"Fluent English language skills"?

Question

I have just been sent an e-mail concerning internships with Microsoft, and they state under "candidate qualifications":
"Fluent English language skills".
Maybe I just need to have my language receptors recalibrated, but then again maybe it's those 1,200 people whose websites Google comes up with when searching for this phrase...
Can I ask your opinions on this?

Peter

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]I have just been sent an e-mail concerning internships with Microsoft, and they state under "candidate qualifications": "Fluent English language skills".[/nq]
This seems typical of the "human resources" profession. They would like to hire people either fluent
or English or with advanced language skills, but
have not themselves the ability to turn a
polished and coherent phrase.
I blame the high schools.

Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I have just been sent an e-mail concerning internships with Microsoft, and they state under "candidate qualifications": "Fluent English language ... 1,200 people whose websites Google comes up with when searching for this phrase... Can I ask your opinions on this?[/nq]
You can be fluent (and I've no doubt you are). Your skills can't.
John Dean
Oxford

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I have just been sent an e-mail concerning internships with Microsoft, and they state under "candidate qualifications": "Fluent English language ... 1,200 people whose websites Google comes up with when searching for this phrase... Can I ask your opinions on this?[/nq]
Well... this is jargon, but in my trade we differentiate fluency and accuracy. Fluency just means you can continue a flow of language, understand and be understood. It doesn't suggest that your English isn't complete bollocks (comprehensible complete bollocks, but bollocks all the same). That's where the accuracy comes in. A good student should aim for both.
But the lay definition of 'fluent' is as in the ad, and I don't see any problem with it (unless you're making an issue about how a skill can be seen to be fluent). It's sufficiently vague enough to mean 'good enough English to do the job', and if they started asking for 'native-speaker level English' they'd probably be into Equal Ops terrritory.
DC

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]"Fluent English language skills". . . .[/nq]
[nq:1]Well... this is jargon, but in my trade we differentiate fluency and accuracy.[/nq]
Jargon usually means the technical language (often abbreviated) of some particular line of work, which people outside the business do not understand nowhere evident here.

Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I have just been sent an e-mail concerning internships with Microsoft, and they state under "candidate qualifications": "Fluent English language ... 1,200 people whose websites Google comes up with when searching for this phrase... Can I ask your opinions on this?[/nq]
"Fluent skills"? Its nonsense.
This is brought to you by the country where "providing incentives for new employees" has become "new hire incentivization".
gtoomey

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I have just been sent an e-mail concerning internships with Microsoft, and they state under "candidate qualifications": "Fluent English language ... whose websites Google comes up with when searching for this phrase... Can I ask your opinions on this? Peter[/nq]
Advanced English language skills might be better, or changing the phrase so that one could make sense with "fluency" or "proficiency".

As it stands, to me it is an arkward reading. I am fluent in English regardless of how skilled I am in using it. Do they expect their programmers to be fluent in binary code?
Joanne

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Well... this is jargon, but in my trade we differentiate fluency and accuracy.[/nq]
[nq:1]Jargon usually means the technical language (often abbreviated) of some particular line of work, which people outside the business do not understand nowhere evident here.[/nq]
Yees..?

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]"Fluent English language skills". . . .[/nq]
[nq:1]As it stands, to me it is an arkward reading. I am fluent in English regardless of how skilled I am in using it. Do they expect theirprogrammers to be fluent in binary code?[/nq]
This suggests a solution: candidates should
be fluent in assembly language and skilled
in binary notation.

Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I have just been sent an e-mail concerning internships with Microsoft, and they state under "candidate qualifications": "Fluent English language ... 1,200 people whose websites Google comes up with when searching for this phrase... Can I ask your opinions on this?[/nq]
"English fluency" correctly describes the requirement.

The reason a silly phrase like "fluent English language skills" keeps coming up has to do with the way job descriptions are crafted in the US to comply with a host of legal concerns which must be satisfied, mindful of the fact that relatively uneducated staff will be responsible for compliance.You need to have the "skills" tag in there so that understaffers know to classify this under the "skills" heading. Secondly, because in a law someplace it talks about selecting workers based on "skills" as the proper method of avoiding bias in hiring, therefore you try to make it blindingly obvious to jurors or others, who really don't care about you or how much money you lose if you lose your case for bias in hiring, that this was a "skill" being selected for and some other variety of trait.

When the law says "A person may X in the event of Y, but is liable for fine otherwise" you need to be very careful to tell someone "Do X, because this is a situation where the event Y applies" not merely "Do X". To get understaffers to comply with laws, think like a second grade teacher trying to get her class to do a complex and dangerous task such as using scissors to cut paper. Make everything extremely clear and labelled beyond the extent reasonably necessary, because what those idiots do is what you will be held resposible for.
The redudancy of saying "English language" also helps the understaffers translate information on one page to another page where it might ask if there are any "language" requirements. If they say "no" on one page while there IS in fact a language requirement stated on the other page, it opens the door to the language requirement being, again, a mere proxy for ethnic bias in hiring, because the company did not consistently state the requirement of it! One can try to prevent these errors by stating that the requirement is a "language" requirement, and hoping understaffers recognize that word on the page.
The "fluent" is tagged on as the name of a skill level, indicating that it can range from "no" to "some" to "good" ability to read/write/converse in the language all the way up to the highest possible level, which is "fluent".Cram this jumble of legalese into one ungrammatical phrase and you have "(Skill level = Fluent)(Language Requirement = Yes)(Language Required = English)(Is a skill or other type of trait = skill)", thus "Fluent English Lange Skills". This is a phrase designed to operate outside the rules of ordinary grammar but help large companies comply with laws, made and enforced by and litigated by idiots, which are very expensive to violate, thus it operates with a "binary logic bureaucratic" grammer involing a bunch of yes/no classification decisions, the result of which is a sacred text which must be repeated as is to avoid errors which may anger the gods of frivilous litigation if someone intones the phrase erroneously.

Please believe me when I say a well functioning US corporate hiring office will not be shy about stating "No English language skills required". That's VERY bad grammar - just take it literally and you'll see - but indicates a corporation that isn't going to be paying out ridiculous sums to settle frivilous employment litigation suits, because it has a highly automated system of assuring that errors which trigger such suits are avoided. So long as the law suit is avoided, good English be damned.

It is dangerous to translate a legalese job description into plain language, because that simply opens the door for greedy lawyers to say: "they didn't consistently describe the job, so really what they pretend was strictly required wasn't strictly required. They would have consistently stated the requirements otherwise". So you get publication of the legalese, not translation of it, when it is time to actually offer the position, after the laborious process of following the rules for creating job descriptions that do not anger the gods of frivilous litigation has been completed.
To understand business in the US, first know that US society was founded by the Puritans, and we haven't strayed far from their precepts. Being a rich nation, we naturally feel the need to punish ourselves by having a swarm of lawyers run our lives.

"Fluent English language skills"?

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions