Recently I read a good article by Kumar Mangalam Birla, the chairman of Aditya Birla group. He made a very interesting observation on the Indian perception of English speaking ability of a person.
He had this bias towards a person who could speak good English. He used to get impressed by that and even wanted his employees to speak fluent English. But when he started looking across his globalized operations in places like Brazil, Egypt or Thailand, he could see a whole host of people who weren’t comfortable in English, who needed interpreters, but who were very, very good at what they do. This made him appreciate his talent pool from a different perspective.
In his words: “If you can get your point across, if you are adding value, if you are competent, then bloody hell to your English.”
This highlights, I believe, a particular implicit or explicit bias of Indian hiring managers, in general (not all of them). If a person can speak fluent English then this sometimes covers up for the insufficiency of other skills required for the job.
For example, I met with a chairman of a real estate group and was surprised to find that for his executive assistant position he was looking for fluent English speaking as a primary ability, one who could speak like Harsha Bhogle! He did not seem to be aware of the fact that this could seriously cloud his judgement of a good candidate suited for the job.
I am not saying that one should not look for this essential skill in a candidate. It would be one of the most essential things for a lot of job profiles. But, at the same time, be aware of the fact that our judgement does not get biased by the mere presence/absence of this skill. We should be aware of this Indian bias, specific to our culture, how the brains of many of us are wired to think.
Communication and articulation of thoughts, getting the point across is much more essential in most of the job roles. English speaking can be acquired on the job or through training but other subtle skills may not be. Each skill has his own importance and a person should be evaluated holistically.