As a remodeler - would you hire a non-fluent English speaker?

Question

I had an interesting situation come up and I was wondering everyone's take on it. My company does small jobs to full remodels and our guys interact with clients a lot. I'm looking for another remodeler on my team to primarily handle bathroom renovations.

I had a candidate come in that had really good pictures and what looks like good technical knowledge but he spoke Russian and it was hard to communicate. We were using a translator app to speak to each other and he seemed like a good guy with good knowledge but it was hard to communicate. He had all his papers squared away so that wasn't the issue. Would you disqualify someone on difficulty communicating alone?

My concern is with all the things that can come up with a remodel, it's important to be able to quickly communicate that to the team and I'm concerned we would spend too much time trying to get the message across.

pestfreecanada · Answer

If the guy does good work and is trustworthy, I would keep him on. I would also be pushing him to study English and make that a priority. Work together and practice speaking as much as you can. I wouldn't leave him alone with a customer until his communication was better in case a customer had a question or concern, but have him more as a labourer to start.

Good workers are really hard to find. Good communicators are also hard to find. I personally would rather have a good worker who is a poor speaker, than a strong speaker who is a bad worker.

adamsi01 · Answer

I can agree with that because if the work is good like you said then keep him and help him work on his English but also keep him because if you run into a customer one day who doesn't speak fluid English then you can always use him to translate what your saying&nbsp;

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As a remodeler - would you hire a non-fluent English speaker?

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