Why Learning A Language Could Save Your Career?

By Clair Jones, Next Avenue Contributor.

In today’s Millennial-saturated job market, it can be hard for even the most talented and experienced boomers to preserve their competitive advantage. However, there is a rare skill that makes hiring managers sit up and take notice: fluency in a high-demand, low-supply language.

Whether your goal is to remain relevant in your current position, switch jobs or launch an encore career, acquiring a second language could set you apart from the sea of qualified (and younger) job applicants.

Many companies are rapidly expanding overseas and scrambling to appeal to foreign-language customer segments. But which language is the most lucrative to learn and what learning method is most effective for midlifers?

Three Languages Worth Considering

The general consensus among career experts is that the most universally-useful languages are Mandarin-Chinese, German and Spanish. This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave an interview entirely in Mandarin.

Mandarin-Chinese (a notoriously difficult-to-learn language) and German are especially helpful to know if you work in the manufacturing or the financial sphere. Thanks to our global economy, those industries depend heavily on employees who can effectively communicate with foreign partners.

Goldman Sachs has reported that at least 50% of its employees speak a foreign language and that German is a language the firm actively seeks in job candidates. And the demand for fluent Mandarin-Chinese stockbrokers, in particular, has risen sharply in recent years.

Spanish is an extremely practical choice if your career is in sales, marketing or health care. The 2010 Census found that Latinos make up 16% of the U.S. population, creating a domestic consumer segment that has companies desperate to hire and retain bilingual employees. Firms such as McDonald’s, Dish Network and L’Oreal are spending millions to target Latino markets and are diversifying their workforce accordingly.