Hi! I am Andrea Winters, the Certificate Processor for The Global Seal of Biliteracy. By now you have likely received your students’ Global Seal certificates and are wondering what to do next! This is a wonderful achievement for your students and one that, while they have earned it now, will benefit them in multiple ways throughout their life. Professionally, this certification will give them an advantage in their job search. Personally, learning a language is associated with an increase in empathy as they have dedicated a lot of time to learning about a new culture. Your students should feel very proud to hold this certification. And you should feel proud too, as your hard work helped them earn it!
Here are some ways The Global Seal can extend the celebration and how students can capitalize on their bilingual certification.
Extending the celebration
Many schools will hold a ceremony for their newly certified students to give their parents and schoolmates the opportunity to cheer them on and recognize them for their hard work. To go along with the certificates, you have the opportunity to purchase medals and pins for them to wear loud and proud! You will find the link to purchase these in the email you received when your certificates were mailed or by clicking the images below.
but the party doesn’t stop there…
This is a great accomplishment for your students and when the celebrations have fizzled out, here are the next steps to encourage your students to take. Biliteracy for the sake of biliteracy, while very impressive, is not the entire picture. Leveraging a Global Seal of Biliteracy can open doors monolinguals do not have the key to. Biliteracy is a widely sought after skill in any career and industry, and employers will pay the big bucks to employees who have a certification to prove it. They should shout it from the rooftops, or at least add it to their resume and LinkedIn profile.
a Resume Builder
a LinkedIn certification
This is not a filler piece to take up space on a resume. This is a certification that shows your students will be a value-add to a prospective employer. A Global Seal of Biliteracy gives your students the jump on any competitors they have when they are applying for jobs. This sets them apart and shows that they have a lot to bring to the company if they are hired. Here is an example of a blurb a student could add to their resume:
It is also important to prepare your students for what to say when this portion of their resume comes up in an interview. They should know how to present this certification as a skill that will be valuable to the employer, such as having the ability to communicate with customers or clients in their native language. They should be prepared to discuss specific topics such as the soft skills they gained, examples of times they used their language in the real world, how that interaction benefited them, and why learning a new language is important to them.
LinkedIn recognizes The Global Seal of Biliteracy as an official certification. This can be added to the Licenses & Certifications section of the profile. The important information to add is:
The award level (Functional, Working, or Professional Fluency)
Both languages a student is certified in
Our organization name
The date issued
The Unique Serial Number assigned to their certificate
Our website link for more information
www.theglobalseal.com
Students can also add skills associated with this certification that will be shown in the Skills section of their profile. Keep reading for examples of skills that are honed by learning a language.
Click here for our YouTube tutorial on how to add this to a profile.
Value-Adds of a Global Seal
Being bilingual comes with a long list of soft skills that employers look for. These are just as important to highlight on a resume or LinkedIn profile as the new language they learned. Some of these may not be so obvious, so have your students reflect on their language learning journey and come up with the skills they think they improved. The process will be different for every student, so make sure they don’t just copy this list.
Communication
Critical Thinking
Problem Solving
Empathy
Time Management
Creative Thinking
Multitasking
Self-Confidence
And so many more!
*This also gives them a chance to appreciate how far they have come and to be proud of their achievements! 🎉
The Hard work pays off
There are rewards to reap for the hard work your students dedicated to learning a language. That reward is called Biliteracy Pay. This is the pay increase bilinguals with certifications receive from companies who benefit from this skill. Across all industries, there is a 5-20% pay increase when compared with the salaries of monolinguals. Now that your students have a certification to prove their fluency, they are eligible for this pay increase from any company that offers it.
Click here for more specific data on this and useful information to share with your students.
Don’t Leave anyone out
For the students who did not qualify for a certificate this time around, we offer Pathway Ribbons. They may not have reached the level on the ACTFL or CEFR scales that aligns with our first award level, but we still want to recognize their hard work and encourage them to keep pushing on! There is no application process for these. You can purchase them through our shop, either individually or in packs of 25 or 50 ribbons.
