Internationalize Your Resume!

Flickr user: Paulo Brandão

So you're planning to or you have studied abroad, what next? Well you need to build a resume that properly markets your amazing experience to recruiters and hiring managers. CEO love applicants who have studied abroad, but most hiring managers don't even consider it as important as other factors (Read: They never had the fun you've had /will have from your study abroad). In the following post, I will break down how you make your international experience an attractive and important part of your resume, as it should be! Read on for all the juicy tidbits.

Language hurdle number 2 of 6: They won’t correct me!

Flickr user: cyanocorax

Now you’re speaking spontaneously, without having to pause for a long time to think of a way of expressing yourself. However you’re still making mistakes than you'd like and there are some things you can never quite work out how to express… Getting locals to correct you in your language use is difficult and scary, Benny the Irish Polyglot has a great article that details some ways to get locals to work with you in their language.

Besides bribing local friends with chocolate and smiles à la Benny, Language schools can help you target your specific weak points, such as straightening out recurring problems or finding new means/forms of expression. You can rely on your language teacher, when you’re at an intermediate ‘spontaneous language’ level, to begin correcting you on recurring problems, particularly if it’s something that they really believe you should know by now. In the end however it is up to you. You must take the big leap and fight the anxiety. You ability to press onward will net you some new appreciative friends and at the same time some additional help. If you ask questions, be brave, and don't use English with anyone you will be well on your way to becoming a pro!

What kinds of hurdles have you had to overcome when learning a language? Do you have any stories about trying to persuade your local friends to correct you?

Acting in a foreign language

Javier Bardem in a recent interview with Andrew O'Hehir at Salon.com had a beautiful way of describing his relationship with two of the languages he speaks. Although he speaks excellent English, he has a very different kind of connection with it compared to Spanish, a much more 'cerebral' connection than Spanish, a language that he has 'lived' more.

Anyways, I thought I'd share with you guys as it's an interesting insight into the different roles a language can occupy in your life:

'Yeah, it makes a difference because it's the mother tongue. You live your life in Spanish and you've suffered and enjoyed and had pleasures and pains in Spanish. Words have an emotional resonance in you, huge emotional echoes, when you're speaking in your own language. You don't think about what you're saying; the words come out of a need to express yourself. When you're speaking in a foreign language, there's like an office in your brain, where people are throwing the words at you. "Give me that word -- I need a verb! I need an adjective!" There's a lot of people working in there, and you have to live with that.'

Thanks to the Daily Dish for drawing attention to the interview.

What's your take on this? Which languages do you speak, and do you have a different 'relationship' with them?