The IT Decisions LinkedIn group recently asked readers a question related to the use of English in the IT industry in Brazil:
How important are English skills to IT professionals in Brazil?
We checked the group today to see the results and they are quite conclusive.
76 per cent of respondents said that a knowledge of English is now essential for Brazilian IT professionals to engage on a global career and even the second choice of English being ‘very important’ scored a further 18 per cent. The rest of the vote was just 4 per cent showing an overwhelming confirmation that most IT professionals believe that English is a skill that is essential for them to improve their career and to win a promotion – even in Brazil.
Clearly this poll was conducted in English, perhaps leading to the bias that only those IT professionals who can use English would have participated – and they would of course say that a skill they possess is important. But it was only ever intended to be a quick snapshot of opinion and with over three-quarters saying that English is an essential skill there is a very low spread of opinion.
IT Decisions will run the same survey again this week in Portuguese just to see if the strength of feeling is as strong, then we can compare views next week based on a more complete picture of local IT professionals.
Photo by Calamity Meg licensed under Creative Commons