Wednesday 23 April 2014

Confusing English language skills with professional competence.

Mon dieu- this is worse than ERP HR implementation

On the plane coming home to Canada for the holidays, whilst my Blackberry was closed, I read a management article in Readers' Digest which claimed that "English language prowess may confuse US and Canadian based decision makers about professional competence; in some cases, gr8 candidates are passed over simply because another candidate speaks perfect English".

If you ask me, c'est des conneries. That's French. In other words, it is not big data.

Our CEO Stan can tolerate many things: Comrade Carl Marks' rambling, Wifey's nagging and Hugh White's irrelevance and stupidity. (Hugh heads our Diversity Department).
However, when Stan does not understand someone's accent, and has to say "can you repeat that, please", he gets migraines, overeats, and criticizes my HR business partnership.

As we expand our global presence into South Thailand, rural Ukraine and Mali, I have instructed the uni-lingual Cynthia Axe and the inept Hugh White to bring me only la crème de la crème of English speakers, who have other competencies.

By the way, when I got my job as HR manager,I did not disclose my French language skills,
because I did not want to be perceived as exotic.

Follow me @GRamsbottom

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