Here in Malaysia, many citizens can speak more than two languages, typically our mother tongue and national language, Malay. While that may be enough to secure a steady job, this customer service worker says you should pick up another foreign language as it could help secure a higher paying job.
Through the Instagram account ‘Malaysian Pay Gap’, this 27-year-old shared his experience getting a better-paying job simply by utilising his language skills.
According to the IT helpdesk worker, he recognised that there is a market for customer service workers who can speak a foreign language after working in the industry for several years. As he has been self-learning Japanese, he decided to brush up on his skills and take a proficiency test to get the credentials he needed for a better-paying job.
After scoring his Japanese proficiency test, he decided to apply for a position as an IT helpdesk at a multinational corporation’s shared service team, mainly working with Japanese individuals. He revealed that he made as much as RM5,300 per month before moving to his current job, where he does essentially the same thing but gets paid RM6,400 as a base salary with an additional RM1,600 language allowance.
The customer service worker said that if he had “stayed in his comfort zone” and only used his native language, he wouldn’t have gotten such a high-paying job. He also said that learning a new language and working in a new language environment had grown his career and expanded his horizons. As a bonus, the 27-year-old also shared that he can now comfortably watch anime without subtitles and travel to Japan without any language issues.
The post received tons of likes and comments, with many applauding the man for challenging himself with a new language. A few also agreed with his statement about using language skills to get a better job, like one Spanish speaker who shared that they get RM2,000 on top of a high base salary because they use their Spanish skills at work.
A recruiter also shared that many Japanese and Korean university graduates opt to work in the customer service field when they return to Malaysia as they can demand a higher pay because of their proficiency in the language. Well, guess it’s time to download Duolingo.
Source: Instagram
Adleena contributed to this article.
