They are not doing actual testing so there is no claim of disparate impact here. There is no discrimination case unless you want to argue flat out that you were discriminated against based on some protected category -- they did not hire you based on your race, sex,national origin, religion, etc. That's going to be very hard.

Anonymous wrote:Just ask everyone the same question - it gets dicey if you assume Liliana Rodriguez speaks Spanish and push her forward while you assume Maureen McIrish can’t speak it and toss her resume without checking the skills of either candidate.

Yep, this. If everyone gets told/asked, “This position requires conversational fluency in [language], can you tell us your experience speaking it?” then it’s a normal interview question. Make sure it’s in the job posting, then you can even say “As stated in the initial posting, this position…”

Sounds efficient to me. If the job requires Spanish, you need to assess their Spanish.

So I interviewed with a foreign office of a consulting firm during on campus recruiting, and I noticed the interviewer greeted every applicant in the required foreign language.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Usually people just ask a question (same question) in a foreign language to all candidates. Something like, "tell us about your experience speaking Finnish" or whatever.

you can also screen CVs by language proficiency testing scores (ACTFL OPI in the US, then different languages have their own exams like DALF/DELF for French, DELE for Spain-Spanish, CELU for Argentinian-Spanish, etc).

Thx!

The issue there is that we primarily need Spanish speakers who are typically either native speakers or people who majored in Spanish and did study abroad. Nobody is doing formal testing at the level you suggested. A basic conversational screening question like you suggested has been the approach, but it has been called into question.

DP. Who called it into question? It seems like a perfectly sane and easy way to gauge fluency for adult job applicants. It is one of the ways that we test children for their language fluency in schools. We ask each child the same question in the language being tested and wait for the child to respond in that language. Their ability to respond, using appropriate words and sentence structure, and being grammatically correct, gives evidence to their level of fluency.

It is just the same as the informal evaluation that you do when you're talking to the person in English. Their ability to respond in a cogent and cohesive way informs your opinion of the person.

I'm just guessing but it sounds like the person asking the question didn't really think they would have to prove their ability to speak Spanish. LOL, the joke's on them.

Make it a requirement for the role that is advertised at the fair. As you interview people, tell them the requirement. Then ask them an open ended question in Spanish and continue the interview in Spanish.

What exactly was called into question?

Just ask everyone the same question - it gets dicey if you assume Liliana Rodriguez speaks Spanish and push her forward while you assume Maureen McIrish can’t speak it and toss her resume without checking the skills of either candidate.

I’m an HR Director. There’s nothing wrong with the approach the PP suggested.

Anonymous wrote:Usually people just ask a question (same question) in a foreign language to all candidates. Something like, "tell us about your experience speaking Finnish" or whatever.

you can also screen CVs by language proficiency testing scores (ACTFL OPI in the US, then different languages have their own exams like DALF/DELF for French, DELE for Spain-Spanish, CELU for Argentinian-Spanish, etc).

Thx!

The issue there is that we primarily need Spanish speakers who are typically either native speakers or people who majored in Spanish and did study abroad. Nobody is doing formal testing at the level you suggested. A basic conversational screening question like you suggested has been the approach, but it has been called into question.

Usually people just ask a question (same question) in a foreign language to all candidates. Something like, "tell us about your experience speaking Finnish" or whatever.

you can also screen CVs by language proficiency testing scores (ACTFL OPI in the US, then different languages have their own exams like DALF/DELF for French, DELE for Spain-Spanish, CELU for Argentinian-Spanish, etc).

I’m not an HR person, but I don’t think language proficiency is a protected class. Therefore, that should be fine.

Surely someone from HR/GC at an agency or org is on dcum and can answer this question. Curious how others navigate foreign language proficiency to screen at career fairs (as opposed to the more formal process that occurs during recruitment).

Think: college/grad school career fair briefly meeting students/potential applicants for a job that requires interacting with clients exclusively in a foreign language. Is it possible to ask every applicant you encounter the same question in a foreign language to gauge their fluency via their oral response? What about a simple onsite form asking for certain resume type info or some such in a narrative written in the language?