What to do with illiterate candidates

Employers often complain about the low literacy level of candidates, the use of professional slang where not everyone understands it, if you need a professional writing company - use ResumeBot https://www.intensedebate.com/people/Jason_Newton.

There is a problem
Literacy is important not only for text professionals. Errors in business correspondence and in oral speech can harm the image of the company, so it is important to pay attention to the literacy of the candidates. The “language problem” is quite acute. Evgenia Lanichkina, partner of the Antal Russia recruiting company, says: “This is a very relevant topic. The general literacy rate of the population is falling. Both in oral and in written speech there are more and more mistakes. Informal and street slang is found even in a business environment. But sometimes, due to neglect of the rules, it is difficult to understand what was discussed in the message or letter. ”

How to check
If you are hiring an employee for a position where a good level of literacy is needed, you must, of course, first of all take a closer look at his resume and cover letter, listen to how he says. Evgeniya Lanichkina advises: “When you hire a new employee, in most cases you can already understand from an oral speech whether he has literacy problems. And in order to make the assessment more accurate, especially for positions that involve a lot of written and oral communication with clients or public communications, you can conduct a small test, asking to draw up and present, for example, a commercial proposal. ”

Back to the desk
On the one hand, one can understand an employer who selects specialists only with an impeccable knowledge of the Russian language, but on the other hand, a staff of professors of philology is unlikely to be able to solve the problems of sales, procurement or logistics. Therefore, select employees according to their professional qualities, and you will do literacy development later. In the case of mass hiring, conduct a training course on the basics of communication with clients. If one specialist is employed, assign a more experienced employee to look after the newcomer. The main thing is to show the basic patterns of oral and written speech that are adopted in communicating with the clients of your company.

“Today there are more opportunities to improve communication, persuasion and presentation skills,” says Yevgeniya Lanichkina. - You can find many courses and trainings in oratory, which will help to raise the necessary skills of your employees to a new level. Of course, it is not worthwhile to conduct large-scale training in the Russian language within the company, but monitoring communication and discussing emerging difficulties is especially necessary at the first stage. A small adjustment will help to avoid problems in the future. "

We clean language
But today, both managers and human resources specialists sometimes use a huge amount of foreign words. Here is how Yevgeny Lanichkina explains the situation: “Recruiting business originated outside of our country, so those who work in this area use a lot of words of foreign origin. Starting from the very name of the profession - a recruiter. There is simply no Russian analogue of this word, like, for example, the term “headhunter”. Many are familiar with such concepts as “assessment” as a method of evaluating the applicant and “offer” - a job offer, etc.

We can say that a kind of deformation has already occurred in the business environment, and “wrong” words have become a habit. We do not pay attention to the word “meeting” when speaking about meetings, although until recently you would have had an association not with a meeting, but with an event with banners and balloons. It is difficult to say whether it is possible to do something with this, whether it will be possible to "clear" the professional speech of these words. At least, you should not abuse them in communication with people belonging to other specialties. It is hoped that the language itself will clear itself of everything ugly and superfluous. "