Impression caused by Mandarin language skills during Internship Selection Processes in Brazil

Even before joining Huawei as an Intern, I have been studying Mandarin Chinese for two years simultaneously with my Engineering major at university, besides having participated in some internship selection processes for other companies. Regardless of them being Chinese enterprises or not, including this language skill on my CV has constantly helped me to cause a good impression, as interviewers were usually very curious and surprised as soon as they acknowledged my hobby in learning Mandarin. Questions such as "Why did you decide to learn Chinese?" started to be so frequently asked and time-consuming during interviews that I had a previously prepared answer for it: I simply love it (showing truly spontaneous interest in culture, which is crucial to global companies) and I believe in its professional potential (depicting business vision regarding the global market in the future).

It seems that Chinese is still regarded as one of the hardest languages in the world (although I disagree), especially to laypeople who have no idea about how it is morphologically structured. Thus, being a Chinese language student seemingly conveys the impression that you do possess professional perspective and are not afraid of coming across with big challenges and hard tasks. Giving up is definitely not a part of your vocabulary, particularly if you are a "long-term" learner who insisted in studying it. Note that this is the opinion I have built based on my own experiences during internship selection processes in my country, which might differ from other people's.

Chinese omnispresence around the globe

Beyond dispute, Mandarin is getting even more relevant throughout the past years. I am not that bold to say that Putonghua (普通话, Standard Mandarin) is going to be the global language to the point of surpassing English in the future, as some might reckon. In my point of view, English will still be the main language of commerce and academics, plus knowing it in an advanced or fluent level is merely an obligation at the present time in order to pursue an international career. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that learning Mandarin is a huge differential, due to the Chinese's omnipresence around the world, not only in big multinational companies, but also in widely known and internationally recognized universities. If you pay attention, unlike the isolationist scenario of China in the past, right now Chinese students and professionals are literally everywhere!

Expanding cultural knowledge

In spite of Chinese language-related myths and actual obstacles (regional varieties, dialects, tones), I encourage people to search more and learn Mandarin, especially in case they are language enthusiasts and eager to study culture just like I am. Learning Chinese is not just a matter of acquiring a new language, since you will certainly end up bumping into many interesting topics related to Chinese mindset, philosophy, history, folklore and cuisine so as to fully understand characters, meanings and chéngyǔ (成语).

I am far from being fluent and I have not even graduated from university yet. However, I do not intend to stop my extracurricular weekly classes anytime soon, even if I get to work abroad or do a Master's in another country. If you do it with passion and willingness, everything will flow much more smoothly and you will surely be rewarded both professionally and culturally in the future.

不怕慢，就怕站。 （孔子）

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. (Confucius)