I work as a Bilingual Customer Service Representative. I say bilingual because I make use of 2 languages in my line of work, namely English and Spanish. I support both English- and Spanish-speaking customers who are mainly in the United States and its territories. In my previous work, however, I was also tasked to handle concerns of customers in South America, such as Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. My language skills have been my bread and butter for more than 3 years now.

Being bilingual gives an individual more chances to land in lucrative job opportunities. This is so true in the Philippines. Even in professional online sites like LinkedIn and Job Street, one can see posts that say company A is looking for a candidate who is fluent in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese; the same can be said for Asian languages like Mandarin, Nihongo, Bahasa and Korean. The second category even pays more!

Francisco Colayco, one of the country’s renowned financial advisers, even said that the market value of an individual is multiplied by the number of foreign languages s/he fluently speaks. This implies that parents should better start sending their children to foreign language schools as early as possible, so that by the time they embark on their respective careers, their market value will have already dramatically increased. Talk about giving them a good head start!

The demand for multilinguals in the Philippine job market has increased over the years. The booming sector of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has contributed a great deal to this.

It is of no surprise that many foreign nationals decide to come to the country to find jobs, usually in the BPO sector. I, for one, have worked with Spanish speakers from Spain and Latin America. The ongoing recovery from the recession in Spain and the economic downturn brought about by the political situation in Venezuela are some examples. So long as the BPO companies grow, there will always be a demand for bilingual careers.

This being the case gives a new meaning to the statement: It pays (better) to learn many languages.