How important for one’s future career aspirations in Switzerland the German language really is? After having lived in St.Gallen for more than three months and after being through almost all of the core part of the MBA program, I can offer some insights into that topic that potentially could be of some use for future St.Gallen MBA students. I will also provide some suggestions on how to better approach the task of learning German using examples of my personal experience.
From what I understood so far, German is not at all a prerequisite for getting a managerial level job in Switzerland, especially if it’s a position in a big multinational company. We’ve had quite a number of corporate presentations so far and I would say that in most cases, big companies use English as their business language here in Switzerland. Nevertheless, I can cite a couple of reasons why you should really try to invest your time and energy in learning German. First of all, there are some positions, even within companies where official language is English, that really require at least some fluency in German. For example, if you’re lucky enough to get a consultant job in a company located in, say, Zurich, understanding German will certainly take you much further than not understanding it at all since often times, you’ll have to deal with local companies and local people, in which case communication is always more efficient if you speak at least some German. That is because on the one hand, there are some people in Switzerland who don’t speak English very well and on the other hand, even though most of Swiss people do speak English, they really appreciate one’s effort of trying to learn and use German. Generally speaking, if you’re considering some position in Switzerland that has a client relationship aspect in it, I’d say that German is a must. It might well be the case that you’d miss the opportunity of getting a desirable job simply because someone else had a higher level of German stated in her/his resume. To sum it up, I’d say that you’ll broaden your career options significantly by making an effort of learning as much German as you can prior to graduating even though on the surface, it may not seem to matter that much.
So how to better approach the problem of tackling the German language? Here’s my advice: start early! Taking German classes is part of the MBA program and is compulsory for all non-German native speakers so once you’ll start your studies here, you’ll get your portion of German learning, that’s for sure. The trick is, we have several groups of students who take German classes divided by respective levels of fluency and the expectation is that eventually, every student shall move one level up as a result of taking these classes during the MBA program. So the better your level is at the very beginning, the more advanced group you’re in, and the better your level is going to be by graduation. I realized that even before I came here and I spent a total of 180 to 190 hours studying German prior to my arrival. Of course, there are different ways of learning foreign languages – you have to choose the one that’s best for you. In my case, attending classes or taking private lessons wasn’t logistically convenient so after conducting a bit of a research, I bought the Rosetta Stone language learning software package. For me, the learning experience with this application was of a great fun and pleasure and afterwards, it proved to be efficient as well. It took me two months in total to finish all five levels of the course and after writing an assessment test here at the school, I made it straight to the strongest group (note that prior to taking Rosetta course I didn’t know any German at all). Besides, I immediately felt the effects of my taking the course once I arrived in Switzerland because I actually was able to communicate with locals using just German.
With the start of the MBA program, we began taking German classes twice a week, 1:45 hours each time, and I saw my German language skills improving really quickly. I can’t talk for everybody in our class because I have but a vague idea how people from other groups are progressing, but I and my group mates got really lucky since we’ve got an extremely competent and entertaining German instructor. Each member of our group is progressing fast and it’s quite visible. We speak only German during German classes and more and more we’re switching to German during our common conversations. Besides, we have excellent opportunities to practice the language with our German, Austrian, and Swiss classmates and to practice it everywhere outside the school. Local people tend to be happier when you address them using your not so good German than when you’re using your English, however excellent it might be, so usually they patiently endure your attempts to communicate in German and are always willing to help with advice.
Here are some indicators of my progress to date. At the beginning of the summer, I didn’t speak any German at all. Today I can deal with any issue that involves communication with local people using just my German. Shopping, dealing with authorities, communicating with landlords (I moved to another apartment recently and when making arrangements with my new landlord I was speaking almost exclusively German), opening a bank account, ordering and installing winter tires on my car, and so on. Today I can say that when it comes down to communicating with locals I speak only German and I do it on purpose. True I make lots of mistakes but people can understand what I’m saying and I can understand them. More importantly, it brings results and it’s a good indicator of my progress.
Assuming that you’re interested in doing your MBA at St.Gallen University and in getting employed in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, or Liechtenstein after graduation, I would strongly recommend that you start learning German. I’ve done it in a fairly compressed manner that probably won’t work for everybody so I suggest that you start devoting some of your time to learning German as soon as you’re accepted into the program. Your efforts will be rewarded on the professional side and you’ll see how fun it is to be applying what you’ve learned to your daily situations.
