Over the past 12-18 months the demands for IT Sales professionals who are fluent in a second European language have seen a steady increase. Where once a request for an individual who spoke fluently speaks a second language has steadily increased. Where once the requests for people who spoke German, French, Spanish Italian or a dozen other languages were a novelty now they are become a weekly occurrence.
With the UK marketplace shifting consistently and financial troubles of a few years ago still firmly in many businesses minds company’s seem to be looking towards other European markets to help maintain revenue generation.
Learning new skills and constantly expanding your knowledge is a must for any sales person at the best of times but with the troublesome times we have seen it has never been more important. We have written before about why people move job but learning new technologies and skills is a reason that crops up occasionally but not as often as you might think. It can take a long time to learn everything you possible could within a role but ask yourself how much of an effort have you made to learn something new that is in your job description. If you find yourself thinking that you have learnt all you possible can then just how much are you challenging yourself or are you just going through the motions.
Cloud computing, big data and mobile technology are just a few of the big IT trends for the rest of the decade but developing skills in these technologies is best done now so you can get in on the ground floor and be at the top of that tree sooner than your competition. A hiring manager is not going to be put off by someone highlighting in an interview that they are spending some of their own time outside of work learning a new skill, language, or technology that could be advantageous in a new role. Indeed it will only help your case and could tip the balance in your favor when the hiring manager sits down to make a decision.
Languages are useful not just in IT sales but life in general and if you decided to enter a new industry then it opens even more doors for you. Now is the perfect time to learn a new language – or skill – not trying to pick it up when you secure that new job and have hundreds of things to pick up – do it whilst you are in your current job and can more easily absorb that new information and it will make your CV stand out even more from the crowd when it joins the pile on the hiring managers desk.
It’s starting to look like some of us should have paid a bit more attention in those French lessons at school – although I don’t remember when we were taught about conducting a consultative sales pitch for a piece of IT software – Must have missed that day…. Now where’s that training brochure…?
