Tech Support "Languages"

zonad

Is anyone else as fed up as I am with these "languages" jobs? Seems there's tons of jobs here in Ireland if you speak Spanish, French, German or Swedish.

We see on the news "400 jobs announced at Stream in Dublin" but they fail to mention 90% of those jobs are "languages" roles.

It really frustrates me that speaking English, all of a sudden, isn't enough if you want to do technical support in this country. I hate doing job searches online only to get back language jobs.

With the technology available for telecommuting (VPN, VoIP, LogMeIn) why do they even have these people working here? They should get these people to telecommute. Recruit them back in their home country.

I used to get paid €50,000 a year to working in Desktop Support and now there's nothing but jobs for foreigners. No exaggeration, there are about 5 desktop support vacancies in Dublin right now.

Other jobs say they are desktop support but they are really infrastructure support or they are looking for someone to do light development (scripting, T-SQL). When did a Desktop Support person ever need to know Java for feck's sake?!

I've never been on the dole in my life but I'm thinking about giving up and signing on.

axer

zonad wrote: »

Is anyone else as fed up as I am with these "languages" jobs? Seems there's tons of jobs here in Ireland if you speak Spanish, French, German or Swedish.

Nope, believe it or not some people out there speak these languages. Even *shock* Irish people! You could actually just go out and learn to speak one of those languages. The world does not revolve around the english language. There are more people in Germany than in the UK and Ireland combined. Native english speakers are a minority in Europe and the world.

zonad wrote: »

We see on the news "400 jobs announced at Stream in Dublin" but they fail to mention 90% of those jobs are "languages" roles.

It really frustrates me that speaking English, all of a sudden, isn't enough if you want to do technical support in this country. I hate doing job searches online only to get back language jobs.

With the technology available for telecommuting (VPN, VoIP, LogMeIn) why do they even have these people working here? They should get these people to telecommute. Recruit them back in their home country.

Do you realise that it is good for this country to have them here? They will spend in the local economy. They will pay their taxes here. The company will pay their taxes here too. Its a win win for us.

zonad wrote: »

I used to get paid €50,000 a year to working in Desktop Support and now there's nothing but jobs for foreigners. No exaggeration, there are about 5 desktop support vacancies in Dublin right now.

Maybe that is why we are in the trouble we are in right now. €50k for desktop support is wrong.

zonad wrote: »

Other jobs say they are desktop support but they are really infrastructure support or they are looking for someone to do light development (scripting, T-SQL). When did a Desktop Support person ever need to know Java for feck's sake?!

Desktop support etc is a very competitive market right now so you have to be well versed

zonad wrote: »

I've never been on the dole in my life but I'm thinking about giving up and signing on.

If you are unemployed then sign on - even so that your stamps are paid at least. This idea that it is below people to sign on is rubbish.

KillerKity

I understand it's frustrating for you OP but get a grip. The world doesn't revolve around the english language and there are plenty of Irish people who have realised this and have become fluent in another european language.

Maybe it's time you upskilled?

WIZE

Hi OP

I work in this market and its because American Companies are tapping into the European and Nordic Markets for I.T

They find it is easier to setup in Ireland as it would be too expensive to set up in the UK

there is no point in setting up in Main Land Europe as America would like English as the prime language

you would be supprized but these Companies are able to fill these roles as many europeans come over and take theses jobs

Also if your Irish as I am with a second language you have a great chance of getting theses jobs

Ireland will become I.T Capital of Europe as EBAY PAYPAL HP IBMand many more bring all there I.T and support under one roof in Ireland

qwytre

You will have to skill up OP as desktop support is a dying area in the Irish IT industry. I don't what other area of IT you like but you should consider changing focus and learning new skills.

Ouchette

If employers want a 2nd language and you want a job, then I think you know what you've got to do.

Out of those languages, I'd go for Swedish. There can't be that many Swedish speakers in Ireland so you wouldn't have much competition. It's much simpler than French or German and it's so closely related to English that if you worked hard at it you'd be reasonably fluent in a year, and you'd even be able to claim to understand some Norwegian and Danish too.

You could probably even move there for a bit and keep claiming your dole, or even do a bit of bar work or something. Beats sitting at home complaining about the unfairness of it all.

MarkJD

I can relate greatly with the OP but realisticly the only option you might have is to learn a new language. If thats what you have to do thats what you have to do.

I too am fed up at looking for jobs only to realise that they literally all are jobs for people fluent in german/dutch/sweedish/danish etc. Even standard IT support jobs want extensive knowledge and experience in SQL/JAVA/PHP/ORACLE etc these days.

I havent progressed or learned more so im either going back to college or getting into a new field. I for one know ill probably never work in Support again because its completely unrewarding and you get no respect. People get on asking for your help yet claim to know more than you or your methods or what you are saying is wrong worng.

Why bloody ring in the first place!

On note of the learning a new language does anyone know if the likes of Rosetta stone works? Id love to learn a new language but judging from my french skills from school (5 years and 0 skill) im left beleiving that the only way to learn a language is to go imerse yourself in that country

onemorechance

On Rosetta Stone, I have tried the Spanish and I think it works. I only did two modules but I found that I could remember most of it. About one hour per night should be good for learning. That being said, Spanish is meant to be one of the easier languages to learn, but I do think the Rosetta Stone method is good!

dory

MarkJD wrote: »

On note of the learning a new language does anyone know if the likes of Rosetta stone works? Id love to learn a new language but judging from my french skills from school (5 years and 0 skill) im left beleiving that the only way to learn a language is to go imerse yourself in that country

You should read some of the threads on the languages thread, or another forum called How to learn any language. There are lots of reviews of the different methods there.

In short; it's different for everyone. For me, I hated Rosetta Stone and I'm glad I didn't pay the crazy price for it. I enjoyed Pimsleur (was learning Russian though), and then immersion. Other people work through workbooks, and a few Skype conversations with natives, whatever works for you.

dory

onemorechance wrote: »

On Rosetta Stone, I have tried the Spanish and I think it works. I only did two modules but I found that I could remember most of it. About one hour per night should be good for learning. That being said, Spanish is meant to be one of the easier languages to learn, but I do think the Rosetta Stone method is good!

The thing with Spanish is it's easy to get to a comfortable conversation level, but if you need it for work you need a good knowledge f the grammar which is hard. Not impossible of course, but don't underestimate it!

eejoynt

zonad wrote: »

I've never been on the dole in my life but I'm thinking about giving up and signing on.

if you resign your job you are not eligible for job seekers benefit

onemorechance

I think that the OP is already unemployed but did not sign on! I think he was able to survive on the remains of his 50k salary, but maybe underestimated the difficulty of landing another job. It is a tough job market out there for everyone. It sucks bigtime!

galah

zonad wrote: »

Is anyone else as fed up as I am with these "languages" jobs? Seems there's tons of jobs here in Ireland if you speak Spanish, French, German or Swedish.

We see on the news "400 jobs announced at Stream in Dublin" but they fail to mention 90% of those jobs are "languages" roles.

It really frustrates me that speaking English, all of a sudden, isn't enough if you want to do technical support in this country. I hate doing job searches online only to get back language jobs.

With the technology available for telecommuting (VPN, VoIP, LogMeIn) why do they even have these people working here? They should get these people to telecommute. Recruit them back in their home country.

I used to get paid €50,000 a year to working in Desktop Support and now there's nothing but jobs for foreigners. No exaggeration, there are about 5 desktop support vacancies in Dublin right now.

Other jobs say they are desktop support but they are really infrastructure support or they are looking for someone to do light development (scripting, T-SQL). When did a Desktop Support person ever need to know Java for feck's sake?!

I've never been on the dole in my life but I'm thinking about giving up and signing on.

without getting too worked up about this (and I don't even work in a language tech support role), you do realise that 'these' people actually pay taxes in this country, spend their money here, contribute to society, and finance those on the dole and welfare as well? I really can't stand this 'foreigner' attitude...

Also, most of these tech support roles will be FOR the German or French or whatever market, so for a company it makes sense to set up a service center here. Ireland is lucky that it is still a rather cheap location, in terms of wage costs and tax incentives etc, so be glad that the companies are here and not in Germany or France.

And while I'm sorry that you don't have a job or can't find a job, don't blame the foreigners - they have jobs you can't do because of their language skills. Imagine they'd also take the jobs that would technically require native speakers...:P

Magenta

WIZE wrote: »

Ireland will become I.T Capital of Europe as EBAY PAYPAL HP IBMand many more bring all there I.T and support under one roof in Ireland

Don't forget Microsoft and Google!

WIZE

So we have

IBM
HP
EBAY
PAYPAL
MICROSOFT
GOOGLE

Who have european HQ's in Ireland .

All theses companies could set up on Main Land Europe and run there business from the US

So there English speaking market is very small compared to the Conpanies they support all over Europe which is starting to expand

MysticalRain

50 grand a year for desktop support work? Most sys admins or programmers I knew didn't even earn that much during the boom times.

The only problems I have with language jobs is that the various job search websites don't have an option to exclude them in their searches. That and politicians opening call centers where 90% of the jobs go to non-nationals, and then trying to claim that it's a major benefit for the average Irish citizen.

pog it

Ouchette wrote: »

If employers want a 2nd language and you want a job, then I think you know what you've got to do.

Out of those languages, I'd go for Swedish. There can't be that many Swedish speakers in Ireland so you wouldn't have much competition. It's much simpler than French or German and it's so closely related to English that if you worked hard at it you'd be reasonably fluent in a year, and you'd even be able to claim to understand some Norwegian and Danish too.

You could probably even move there for a bit and keep claiming your dole, or even do a bit of bar work or something. Beats sitting at home complaining about the unfairness of it all.

Have you experience of learning Swedish ? I heard it was a tough language to learn, more so than French of German! ?? Would be grateful to hear how you found it.

axer

MysticalRain wrote: »

That and politicians opening call centers where 90% of the jobs go to non-nationals, and then trying to claim that it's a major benefit for the average Irish citizen.

It is a major benefit for the average Irish Citizen. These workers have to live somewhere, purchase their food somewhere etc etc. Creating jobs have knock on effects that create more jobs.

Gaz

WIZE wrote: »

So we have

IBM
HP
EBAY
PAYPAL
MICROSOFT
GOOGLE

And Citrix, Oracle and Yahoo ...

axer

Gaz wrote: »

And Citrix, Oracle and Yahoo ...

and Cisco

Raekwon

axer wrote: »

and Cisco

and Facebook

Ouchette

pog it wrote: »

Have you experience of learning Swedish ? I heard it was a tough language to learn, more so than French of German! ?? Would be grateful to hear how you found it.

Yes, I learnt it along with my main subjects at university and I loved it but I've forgotten a lot of it now. We all went from total beginners to a level of Swedish where we were able to work as tour guides, receptionists, etc in Sweden in about a year, studying it for about 6-8 hours a week.

The Swedish verbs are very simple so no learning endless declensions like in French. There are 2 genders but the vast majority of words belong to just one of them so they’re easy. The cases only exist in the way they do in English so you don’t need to learn tables of adjective endings and definite/indefinite articles like in German. The sentence structure is closer to English than either French or German are (it’s a lot like German but without sticking the 2nd verb at the end.) There’s nothing that’s hard to pronounce. Plurals are a bit more complicated than in English though and I found the accent tricky.

Here’s a quick example to show how easy the verbs are compared to English. The verb doesn’t change at all according to who’s doing it
I am – Jag är
You are – Du är
He is – Han är
She is- Hon är
We are – Vi är
You (pl.) are – Ni är
They are - De är

pog it

Ouchette wrote: »

Yes, I learnt it along with my main subjects at university and I loved it but I've forgotten a lot of it now. We all went from total beginners to a level of Swedish where we were able to work as tour guides, receptionists, etc in Sweden in about a year, studying it for about 6-8 hours a week.

The Swedish verbs are very simple so no learning endless declensions like in French. There are 2 genders but the vast majority of words belong to just one of them so they’re easy. The cases only exist in the way they do in English so you don’t need to learn tables of adjective endings and definite/indefinite articles like in German. The sentence structure is closer to English than either French or German are (it’s a lot like German but without sticking the 2nd verb at the end.) There’s nothing that’s hard to pronounce. Plurals are a bit more complicated than in English though and I found the accent tricky.

Here’s a quick example to show how easy the verbs are compared to English. The verb doesn’t change at all according to who’s doing it
I am – Jag är
You are – Du är
He is – Han är
She is- Hon är
We are – Vi är
You (pl.) are – Ni är
They are - De är

Ouchette, thank you so much! I know the Google Translate thing works better for Swedish than for other languages, say Irish for example, so I was wondering what did that say about Swedish in terms of difficulty.
Well you've convinced me now.

youcancallmeal

Even if you do manage to get into desktop support it is a bit of dead end. You will eventually need to branch out into some sort of specialization. Instead of learning another language I would recommend learning something else like a programming language or a network cert (CCNA). Those entry level ‘Foreign Language’ support jobs usually have a high turnover because there is little or no opportunity to move up the ladder. It would be a bit of waste if you spent a year learning Swedish and then work for 2 years doing phone support only to realise there is no promotion ladder. Basically what I’m trying to say is don’t put all your eggs in one basket

OP, it's incredibly narrow minded that you think these jobs are for 'foreigners'. I used to work in French, Spanish and German in a call centre, guess what, I'm Irish. So were the majority of my coworkers. You REALLY need to get out of the mentality that English is the only language that matters. Plenty of Irish people know other languages. My complaint would be that these jobs are badly paid when you take into consideration that you're expected to have skills AND two other languages, which take a lot of time and effort to learn. If you want this kind of job, learn a language. Plenty of other Irish people do it. I'm working on my 4th language to make myself more employable.

And even if the jobs were for foreigners, what's it to you? If they need tech support + Swedish and you don't have Swedish, it's not a job you ever would have had anyway. Not sure why you see it like that.

bongi69

Got myself Rosetta stone a few months back to learn Dutch.

There's quite a few jobs for Dutch speakers with the likes of Paypal etc. and since Afrikaans (which was drilled into us in school in South Africa similar to Irish here), is derived from Dutch, it's turning out to be pretty easy for me to learn Dutch.

It'll help me get a job, even if its not speaking that language, I can still bring it up in an interview along with the (useless) stuff I've done in Fás and show that I'm not just sitting on my arse on the dole.

I've given myself a year to find a job before I seriously look at moving to another country, and Holland has a high proportion of jobs that require someone to be fluent in English so its top of the list. So having conversational level Duthc would be helpful in that scenario.

Back on topic, OP I know what it feels like when you go on to a job site, hit search and a load of those jobs come up. But the way I see it, they're looking for a specific skill set just like any other job. If I see a job in Insurance, and they want someone with commercial lines experience, I don't bother applying bacause I don't have this experience. Carry on looking, and something will come up eventually/hopefully

the_syco

youcancallme>al wrote: »

Those entry level ‘Foreign Language’ support jobs usually have a high turnover because there is little or no opportunity to move up the ladder.

I've found that after they get their level of english up to "fluent", some of them go back to their home country with an extra skill under their belt. I know a few Polish lads that I worked with did this.

ToasterSparks

Out of interest, if someone was to learn another language as a CV booster, what would you recommend to learn? A European language that is.

ToasterSparks

ToasterSparks wrote: »

Out of interest, if someone was to learn another language as a CV booster, what would you recommend to learn? A European language that is.

It really depends on what you're planning to do with it. Something like French or German is always going to be useful in general, but then a lot of the tech support jobs are in 'niche' languages like Swedish or Dutch. When I worked in a call centre, the greatest demand was for the more common languages (I had Spanish/French and acted as a back-up for German) but I don't know if that's typical. What industry are you in? I think it could be a good idea to learn both a common and a niche language and that way you've both things covered, but it is a lot of time and effort! You also have to consider the culture and things like that, you're not going to learn a language if you have no interest in the country. Also if you tend to be better at Germanic or Romance languages - did you learn French or German at school?

ToasterSparks

I 'studied' French at school but apart from the subconscious vague knowledge of the language rattling around in the back of my head, I never really learned to speak it or write with any degree of confidence.

I'm a generic Business grad, so was asking out of curiosity really. Something that would be simple to pick up a basic knowledge of would be handy on the CV or for opportunities for travelling too. I'm assuming Gaeilge is pretty redundant (what with the fluent natives being so much better at it than me!)?

wetling

I feel cheated that someone ever got paid 50k for desktop support, I graduated in 09 with honours, and am insulted by companies looking for free web developers (sorry intern's) under the guise of work experience.

Desktop support, jesus christ, I hope you never find a job.

Oh and please don't sign on if you feel too good for it, no one will argue with you there.