I reached that point in my career when I discovered that there are hidden skills that you need to have. We all know that long list of professional skills that you need to bring on the table. Soft skills should be required, that’s what recruiters ought be taking care of [yeah, right], but I found some skills that you need to have them although they are not mentioned anywhere in the job announcement nor at the interview. Therefore I like calling them — hidden skills.
A good example is international experience. I would define it as ability to work with people that are of a different nationality. This is a challenge and here are three reasons:
1. Different cultures
In some countries there are people who have a completely different style of working. Let’s imagine a scenario where changes of requirements are very usual. Some people may see it normal and call it dynamic environment, others may see it as total chaos. Who is right in this example? Both ones! Take a look bellow and convince yourself.
2. Language barrier
You think you speak English quite good, after all you were tested during the hiring interview. The only problem is that you think you speak English quite good. The reality is that you will have difficulties speaking with something from UK or Australia due to their particular accent — and even wording. For instance, I didn’t know that litter means garbage, I was confusing it with the word liter. The list of such examples may go on and during a conversation you might get out of the context soon when you need to understand what it is discussing there.
And also, you are not feeling comfortable putting someone to repeat more than two times, because you don’t understand what she.he is saying.
The real challenge comes when you are dealing with an angry person — which could be a client or your superior. If you are a responsible and nice person you will hardly find the power to say something in your defense, from various reasons — you don’t want your nationality to look bad by looking for excuses, you’re too nervous to translate your reply and so on.
This challenge of language barrier goes for native English speakers as well. They need to be very careful when they talk to others. I worked with an American which was always speaking fast and with “a hand full” of expressions, and “I had a hard time” to understand him, and I couldn’t “shake the trees” during the calls with him to get what he was saying. The fact that I warned him multiple times that I don’t understand him was “a moot point”, eventually he found someone else as “low hanging fruit” to harvest for his project.
3. Different timezone
It’s annoying, to say the least, to work with someone with a difference of 6+ hours. It’s pretty hard to schedule meetings, and when you need somebody from the other end (offshore) he probably sleeps because it’s night there.
Conclusion
The main challenge is number 2. It goes both for English native speakers, or for those who speak it as a second language. I explained there in great detail.
International experience is required wherever you work — be it in a large or small company. On a large company is fairly obvious why, on a small company your clients might not be from your country.
Note: when you’re a fresher, the lack of professional experience is a huge handicap due the same old well known context. The lack of international experience makes it harder for a beginner to find a job — more details a future article: The sorrows of a young developer