Languages on your resume

[Marah]

This question is for all those people who study a great amount of languages. What languages do you put on your resume? Do you put all languages you're studying or just those you know on a certain degree?

I put the 3 that I absolutely need to get me any job at all (Canto, Mando, Eng), each with a qualifier that may change depending on what the job requires, plus French and Spanish with no qualifier. French and Spanish are there more to show what a serious and hardworking person I am even outside of work, and to explain free time. It's better than mentioning Metallica or death metal.

Yes I think that's also an important point. We dedicate so much of our free time to language learning when we could have spent that time doing other things like sports or music.
They can also show that we are autonomous, open-minded people. Which is always good on a résumé.

[jeff_lindqvist]

If one has studied languages (or anything else) at the university, I see no point in hiding that information (imagine a translator who has also studied some engineering, economy and psychology; or a historian who has also studied Latin and Greek - of course it would be beneficial to put that on the CV). Last time I applied for a job, I actually listed Swedish, English, Spanish and German (in descending profiency order) - and also mentioned that I (at that time) studied Portuguese at the university. All of this made sense considering the duties I had (and was going to keep, if I got the new position).

If there's a certain reason (no matter how small) in mentioning your language skills, even an non-certified A2 Russian could give you better odds.

[tarvos]

I could put 10 and it wouldn't be enough :/

I just put the most widely spoken ones or ones that might be of use locally; for example Spanish and Russian are no-brainers. I also speak good French and German and some Chinese. I don't usually put Esperanto...

[Serpent]

If one has studied languages (or anything else) at the university, I see no point in hiding that information

unless you're a spy

[Stelle]

I put fluent in French and English on page one of my resume. But then, I live in an officially bilingual country, I grew up speaking both languages, and French has given me a leg up in every single job I've ever gotten. Depending on how important French is to the job that I'm applying for, I'll sometimes write the accent on my name on my resume (Stéphanie instead of Stephanie), even though my interviews have almost always been conducted in English.

I put "conversational Spanish" on page one of my resume, right after French and English. Really, I think that my level is higher than that, but conversational feels "safe". If I ever get tested, I feel that I would surpass expectations rather than fail to live up to them. In my current field, though, I don't think that Spanish would ever provide an advantage for me.

I also put something like "studying foreign languages" under hobbies at the end of my resume.

[EmmaC02]

This question is for all those people who study a great amount of languages. What languages do you put on your resume? Do you put all languages you're studying or just those you know on a certain degree?

I put the 3 that I absolutely need to get me any job at all (Canto, Mando, Eng), each with a qualifier that may change depending on what the job requires, plus French and Spanish with no qualifier. French and Spanish are there more to show what a serious and hardworking person I am even outside of work, and to explain free time. It's better than mentioning Metallica or death metal.

Yes I think that's also an important point. We dedicate so much of our free time to language learning when we could have spent that time doing other things like sports or music.
They can also show that we are autonomous, open-minded people. Which is always good on a résumé.

That's not fair. Working hard and dedicating a huge amount of time to something, whether it's learning a language, playing a sport, or playing an instrument takes commitment and dedication. I'm as proud of my achievements as a university athlete as I am of my achievements as a language learner; there's no superiority there.

[Chung]

This question is for all those people who study a great amount of languages. What languages do you put on your resume? Do you put all languages you're studying or just those you know on a certain degree?

My answer to this hasn't changed for quite some time.

I've never taken a certification exam to assess linguistic competency and so my description of them is vague. It certainly doesn't help that I'd need to take a plane to go to a city which gives such tests for my target languages (if such tests exist - I don't know of any yet for Northern Saami )

English and French: Fluent, can and have used them professionally.

Everything else: Whenever these are on my resume I qualify them with intermediate-level (e.g. for Hungarian, Polish) or basic (e.g. Finnish). Given the number of languages that I've dealt and my desire to keep things succinct, I rarely include languages for which I deem myself to be a beginner, let alone objects of dabbling.

In any case, listing even a few of my target languages often attracts a question or two from the hiring manager in an interview. This opening lets me be more natural and relaxed in the interview in talking about something that interests me instead of burning up time with devising nonsense to answer one of those canned and inane questions that HR personnel adore (e.g. "If you were an animal, which one would it be?").

In general, I list languages other than English or French which not only interest me strongly but in which I feel comfortable making a bit of small talk. I suppose that my competency in these languages is somewhere in A2 or B1 or ILR 1+ but those rankings are meaningless to most hiring managers given how many of them know only English. Furthermore, certification or a credential for competency in a language is rarely insisted upon here in a resume compared to other qualifications because of the legal/regulatory environment. Think of passing series 7 and 63 exams just to be considered for the job of securities trader/broker, completing medical school and a residency to become a doctor or even passing the CMC exam to become a master chef.

See the following from the old forum for more discussion:

A dead honest language CV
When do you put languages on your CV?

[Zireael]

When I applied for my first job, I put all my languages on my CV, using the CEFR scale and an optional classifier (beginner-intermediate-fluent).

The head, who was interviewing me himself, was really interested in the fact that I know some Arabic

[Marah]

That's not fair. Working hard and dedicating a huge amount of time to something, whether it's learning a language, playing a sport, or playing an instrument takes commitment and dedication. I'm as proud of my achievements as a university athlete as I am of my achievements as a language learner; there's no superiority there.

That's not what I meant! I was saying that if we shy away from mentionning language learning as a hobby in our résumé because we are afraid of skepticism the résumé could look duller since we dedicate so much time to it.

[Delodephius]

For the last ten years I have always done the same:

Fluent/native: Slovak, Serbian/Croatian, English
Passive/intermediate: Czech, Macedonian, Slovenian, Russian

And into the hobby/interests section I just list what languages I am interested in and that I'm learning some of them.

Also I don't put the hobby part if the job I'm applying to has nothing to do with languages (like when I worked as a "production operator" of a car parts factory).