at reaching multilingual candidates by being clearer in their job descriptions and overtly designating fluency in languages other than English as a skill.
Sanchez-Vega, who also works as a consultant for organizations, compares multilingualism to an IT skill that requires specific knowledge of a software, meaning that it should be compensated properly. “The way for organizations to reach out to these folks is by really saying, ‘we value your language skills as much as we value other skills,’” says Sanchez-Vega.
If you’re someone who speaks multiple languages, you can leverage that skill to get a remote job working within international markets or interacting with non-English speaking populations. Here are some tips on how to leverage your multilingual skills in the job market, or to get a promotion at your current job:
Specify Your Level of Proficiency
Sanchez-Vega says that you should include the languages you know at the top of your résumé and specify which language(s) you speak natively, as well as your varying levels of proficiency for the other languages.
For fields such as medicine or academia, you may need to take specific exams to prove your language ability. Sanchez-Vega says that for her clients, she doesn’t focus on them having an exceptionally advanced level of reading comprehension, but rather prioritizes their ability to hold a conversation and establish rapport. However, she says that to be a translator in more regulated fields of healthcare and education, you would need a third-party proficiency assessment. For example, she says that a nurse who wants to work a “dual role” with English and Spanish speaking patients would need to take an exam.
When you are compiling your résumé, you should emphasize the projects and instances in which you used your bilingual skills to give companies a clearer picture of how it can benefit employers. Alejandra Mielke, a career coach who specializes in Latinx applicants, says that someone who was able to conduct interviews in multiple languages should clearly state that, because it’s a skill that could easily be leveraged in a workplace.
Reframe Your Experience
While knowing how to speak and write in two languages is a technical skill, it can also be reframed more broadly, since it provides you with an understanding of other cultures. “Having access to two systems of communication goes beyond the language; it includes the culture,” says Mielke. “In addition to being able to speak, write, and read two languages, you also have access to two cultures.”
In your job interview or cover letter, you can present your multilingualism as something that can be practically used, but also as a lived experience that has influenced your worldview and the ways in which you interact with people. Mielke says that bilingual or multilingual individuals should make sure to indicate if they worked abroad on their cover letter because those experiences can also indicate a knowledge of multiple cultures.
Sanchez-Vega also says that people who emigrated to the U.S. should use their résumé to share their story of integrating into American society and list previous international roles in chronological order. This could help you explain any professional gaps, while also painting a fuller picture of who you are as a job candidate.
Dr. Sajani Barot, a pharmacist and founder of The Skin Consult, a virtual skincare platform, says that she’s been able to apply her knowledge of Hindi and Gujarati throughout her career. When starting out as a pharmacist, she was able to assist patients who spoke those languages. And now, as an entrepreneur, she leverages her skills to connect with workers in India’s growing sector of outsourced IT.
As talent becomes increasingly outsourced, knowing how to jump between cultures and languages can come in handy—especially in the tech sector. Andres Garcia, cofounder and CTO of healthcare software company Florence Healthcare, is a native Spanish speaker who learned English and Portuguese. His language trajectory has helped him better connect with teams that Florence Healthcare works with that may not fluently speak English.
“I feel that being a bilingual person … I have the empathy for a remote team that is not native to English,” he says. “They conduct their business with us in English and I’m aware of the effort it requires.”
Find Opportunities and Leverage Your Skills For Compensation
To find multilingual opportunities, applicants should continuously network across industries on LinkedIn, says Mielke. Once you find a multilingual opportunity, you should make sure that you’re properly compensated.
Through researching how much your translating skills are worth and backing your requests with data, you can make a compelling case for your target salary. After securing the position, you should make sure that the company sticks to the job description and sets proper boundaries. For instance, you aren’t suddenly a cultural ambassador, unless that was previously specified.
“Unless you have been brought up as a marketing expert in multicultural or diverse markets, your job [as a culturally diverse employee] is not to explain how members of your cultural group think or act, for example,” Mielke says. “Your company should respect your job description and not assume an individual who belongs to a culturally diverse group is going to be the translator, the interpreter, or an expert in that culture just because this individual is a member of that group.”
As remote work becomes the new normal for many fields, companies need people who can connect with others. “Now that we’re working remotely, I find that communication is even more essential,” Dr. Barot says, “Having people who [are bilingual and] also understand [different cultures] can really make communication a lot easier.”
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Barely six months into the year, state lawmakers have proposed hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills, from legislation that targets trans kids to bans on LGBTQ characters in books. That’s the equivalent of multiple bills each day—and a record high even after years of fervent activity.
It’s a moment of incredible urgency for GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis, who has steered the LGBTQ advocacy organization for the last eight years with an emphasis on courting the business community. “We haven’t seen companies standing up as much as we would like,” Ellis says. “And I think that has a lot to do with the politicization of the LGBTQ community. What I’m constantly saying to CEOs is: ‘This is not a political issue. This is a human issue.’”
Amid the mounting pace of legislative proposals—and the real possibility that the Supreme Court could take aim at landmark LGBTQ cases—Ellis is imploring business leaders to take a stronger stance, beyond pledging their support for the community through Pride celebrations and social media campaigns. In a recent conversation with Fast Company, Ellis reflected on how corporations should respond to an endless onslaught of anti-LGBTQ legislation, and what GLAAD is doing to push them to act. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Fast Company: Since 2014, you’ve been instrumental in turning things around at GLAAD, financially and otherwise. Can you tell me how you see GLAAD’s role now, especially at such a tumultuous time?
Sarah Kate Ellis: As we saw media shifting and culture shifting, I was brought in to modernize [GLAAD] and make it an organization for the future generations of the LGBTQ community. [One] of the directives that I took on when I started was creating the GLAAD Media Institute, which works very closely with corporate Hollywood. We launched the Social Media Safety Index. That measures and holds accountable the five largest social media platforms because we know that LGBTQ people are the most discriminated against on these platforms and the most censored.
The organization was built to be a watchdog for media and journalism, and to be an advocate or lobbyist for Hollywood to include us in storylines, so that we grew our visibility. Now culture is created by CEOs. It’s created out of Washington, DC, and politics. It’s created out of Silicon Valley. Pretty much anyone who has access to a phone can influence culture. So, we’ve grown accordingly, to help not only watchdog those platforms and those places, but also to advocate for our stories to be told, and for fair and accurate representation.
The corporate voice can be really powerful, as we saw when hundreds of companies came out in support of same-sex marriage and opposed bathroom bills. But the business community is still reluctant to speak on these issues. We’ve seen some companies respond to the recent wave of anti-trans legislation, but those efforts pale in comparison to their investments in, say, Pride events and social media campaigns. You’ve focused a lot on business engagement during your tenure and have far more corporate sponsors now than you did in 2014. How would you characterize corporate engagement on LGBTQ issues right now?
Corporations have a growing influence so, therefore, they have a growing responsibility. Within [the GLAAD Media Institute], we have a whole group of people that work directly with corporates [on] everything from their HR policies to how they are speaking out on social justice issues. I think in 2016 there was great momentum around CEOs and companies speaking out against anti-LGBTQ legislation, and it was really effective at those moments in time. You saw Marc Benioff from Salesforce [speak out]; in Georgia, we saw Disney take a stance that really helped stop bad legislation. We’ve seen companies throughout the years really start to understand the importance of who they are in the world.
But in this past year, we haven’t seen companies standing up as much as we would like. And I think that has a lot to do with the politicization of the LGBTQ community. What I’m constantly saying to CEOs is: This is not a political issue. This is a human issue. The LGBTQ community is living in an unsafe America, and we need you all to step up, using your political clout and your economic footprint to help support the community.
GLAAD recently released what you’re calling “Recommendations for Corporate Allies” to help companies do exactly that. What do you think businesses should be doing differently, and how can these recommendations help guide them?
These recommendations give them a playbook on how to step out in a way that is affirming and supportive of the community, [but] that’s still safe for them. We’ll give them the playbook, but we won’t give them a pass. I hear from a lot of CEOs about not understanding how to navigate the current political environment in the U.S. because it’s become so polarized. Yet, I hear from senators that they’re not hearing from business leaders on LGBTQ issues—that they are not prioritizing them when they have their member meetings. So, I think that there is a disconnect happening here, because these companies internally are saying, ‘Here’s our value proposition: Equality for all. DEI is a priority for this company,’ but when you see the legislative moves and the rhetoric that is demonizing our community, it’s creating an incredibly unsafe space for LGBTQ people.
And if you take into consideration the Edelman Trust Barometer—it says employees trust their companies more than they trust their government. So, there is an added responsibility on these CEOs. Their employees trust them. Employees see what’s going on out there in the world at large, and they expect them to stand up and support them, and do so in a public way. And I think CEOs have been falling short.
One of the things you touch on in your recommendations is that it’s not enough for companies to support LGBTQ employees through internal policies or DEI initiatives alone—that they need to take a public stand and lobby for these issues with their dollars. This is where a lot of companies seem to fall short, whether we’re talking about issues like abortion access or trans rights. How are you pushing leaders to take those steps?
One way that we’re helping them is our Visibility Project, which we launched a year ago with P&G. We know how impactful advertising can be. One [part] is just basic inclusion, having LGBTQ families [and] queer kids in the ads. Then the other is using these advertising platforms to address issues that directly affect and impact the LGBTQ community. Nike did an ad around trans kids in sports. That’s a perfect way to educate people about what it really means to include trans people in sports—and the perfect brand for it in Nike. We recently [created] a PSA that the major networks ran for us. And this was a PSA specifically around a family in Texas who has a trans son, and how the directive in Texas by the governor is affecting their family and putting them in harm’s way. It was really, really powerful, and we saw Comcast, Paramount, and Disney run it.
The general population doesn’t know too much [about] the Equality Act that would help to codify LGBTQ rights. It has passed the House and moved to the Senate; it has about a month left to gain traction and move forward. Right now, our rights are secured through a patchwork [of state laws and] the Supreme Court. Those human rights that we had to fight for—that others are granted upon birth—are only safeguarded by nine Supreme Court justices. I think that corporates should be speaking out on the Equality Act. Signing a letter is clearly not enough. It’s the first step, not the beginning and the end.
If I can’t appeal to your moral compass, and if I can’t make the business case, you have another business imperative that’s coming fast and furious. Twenty percent of Gen Z [identify as] LGBTQ. That’s your next generation of employees and consumers, and they also bring with them allies—and our allies are just as powerful and outspoken as we are.
Fast Company touched on this in a recent editorial series on the business case for abortion access, but the pending SCOTUS decision on Roe v. Wade could have all kinds of ripple effects, jeopardizing the hard-won LGBTQ rights secured by cases like Obergefell v. Hodges. Could you talk about what’s at stake here, and what GLAAD is doing to promote that message?
I think you can draw a direct line between Roe and Obergefell. The underpinning of Obergefell is privacy—the 14th Amendment—which is what’s being unwound with Roe right now. And we’ve heard directly from two of the nine Supreme Court justices that they do want to revisit Obergefell.
When you look at the anti-women playbook and you look at the anti-LGBTQ playbook, they are written by the same players, funded by the same people, and moving in the same direction. So, this is all coordinated against women and LGBTQ people—anyone who is marginalized in this community who has secured some level of protections for themselves. When I talk about these issues with CEOs, I frame it for them as: ‘This is creating a very unsafe country for women.’ It’s not a political issue. And for the LGBTQ community, it is the same thing. A large majority of [these anti-LGBTQ bills] are solutions to problems that never existed. They are used and created to start a narrative against our community that others us and puts us in harm’s way and demonizes us. Most of it is done for political gain and power.
I imagine it’s hard to feel optimistic right now, but are you hopeful about where things go from here? Do you think companies that have been reticent to speak out will start to show up more for the LGBTQ community?
It’s been a tough year. I’m not going to lie. It has been hard to see our allies not jump into the ring with us and be really reticent to do so. Now I will say, for CEOs, every day [brings] something new that they have to speak up on. One day it’s Ukraine. The next day, it’s a mass murder in a Texas school and gun safety. The next day, it’s an anti-LGBTQ bill. You can’t react to everything, and that’s a lot of the conversations that I have. What they can do is figure out where they have the most power and influence as a company, and use those moments to take a larger stand.
I think we are going to see more and more CEOs speaking out on these topics in a powerful way. They need to come out [and say]: Here’s where we stand; this is unacceptable. And then they need to back that up with action.
