Business English | Skills and Qualifications

Download PDF Link

Episode 251 Business English Skills and Qualifications

Disclaimer

I am using an automatic transcript service as it is not possible for me to do it on my own and I cannot afford human transcription at the moment. The service claims to have about 95% accuracy, which means there will still be some mistakes, so my apologies for having a less than perfect transcript, but I hope I can afford human transcription soon and I will solve this problem. However, the service is pretty good, and the transcript is almost perfect.

Transcript

Welcome come to a new episode from English plus podcast. Today, we’re going to talk about business English and we will focus on the topics, skills and qualifications. We will talk about education and training, skilled and unskilled workers. And we will talk about words that we often find in job advertisements about the right person for the job.

[00:00:30] So without further ado, let’s start, we will start with a small conversation between two company managers and they are talking about education and training. First, we listened to this conversation and then we will stop and focus on key words and important ideas in this conversation. The trouble with graduates.

[00:00:51] People who’ve just left university is that their paper qualifications are good. They might have qualifications in interesting subjects, but they have no work experience. They just don’t know how business works. I disagree education should teach people how to think, not train them for a particular job.

[00:01:12] One of last year’s recruits, graduated from Oxford university with a degree in philosophy. And she’s doing very well is an interesting subject, but for our company, it’s more useful to do training in a particular subject. It’s better for us. If you train as a scientist and qualify as a biologist or a doctor, for example, Yes, but we don’t just need scientists.

[00:01:40] We also need good managers, which we can achieve through in-house training courses within the company. You know, we put a lot of money into management development where managers regularly go on specialized courses in leadership, finance, et cetera. You need to acquire experience, get knowledge through doing things for that.

[00:02:02] It’s not the sort of thing you can learn when you’re 20. So that was the conversation between these two managers. Now, let me jump back to what the first manager said. He said the trouble with graduates. People who’ve just left university. So the first word I would like to focus on is graduates. Now graduates are the people who’ve just finished university and they have a degree.

[00:02:27] They graduated from university. So that is maybe the first thing we need to know. When we want to talk about education and training, by the way, in American English, you can also say that someone graduates from high school, you can also use the word graduate from high school. So we can say a high school graduate, but that is mostly American English.

[00:02:47] So our first word is graduate people who’ve just finished university. And then he continued on and talked about paper qualifications. Now, when we talk about paper qualifications, you’re talking about what degrees or what certificates or diplomas you have when you come to work for the company. Now here, why is it important to talk about paper qualifications?

[00:03:11] Because here he contrasted paper qualifications with work experience, the qualifications are the things that qualify you that enable you to do a job, to do a certain job. These qualifications do not all have to be paper qualifications. Some qualifications might be work experience. And here this manager.

[00:03:34] Kind of contrasted between paper qualifications, which are just things you have on paper and work experience. It depends on the job you want to do, but most of the time both are required. Paper qualifications are important, of course, but some work experience is needed. Now here, the, our manager kind of disagreed with the first manager and she said, I disagree.

[00:03:59] Education should teach people how to think, not train them for a particular job. Now, here, you might agree with her. You might disagree, but in her opinion, it’s not the job of education to train people for a particular job. Now, the key word here is to train somebody. For a job. So you train for a job in her opinion.

[00:04:22] She said that education should teach people how to think. Now, maybe that’s true for some jobs, but of course there are other jobs where you have to get certain amount of information and even practical experience from university. Before you can start working like a doctor or an engineer, for example, especially a doctor.

[00:04:43] But anyway, here, our keyword is trained for train somebody for a job. And then she continued on and talked about graduate from, and this is what we talked about earlier. You graduate from a university. Now here, I’m kind of focusing on the prepositions because there are a lot of prepositions you can use here and they can be kind of confusing.

[00:05:06] So you train for a job, but you graduate from a university. And earlier we said qualifications in something, you have qualifications in something. And then this manager said one of last year’s recruits graduated from Oxford university with a degree in philosophy. Now here, you can see the importance of prepositions because we have actually three different prepositions and that might be confusing.

[00:05:34] You graduate from a university with a degree. In a certain topic. So here in the example, this recruit graduated from Oxford university with a degree in philosophy. And according to this manager, this recruit is doing very well. Now the other manager responds to that. And it seems that he does not believe in that thing very much, because he said philosophy is an interesting subject, but for our company, it’s more useful to do training in a practical subject.

[00:06:07] So here again, prepositions training in, you do training in a subject. So here, according to this manager, He thinks it’s more useful and maybe it is true for his company. It is more useful to do training in a particular subject. And he continued on and said, it’s better for us. If you train as a scientist and qualify as a biologist or a doctor.

[00:06:33] So here again, we’re focusing on those keywords and how we can use them. You train as a scientist or as a doctor or as a teacher or as whatever you want. And qualify as, so we can use drain as an qualify, as we can use as with both train as and qualify as now, the second manager said yes, but we don’t just need scientists.

[00:07:00] And she’s right about that. We also need good managers. Which we can achieve through in-house training. Now this is another key thing we want to talk about. In-house training. What do we mean by in-house training? In-house training our courses within the company. Now, here, we’re not talking about the courses you take before you start working in a company or the courses you take on your own, or maybe online courses.

[00:07:26] No. We’re talking about in-house training, those courses done within the company. And usually in-house training is specific to cater for the company needs. So here that is the meaning of in-house training. And she continued on and said, you know, we put a lot of money into management development. Now management development, that is the kind of training they do, obviously in-house to develop their managers.

[00:07:50] We call it management development where managers regularly go on specialized courses in leadership. Now here, I just want you to pay attention to this structure. You go on a course now he or she said, managers regularly go on specialized courses. So here we go on courses or whether they’re specialized or not, but here we go on courses.

[00:08:14] Now he or she sat in leadership, finance, et cetera. You need to acquire experience. And what does that mean to acquire experience? It means to get knowledge through doing things that is something you cannot get at university. Sometimes you can acquire some experience at university because there are a lot of practical courses there, but most of the time.

[00:08:37] You acquire experience when you work, you get knowledge through doing things. So here you might agree with one of the managers or you might agree with both depending on the situation, which I kind of tend to do here. Both are kind of right. But in different circumstances and depends on the job because there’s not only one job.

[00:08:58] In the company, we have different jobs. We need different kinds of people. Some of these people need to be very highly trained. Some of these people need to have a lot of work experience before they start working in the company. Some of them may not need all that much, but it depends on the job you want.

[00:09:15] And it depends on the job responsibilities that are given to this recruit. Now let’s move on to talk about something else that has to do with skills and qualifications. And here, we will talk about words that have to do with skilled and unskilled. And this is not a kind of insult to say that this person is highly skilled and this person is unskilled.

[00:09:36] It definitely doesn’t have to do with classifying people. It’s just a way to describe the requirements of jobs. Some jobs need. People to be highly skilled, some other jobs, they don’t need that level of skill. And here we have four different words we can use to describe people like that. Now, for example, we can say highly skilled for people like car designers, doctors, et cetera.

[00:10:03] We say these are highly skilled. They need to study a lot and they need to have a lot of skills to do the job. We can talk about some jobs and say that people who do them can be described as skilled, not highly skilled, for example, car production manager, or most kinds of managers, maybe not senior managers, but middle managers or junior managers, their jobs can be described as skill, or they can be described as skilled.

[00:10:31] And we have the semi-skilled. The semi-skilled like taxi drivers, for example, a bus driver. Now this person cannot be described as unskilled because of course you need certain skills to be a taxi driver, but it does not take the same level of skills for a doctor or other kinds of jobs. And again, here, let me remind you.

[00:10:52] We’re not classifying people. We’re not saying who’s more important. Everybody is important and a good countries policy. Always takes care of supporting people of all skill levels, because they are all needed for a healthy society. So we talked about the semi-skilled and the last one is the unskilled.

[00:11:11] Now these are jobs people can do with no skills or no skills are needed. No work experience is needed because the job itself is not that difficult to do. For example, like a car cleaner. So these are skilled and unskilled. We started with highly skilled. Skilled semi-skilled and unskilled workers or people, obviously.

[00:11:32] Now here’s, since we’re talking about skilled as a word, let’s see how we can use it. We can say skilled at or skilled in, and we can use nouns with it. Like when we say skilled at customer care, Or skilled in electronics. These are nouns, or we can use ING forms. Like when we say skilled at communicating or skilled in using Excel.

[00:11:53] For example, we can also say someone is good with Goodwill computers, good with figures, good with people. Well, et cetera. And these can all be kinds of skills needed for a job to do this job, or to be able to do this job. Well, you need to be good with computers. To do this job. Well, you need to be skilled at customer care to do this job.

[00:12:17] Well, you need to be skilled in using Excel, et cetera. These are expressions you can use to talk about what skills are needed to do certain jobs. And now the last part of this episode, we will talk about the right person. And we will talk about some words that are often used in job advertisements. And that is usually when companies say that they need people who have these qualities.

[00:12:40] But before I do that, let me remind you that you can find the show notes. In a link I will leave in the description and that link will take you to our website, English plus podcast.com. And there you will find not only the show notes, which are very useful, obviously, but you will also find exercises, a PDF practice worksheet.

[00:12:58] You can download, practice the things you learn here and improve your English everyday. With every episode you listen to from English plus podcast. So with that being said, let’s go back to our content here and let’s talk about right person. Now, as I said, these words are often used in job advertisements companies.

[00:13:18] Look for people who are methodical, systematic, and organized. Now here, what does that mean? When we say people are methodical, systematic, and organized, that means people who work in a planned, orderly way. When you work in a plant orderly way, you can be called methodical, systematic, and organized. Now. All of them mean kind of the same thing.

[00:13:41] So you don’t have to say, you need to be methodical, systematic, and organized. Now you can be one of these things, but the most common word is organized when you’re organized. Usually you’re systematic and your methodical, et cetera. So that is one word. Companies may look for people who are computer literate, computer literate are people who are good with computers, or they can look for people who are numerous.

[00:14:05] And these are people who are good with numbers. Or they may look for people who are motivated. And these are people who are very keen to do well in their job because they find it interesting. Or they may be looking for people who are talented. And these are people who are very good at what they do. They can also be looking for people who are self-starters and these people must be proactive.

[00:14:29] Self-motivated or self-driven we have all these words that kind of mean the same. Self-starter proactive. Self-motivated and self-driven all of these mean that people should be good at working on their own. They don’t need to take orders all the time. And if they don’t take orders, they get stuck. No, they can take the initiative and they can work on their own.

[00:14:52] And finally companies may be looking for people who are team players, or of course you can say about one person, a team player. And these are people who work well with other people. And that might be very important because sometimes you might be very good with what you do or very skilled at what you do, but you work poorly with other people.

[00:15:13] And if the company system is based on teams that will hurt your performance and of course will hurt the company’s performance in return. So with that being said that we all for skills and qualifications, this is everything I wanted to share with you about skills and qualifications. Let me remind you again, that if you want to take a step further and improve your English every day with our episodes, take the link and go to our website, English plus podcast.com.

[00:15:39] There you will find a post for every single episode we create and release here on English plus podcast. That has everything you need. The show notes, the audio, the video. Everything you need to learn better. And of course we have exercises that you can download, you can do and check because there’s obviously the answer keys as well.

[00:15:59] And in case you have any questions, you can always put it in the comments and ask us about whatever you want with that being said, thank you very much for listening to another episode from English plus podcast. This is your host, Danny. I will see you next time.