English Skill Requirements Toolkit and User Guide
One of the biggest hurdles facing organizations when interviewing non-native English
speaking candidates is assessing whether they have the right level of English skills for
the job. It can be very difficult, however, for organizations to determine what level of
English skills is required for the job, and then properly assess candidates against that
standard.
Often, the tendency is to over-estimate the skill requirements, thus creating a situation
where the organization is rejecting potentially strong candidates based on incorrect
assessment criteria. This tool will assist you to identify English skills required to
competently perform the position you going to be interviewing for. It will also help you to
better assess the English skills of the candidates. Through a better assessment of each,
you will be able to maximize your candidate pool and not overlook potentially qualified
candidates in error.
The tool has been developed with 5 levels, each with a description of progressively
increasing skill. Each has also been correlated to two of the most common English
assessment scales (IELTS and TOEFL) used in the marketplace.
The Position Audit and Candidate Assessment templates are divided into the four major
aspects of English communication skills: speaking, writing, reading and listening. Within
each, a number of potential tasks and accountabilities that might be included in the
position you are looking at have been identified. It is likely that some on each list will not
be applicable to your position and that you may have to add additional ones.
When completing the Position Audit, you should identify the various elements of the job
that require English communications, whether speaking, writing, reading or listening, and
list those in the appropriate section of the template. Next, using the English
Competency Scale, identify the minimum skill level required to perform the task. It is
important here to be realistic and not over-assess the job requirements.
Next, before you start to assess candidates, whether via telephone screening or
personal interviews, prepare the Candidate Assessment template. For each skill
section, transfer the skills you identified in the Position Audit into the Candidate
Assessment template. For the pre-loaded examples, each has a Sample Question or
Experience listed beside it. It is these questions and/or experiences that you can utilize
as part of your interview questioning to more fully assess the candidate’s English skills.
For any new tasks that you added, you should develop appropriate questions or
exercises using the samples as a guide.
You are now ready to begin your telephone screens and/or personal interviews. In
designing your interview, you will want to include questions and experiences from this
template as part of your overall plan. When considering the answers you received to all
of your questions, and specifically the ones designed through this template to assess
English skills, refer to the English Competency Scale that we started this process with.
Again, try to assess the candidate’s performance fairly and accurately by using the
descriptions of the levels.
It will likely take a bit of time to become completely comfortable using this tool as part of
your candidate selection process, but used in conjunction with the cross-cultural
interviewing guide, the guide to developing behaviour based interview questions and
other tools included in this website, you will soon have developed a very effective
interview process that ensures you do not overlook non-native English speaking
candidates through not accurately assessing the job requirements and/or candidate
capabilities.