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Top 13 Jobs and Careers You Can Get with a Foreign Language
We have put together this list of jobs you can get with a foreign language so that all you language lovers out there can find some career ideas. Landing a job with a foreign language is extremely exciting, and yes, there are more career options than just entering into the world of translation. As a speaker of foreign languages, your job options are practically endless because language learning equips you with a wide range of hard and soft skills that make you an extra attractive candidate.
Your language skills are extremely valuable when it comes to looking for a job, and it is well known that learning a new language creates a diverse range of job opportunities and the different career paths you can take. Careers with languages are always the most rewarding jobs, including opportunities for travel and meeting new people. What’s more, jobs where you have to know one or many languages develop your brain and help you to become even more intelligent!
Let us inspire you with this list of top language jobs for multilinguals and show you some of the many jobs you can get with a foreign language!
2. Translation Project Manager
3. Teacher/Blogger/Content Creator
4. Customer Service Representative
13. Human Resources Specialist
1. Translator/Interpreter
Let’s begin with the obvious career choice for dedicated polyglots: translation or interpretation. Why are these jobs always recommended to multilinguals? Well, one, because it is logical to transition from translating texts for yourself or friends in your personal life to translating meaning in a professional sphere, and two, because being a translator is a good career! You can earn a great salary and stretch your mind each day.
2. Translation Project Manager
Perhaps you do not wish to go for the most evident job option for individuals with a foreign language, so why not stay connected to the sector but take charge from the administrative side? By being a Translation Project Manager, you still get to use your languages but by overseeing and revising various projects rather than diving deep into the production of one particular assignment.
3. Teacher/Blogger/Content Creator
Here’s another job option using foreign languages that any career advisor will recommend. However, you do not have to spend your day in a classroom; today, there are many modern ways of helping others to develop their language skills. You can give intense and fulfilling one-to-one tutoring sessions.
Not interested in “live teaching”? Why not create a YouTube channel and give pre-recorded classes like English with Lucy, or start a language teaching podcast like CoffeeBreak Spanish if you prefer not to be seen online!
4. Customer Service Representative
If you simply love chatting in your languages, what better practice is there than to be conversing with natives from different regions on the phone each day? Customer Service jobs provide you with the gratification of solving customers’ issues and advising them effectively in a language that might not be your mother tongue.
5. Sales Representative
If you have learned a foreign language, you are probably a confident individual with great communications skills. This means that Sales jobs are a perfect option in terms of careers you can get with foreign languages. You will revel in contacting companies from across the continents, making connections, and striking up beneficial partnerships!
6. Tour Guide
Becoming a Tour Guide is a really fun idea if you don’t know what job you can get with a foreign language - all you need are language skills, a good memory (to recite information about the area), and a sociable personality! If you don’t like using your learnt languages in a formal setting where you constantly come across business idioms, this is the career for you. You will be getting to grips with all the slang words and how languages are really spoken among friends and family in a relaxed setting.
7. Travel Agent
As a Travel Agent, you are the intermediary between holiday bookers and entertainment, accommodation, and travel companies. What does that mean? It’s a job where not a day goes by without an opportunity to use one of your languages. You need to be a proactive, organised candidate for this type of role!
8. Flight Steward
If using your language skills isn’t exciting enough for you, why not do it thousands of feet up in the air? As a flight steward, you’ll be attending to the needs of customers of various nationalities, and making bilingual announcements at key points during the flight.
9. Restaurant Staff
Knowing a foreign language is a huge asset for restaurant staff who work in touristic areas as it greatly speeds up the process of serving people on holiday.
10. Academic Researcher
If you don’t know what to do after you graduate from university and decide to stay in education, you could dedicate your project to languages. Being fluent in one or more foreign languages is vital for investigating in depth how a language has evolved, or how it affects a nation’s psychology, etc. Or, perhaps your area of focus won’t be languages themselves, but an aspect of another culture, the secondary reading for which being mostly in a foreign language. You will need very strong reading and writing skills to be able to research this topic rigorously.
11. Import Specialist
An Import Specialist controls the products that enter a country, detecting any illegal items that violate the particular customs regulations for the area. Knowledge of several languages is therefore extremely useful when it comes to reading paperwork and deciphering suspicious documents regarding package contents.
12. Hotel Manager
In an establishment frequented day in, day out by hundreds of people from across the globe, hotel staff need to have some language skills under their belt in order to maximise the number of queries or complaints they can deal with. Often holidayers will ask receptionists about nice parts of the city to visit, restaurants they recommend, or family activities available, so even basic language skills are highly useful in the Tourism/Hospitality sector.
13. Human Resources Specialist
It’s simple: the more languages you know, the more candidates you can interview! Multilingual recruiters also tend to be more culturally aware, which is very important in terms of avoiding the racial discrimination that unfortunately prevails in today’s corporate world.
So where can you start your hunt for foreign language job opportunities? Right here at Europe Language Jobs, where we have over 1300 active job offers and a wide range of roles! We want you to know that languages are your weapon, and also your ticket to working abroad wherever you please. Remember, if you manage to master a foreign language and the technical terms relevant to your sector of interest, you can do any job you please. Check out the other directions you can take by reading what you can do with a language degree.
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