Job Fair Next Weekend For 2.000 Bilingual Jobs
Habla usted inglés? is a promotional program by the Coalición de Iniciativas de Desarrollo (Cinde) that is looking for 2.000 Costa Ricans who speak English to fill jobs by service sector companies at the "Feria Bilingüe de Empleo" to be held on November 4 to 6 at the Centro Nacional de Cultura (Cenal).

Some of the companies that will be participating in the job fair are Sykes, Procter & Gamble, Chiquita, Supra Telecom, Alienware, Baxter America, UPS, Dole, Western Union, Maersk, IBM and Hewlett Packard.

The job fair is open to everyone who speaks English, in response to the needs of the service sector companies in Costa Rican. Cinde has for long been saying that the future of good jobs in Costa Rica will depend on speaking the English language.

Alejandra Cobb, manager of corporate relations for Procter & Gamble, says that their primary goal is hire bilingual speaking persons with both written and oral skills in English and Spanish.

Other languages that are required by companies in Costa Rica are German, Portuguese, French, Mandarin and Italian.

Cobb added that language skills are not the only criteria they are looking for in future employees: computer skills, customer service ability, working in a team environment and leadership are also important.

The service sector industry in Costa Rica includes call centres - customers from all over the world making call to a company's customer service department for help with their product or service, administrative services, computer software development, computer design and engineering, and related professions.

Salaries offered by the companies range between ¢270.000 colones (us$550.) and ¢800.000 (us$1.600) colones per month.