Craft the perfect job description: Ensure your candidates have the right English proficiency

Samantha Ball
A group of business people stood around a board with sticky notes on smiling
Reading time: 3 minutes

English is the international language of business and a foundational skill for many roles. The right level of English proficiency is key for individuals and businesses to excel.

But what is the “right” level?

English is not a one-size-fits-all skill. Customer Service Representatives need different English skills to IT Systems Managers. Senior staff will often need more advanced English skills than junior staff.

Enhance your hiring process with GSE Job Profiles
Play
Privacy and cookies

By watching, you agree app can share your viewership data for marketing and analytics for one year, revocable by deleting your cookies.

We know that, for hiring professionals, it can be a challenge to work out your specific language requirements. You aren’t English assessors, so you may default to using vague descriptions, like “strong English skills” or always asking for a B2-level English certification.

But taking this approach means you might be asking for more or less proficiency than the role needs. The knock-on effect? You miss out on great candidates for your roles, spend more money upskilling new hires and waste time on unsuitable applicants.

Understanding the right level of English for your business

Being precise about the English skills needed for specific roles enables hiring managers to get the right candidate(s). It can help you:

  • Identify best-fit top talent quickly
  • Set insight-driven cut scores and progress the right percentage of quality candidates
  • Make more confident hiring decisions
  • Ensure new hires have the right skills for the role from day one

ʱ𲹰Dz’s GSE Job Profiles gives professionals accurate English language skill profiles for almost 1400 roles, so you can identify applicants with role-fit English skills.

GSE Job Profiles gives talent acquisition professionals a competitive advantage to finding the best staff. It helps you go beyond generic language skill requirements for candidates, set targeted cut scores based on global standards and reduce the risk of mis-hires. A bad hire can cost you of the employee's salary, an expense that typically increases with job level.

Powered byʱ𲹰Dz’s GSEand, GSE Job Profiles is the first and only tool mapping English skills to roles, giving you trusted global benchmarks for English language assessments. It’s the result of over 30 years of language learning, developed using real English test responses and validated by industry experts.

Defining the role requirements

Defining the role requirements is a crucial step in the hiring process. It involves identifying the key tasks, skills and qualifications needed for the role. A well-defined description helps attract the right applicant and ensures that the hiring process is focused on finding the best fit for the position.

To define the role requirements, managers should consider the following:

  • The key responsibilities and tasks associated with the role
  • The skills and qualifications required to perform the role successfully, including the precise English skills needed
  • The company culture and values that the candidate should align with
  • The long-term goals and objectives of the role

This will help attract qualified candidates and ensure that the process is efficient and effective.

How can I use the GSE Job Profiles in my job description?

Here’s how to integrate GSE Job Profiles insights into your hiring processes and hire best-fit candidates for your roles fast.

1. Identify the English skills needed for your roles:Remove the guesswork and find out the right level of English for your roles using ourGSE Job Profilesdemo or by getting in touch with our experts.

2. Assess candidates’ language ability: Use a fast, accurate and business-relevant English test, like Versant by app, to get a complete picture of your potential candidates’ language competency.

3. Compare candidate results with cut scores: Progress candidates that meet the agreed-upon required English level for the role.

4. Ensure a fast start with upskilling recommendations: Use GSE Job Profiles insights to make targeted language learning recommendations for new hires and help them thrive in their roles.

Get started with the GSE Job Profiles for your hiring process

GSE Job Profiles is a game-changer for HR professionals looking to hire top employees. By leveraging this powerful tool, you can make data-driven hiring decisions, enhance candidate-role fit, and ultimately drive business success.

Ready to revolutionize your hiring?

Try the GSE Job Profiles demo

Or, for access to the full GSE Job Profiles database,book a free consultationwith our experts now.

More blogs from app

  • Students working together laughing with a laptop in front of them

    Improve student vocabulary and memory with these classroom activities

    By Vaughan Jones

    Reading time: 6.5 minutes

    Vaughan Jones has more than 30 years of experience as an EFL Teacher, Trainer and Author. He’s lived and worked in France, Japan and Spain, and has worked to produce a number of coursebooks, including Focus, an English language learning series for upper-secondary students.

    In this post he explores some tips and techniques for language teachers to help students improve their ability to remember vocabulary.

  • A young woman sat on a laptop outside, smiling and pointing to her laptop

    Three ways to learn new English words

    By Vaughan Jones

    It’s more important for teachers to help students find ways to practice their English outside the classroom. The more efficient students become at autonomous learning, the better they’ll be able to overcome interruptions and make up for lost time.

    It will be even more challenging if you're a self-learner as you do not have a teacher looking over you and steering your learning. But it’s helpful to learn from the teaching world and pick up teacher tips that you can apply to your own studies and techniques.

    Why are learning new words so challenging?

    Students learning new words in English generally progress steadily up until the pre-intermediate and intermediate levels. But after that, they start to struggle.

    This is because there’s a big difference between the volume of the vocabulary that intermediate students and upper-intermediate students need to know.

    • Intermediate (B1/B2 level) students need to know about 2,500 words
    • upper-intermediate (B2/C1 level) students need to know about 7,500-9,000 words.

    That’s a big jump in numbers. But the real challenge is that those 5,000+ new words are not very frequent. Consequently, students don’t encounter them very often, making it difficult to recall them and leap from one level to the next.

    While there’s no simple answer to this problem, there are ways to help students overcome it. The following framework can be a big help in any classroom:

    1. Focus on the most important words:Always teach appropriate words for the levels your students are currently at.
    2. Provide memorable first encounters:You never get a second chance to make a first impression. So, ensure your student's first encounter with a new word is as memorable as possible.
    3. Teach effective word-learning strategies:Provide your students with valuable tools, tactics and resources so that they can learn new words outside the classroom, too.
    4. Organize repeat encounters:Vocabulary works on a “use it or lose it” basis, so ensure your students encounter the vocabulary you want them to learn repeatedly.

    How to teach effective word-learning strategies

    There are three steps to teach students how to learn new words effectively:

    1. Help learners maximize their exposure to English and find opportunities to use English outside the classroom

    Thanks to the internet and technology, there are many ways that students can engage with the English language outside the classroom.

    However, simple exposure to a new language is not enough – it takes much longer and is less effective than active learning. When students do something with the language they’re exposed to; it is far more memorable.

    That’s why it’s crucial for teachers to help their students seek out English in their own time and use the language, turning passive exposure into active learning.

    • Encourage students to read, listen and view things that they’re interested in or passionate about in English. For example, introduce them to new blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, or TV series that fit their interests – since personalization leads to more effective learning.
    • Help students find ways to use English in different ways. For example, they can start a learning diary, make to-do lists in English, write social media posts, and create word cards to practice their writing. For speaking, they can record voice memos or video stories, take part in Zoom discussions, or participate in speaking projects and live classes.

    2. Provide ways for students to discover the meaning of new words

    It’s crucial to help students improve their guesswork. Instead of asking online translators to translate every time they encounter a new word, they should be able to guess the meaning of new vocabulary differently.

    • One approach is to look at the morphology of words and consider word families. For example, you can ask your students to brainstorm words with a common root. Or, you can have them identify and practice common suffixes.
    • Explore “true friends” or words that are similar in English and your student's native language.
    • Help your students figure out how to guess the meaning of a word from the context. To do this, you must ensure that your students don’t just hear or read new words but also put them into use.

    One way to get students to learn and retain vocabulary is to get them to create word cards:

    • Ask students to collect ten new words that they’re exposed to throughout the week and bring them to class, like a “show and tell” for words.
    • Then have a debate about how useful each of those words is.

    This helps to connect learning inside and outside the classroom, and it’s fun!

    3. Provide students with strategies to consolidate their knowledge of new words

    Finally, teachers should give students ideas on how to memorize words outside the classroom. You can have your students produce word cards and use a Word Store booklet to practice tasks like matching words with images or definitions.

    Lastly, it’s important to teach students memory tricks or mnemonics so they can retain the new words they encounter.