IT professionals are queuing up to learn foreign languages

US are no longer the ultimate destination for Indian IT professionals. A simmering shift of focus towards non-English speaking countries like Continental Europe, Nordic countries, Japan, South East Asia and China is being noticed. More and more techies are taking to learning foreign languages like Japanese, German, French and Spanish. A great many number of prospective employers, spread across industry segments, are now attaching importance to proficiency in a foreign language in addition to core technical skills.

Most IT training majors are organizing foreign language classes as a market driven initiative. For communicating and understanding the business needs of the clients foreign language skills are a necessary pre-requisite.

IT professionals are now being called upon to provide IT and business solutions to interact with clients. The communication clarity determines the quality of project deliveries and ease with which the customers receive it. Therefore, those possessing knowledge of a foreign language have a definite advantage over others at the time of appointment.

No wonder, there has been a sizeable increase in number of IT professionals eager to learn different foreign languages ever since globalization has caught on. Foreign Languages is offered to business and technical professionals, who have to deal with and communicate directly or indirectly with their counterparts in non-English speaking countries.

Knowledge of Japanese is probably the most in-demand soft skill for IT professionals. Japan needs Indian IT professionals, but language is the only barrier. There has been a new trend for learning Spanish because the focus now is on the South American market where Spanish is widely spoken. Canada is the destination of most techies learning French. With the European job market opening up, many students are now also interested in going to France.
The keenness of software professionals to learn foreign languages has made the task easier for executive search companies, who have been recently getting many such enquiries. In many cases an employer is willing to compromise on the depth of a technical skill if the candidate knows the local language of a country where the project is to be done.

While technical abilities get the work going, industry observers believe that it is the soft skill areas which determine the overall quality of relationships within a client site, their lifestyle, fun and energy levels, particularly in countries where climate and eating habits are totally different. And learning the language of the country best bridges everything alien.