A Guide to Finding Bilingual Jobs at Charities

Audrey Treasure is one frustrated job seeker. She’ll graduate this spring from Indiana University at Bloomington with a degree in Spanish and a certificate from the American Humanics program, which concentrates on nonprofit management skills — an educational combination that should give her a formidable edge when competing for a charity position that requires bilingual abilities. “But when I actually put those two together in a job search,” she says, “I don’t find much.”

Many nonprofit organizations do need employees with bilingual skills. But because a lot of these organizations are concentrated in certain parts of the country, and because they don’t always advertise in the same places as English-only charities, bilingual positions can be difficult to find.

The good news is that charity managers have a hard time filling these jobs, so qualified candidates who manage to unearth them are popular with employers. Here’s a guide to finding bilingual jobs in the nonprofit field, plus a few tips for candidates on presenting themselves to employers.

Locating Listings

Bilingual charities do advertise in some of the same places as English-only charities: on the Internet (be sure to check individual groups’ Web sites), university career offices, and local newspapers. In addition, they sometimes list job openings in regional nonprofit publications, such as City Limits, in New York, and Nonprofit Directions, formerly Opportunity NOCs, in Southern California.

Unlike English-only organizations, however, bilingual charities often advertise in ethnic publications as well — especially when language skills are a primary requirement and organizations want to reach native and fluent speakers. Getting copies of the local Spanish- or Chinese-language newspaper can be difficult, especially for job seekers who are searching from afar, but libraries and the Internet can aid the search.

Because small ethnic charities like to draw employees from their own areas, they frequently post job announcements at community centers, churches, and schools as well, according to Arturo Ybarra, head of the Watts/Century Latino Organization, in Los Angeles, which runs education, citizenship, and other programs to aid local Latino and other residents. Mr. Ybarra also notifies the employment arm of the city’s Community Development Department, which helps needy residents find employment or start their own businesses, when he has openings, and suggests that job seekers contact comparable departments in their own cities.

The Internet is a great resource for bilingual jobs at nonprofit organizations. At The Chronicle’s Philanthropy Careers Web site, job listings can be searched for the word “bilingual” or a particular language. A number of other sites also yield job ads, including the following, which are listed in descending order of usefulness based on a recent search:

Idealist.org: This site listed hundreds of jobs that required skills in languages other than English, although it was unclear how many of the positions demanded fluency. A search of all nonprofit jobs in the United States using the specific languages yielded 225 jobs that required Spanish skills and 17 that needed Cantonese. Even a search with “Polish” yielded three jobs.

Craigslist: This Web site mainly lists jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area, although it has started to expand to other cities. A search of the nonprofit-job category using the word “bilingual” generated 111 openings.

Monster: A search of the “Community, Social Services, and Nonprofits” category using the word “bilingual” turned up 85 jobs. The results included a few corporate and government jobs, but most were at charities. All but three of the positions required Spanish. (Chinese, French, and Japanese turned up on one job each.)

LatPro.com: This site, geared toward Hispanic and bilingual professionals, lists mostly for-profit jobs, but clicking “nonprofit” when searching by “primary industry” or “job function” generated 23 jobs. Positions were located in New York, Florida, and California, as well as in Georgia, Colorado, and Rhode Island. LatPro also lets users search by language required (26 languages besides English are listed). Again, most of the jobs required Spanish.

Careerbuilder.com: A combination of the keywords “bilingual” and “nonprofit” generated 17 jobs, all but one in California. Searching by “nonprofit” plus a specific language occasionally unearthed jobs that didn’t otherwise appear.

SpanishJobs.com: A search of the nonprofit category yielded 16 openings. This site lists only Spanish/English jobs.

JobLatino: This site listed several bilingual positions at charities, as well as plenty of for-profit openings.

When searching any job site, it’s best to use every combination of words possible: both “nonprofit” and “not-for-profit,” , for example, combined first with “bilingual” and then with the specific language name. Also, avoid searching solely by “nonprofit” or “bilingual” on large job boards such as Monster and Careerbuilder.com — the hundreds of listings will require a lot of sifting.

Getting Creative

If scouring Web sites and local publications still fails to yield many leads, job seekers need to get creative — and do some detective work. One proven strategy is to contact charities that use — or could use — bilingual employees, regardless of whether openings are advertised, suggests Grisselle Rivera-Mucciolo, director of Hispanic outreach services at the Long Island Center for Independent Living, in Levittown, N.Y. The center aids local residents with disabilities. Not every organization publicizes its job openings, and not every job that could involve language skills is billed as bilingual, Ms. Treasure notes.

The idea, say charity managers, is to put the job seeker’s name in front of potential employers. Most nonprofit managers say that because it’s difficult to find qualified bilingual candidates, they hold on to résumés for years. Furthermore, many charities know about job openings at other nonprofit organizations, particularly if they serve similar types of people. Managers of small bilingual charities recommend getting in touch with the local affiliates of larger organizations, such as United Ways, which often know other charities that need employees. “A lot of it is kind of word of mouth,” says Emira Habiby-Browne, executive director of Arab-American Family Support Center, in Brooklyn, N.Y.

For those who are flexible about location, it helps to focus on areas with high concentrations of people who don’t speak English. Although immigrant populations exist all over the country, California, Florida, New York City, and Texas have particularly large numbers of non-English speakers — mainly Spanish, although Asian language skills are increasingly in demand. Ms. Treasure, for example, wants to work in Atlanta, but says a search in New York or Los Angeles would be easier, because she sees many more Spanish-language jobs advertised there.

Once job seekers have pinpointed areas with high numbers of foreign-language speakers, they need to identify and contact the organizations that serve those residents, charity managers say. Most social-services organizations get traffic from non-English speakers, but legal-aid and unemployment agencies are particular hot spots, according to Paul Furrh, chief executive officer of Lone Star Legal Aid, in Nacogdoches, Tex. So are health charities. Think also about cultural and religious preferences when looking at specific organizations, Mr. Furrh advises. For example, Spanish speakers, many of whom are Roman Catholic, may turn to their local Catholic Charities when in need of help.

Marketing Skills

Most foreign-language charities look primarily for two qualities in potential employees: bilingual abilities and the skills to do the job. Applicants should be explicit about their level of fluency, charity managers say. “We love to get people who can not only speak Spanish but can translate it and write it,” says Mr. Furrh. “It’s always better to actually specify that in your cover letter and résumé.”

Reading and writing aren’t required in all bilingual jobs, but oral fluency usually is — and candidates should be prepared to demonstrate their skills in an interview. “If you’re not fluent, it’ll come out right away,” says Ellen Cohen, president of the Houston Area Women’s Center, which aids people who have experienced domestic violence and sexual assault.

In addition, some foreign-language charity managers look for what they call “multicultural skills.” For most managers, that means experience working with people from the cultures the organization serves, although academic study of the population or time spent abroad occasionally suffices. Sometimes “multicultural skills” means demonstrating certain character traits during an interview, says Bill Watanabe, executive director of Little Tokyo Service Center, in Los Angeles, which offers an array of services. Mr. Watanabe, for example, observes how well people listen, because, he says, “an Asian-American setting is a little different from a general setting in that there is a little more emphasis on listening, on not talking before you’ve really heard.”

Finally, many managers of foreign-language charities look for a proven commitment to the population they serve. The same holds true for most nonprofit organizations, but it’s particularly important when hiring bilingual employees, charity managers say. For example, employees who can speak, read, and write fluently in both Japanese and English are rare, and could command twice as much money in the business world, says Mr. Watanabe. Unless they’re reassured by relevant work experience — or significant time spent volunteering — managers worry that bilingual workers will be lured away.

Qualified, committed job candidates like Ms. Treasure should take heart, nonprofit employers say. By monitoring ethnic news media and carefully selected Web sites, and by being creative and flexible in her job search, she should start to ferret out more openings, charity managers say. And once she does, they say, she may just find that there’s truth to the phrase she hears so often — “You’ll have no problem getting a job.”