In a Bad Economy, More Charities Find Workers With Rich Bilingual Skills

After Amita Rao was laid off last year from a corporate-recruiting job, she called to volunteer at Raksha, an Atlanta charity that helps South Asian émigrés who face family violence or sexual abuse. Instead of volunteering, she was recruited for a paid staff position, as Raksha’s volunteer and outreach coordinator.

It didn’t hurt that the 27-year-old Wellesley College graduate seemed to have a passion for the cause. But what grabbed Raksha’s leaders was that she speaks Kannada, a language of India spoken by some of the charity’s clients and none of its other staff members (who speak several other South Asian languages). Ms. Rao filled an important gap, and they wanted her.

In just a year, Ms. Rao has established Raksha’s presence on Facebook and Twitter and is engaging new volunteers and donors.

“She not only is bilingual,” says Aparna Bhattacharyya, executive director of Raksha, “but she brought a set of skills no one else in the organization had.”

Ms. Rao’s story is not unusual. The troubled job market has put people with rare skills, including speaking multiple languages, within reach of many nonprofit organizations. For many groups that serve people who are not native English speakers, nonprofit recruiters say, this may be the right time to add “bilingual preferred” to job postings.

“Right now, the job applicant pool is rich with people with more experience and education, and many of them now bring language skills, too,” says Mara O’Brien, executive director of 826Chi, a Chicago nonprofit center that provides tutoring and writing programs for kids and is located in a largely Hispanic neighborhood.

Abundant Applicants

When 826Chi posted an opening for a “director of development—bilingual writing skills a plus,” 40 candidates with good fund-raising skills, including three fluent in Spanish, applied, compared with 10 qualified candidates three years ago, Ms. O’Brien says. The newly hired employee speaks Spanish and has a fund-raising and education background.

The Lifelong AIDS Alliance of Seattle received 30 applications for a job as a bilingual case manager when it recently posted its opening on several national job-seeking sites.

“Three years ago, it would have taken months to find the right person, but now you can do the whole hiring process in three to six weeks,” says Kathryn Daily, the charity’s human-resources manager.

Thirteen of the organization’s 96 employees are fluent in languages including French, Mandarin, Spanish, and American Sign Language. Bilingual skills qualify the charity’s employees for a 3-percent increase in salary over what they would usually earn.

Recruiters and nonprofit hiring managers offer the following tips for finding (and keeping) bilingual workers:

Be clear about the level of fluency required. For some jobs, it might be sufficient just to speak a language, but for others, being able to write and translate is essential, says Catherine Jackson, human-resources director of Faith Comes by Hearing, in Albuquerque, a charity that produces recordings of the Bible in many languages for use internationally. The group employs program managers who speak Swahili, Arabic, and Asian languages.

Also, when advertising a job that requires bilingual skills, make sure those skills are actually a requirement of that job and not a ruse to attract people of a particular minority group, cautions Cassie Scarano, president of Commongood Careers, a national consulting firm in Boston. Otherwise, it could appear that a group is skirting federal laws designed to prevent employers from excluding certain candidates.

“You have to be 100 percent sure that any kind of requirements that speak to background, culture, ethnicity, or race are bona fide occupational qualifications,” Ms. Scarano says.

Gauge how far to cast the recruiting net for best results. This summer, Faith Comes by Hearing advertised nationally for a Russian-speaking program manager (as New Mexico has a shallow pool of Russian-speaking job seekers with management experience).

Finalists came from Colorado, Florida, and Ohio, with some résumés arriving from candidates in Russia who wanted to work from home. Faith Comes by Hearing leaders are currently interviewing two Russian-speaking finalists.

The Internet makes such wide-area recruiting easy, but charities in large cities or ethnic neighborhoods need not look far from home, says Gayle Brandel, president of Professionals for Nonprofits, a staffing firm with offices in New York, Newark, N.J., and Washington.

“It’s easier to find bilingual workers in the areas we serve,” she says, “especially as large metro areas have become more international.”

Mountain Park Health Center, in Phoenix, employs many Spanish-speaking staff members to serve its Hispanic clients, but an infusion of 400 refugees from Somalia provided a challenge. The group finds bilingual employees through local ethnic associations and community leaders, according to Essen Otu, diversity and cultural competency director for the center. The group also recruits from its client pool.

Be flexible about required experience. Raksha, says the charity’s leader, Ms. Bhattacharyya, has hired smart, bilingual candidates who have less job experience than other candidates without those language skills. She reasons that it is easier to train bilingual workers as long as they have a passion for the charity’s cause, as job skills are far easier to learn than languages.

Fill in with perks when pay falls short. At Raksha, where all five employees speak two or more South Asian languages, salaries can be tight. (A recent job listing for a Bangla- or Urdu-speaking counselor listed a $30,000 to $35,000 salary range.) But workers also get flexibility and culturally sensitive benefits, including five floating holidays to accommodate the employees’ different religions. Flextime is often added to the standard two-week vacations, allowing staff members to work their 40 hours in fewer days before or after their breaks, so the workers can visit their families abroad, which can be a deal maker, Ms. Bhattacharyya says.

Workers also get a “renewal hour” every other week to read, do puzzles, or engage in any other activity to take their minds off the family-violence cases they handle.

Check candidates’ language skills with native speakers. “Don’t just take someone’s word that he isbilingual,” says Ms. Jackson. She asks Faith Comes by Hearing’s international field coordinators, who are native speakers, to converse with the finalists for its open jobs and send them correspondence to check their skills.

Don’t assume a common language equals common ground. Just because someone speaks a particular language doesn’t mean that person will relate to the clients a charity serves.

“Cultural tensions run deep within many countries and regions of the world,” notes Ms. Scarano, of Commongood Careers. “If you are hiring someone to provide translation services in a court system, just speaking a language may be fine. But if you are hiring someone to do community organizing, you have to be aware of the tensions between groups.” Some people from Cambodia, for instance, may have roots that tie them to a political regime that other Cambodians oppose.

To evaluate how someone might interact with clients, she advises asking a question such as: “The population we work with is X, Y, or Z. Is there any reason you wouldn’t be successful with that population?” Also, she suggests, see if the candidate’s references agree with his or her self-assessment.

Monitor communication regularly. Just because staff members can speak clients’ language does not automatically mean communication problems are solved, says Mr. Otu of Mountain Park Health Center. To make sure things are working, the organization surveys patients annually to ask how effective employees are at meeting their language needs.

Encourage bilingual workers’ connection to a charity’s mission. Highlighting the value of what they bring to the organization will help keep these skilled employees in the fold as the economy recovers and other opportunities open to them.

“There are already nights when I wonder if I should look for a job that pays more, but what keeps me here is that I know I am making a difference,” says Ms. Rao of her work at Raksha. “This nonprofit group speaks to who I am and what I want for my community.”