And how do you find out before they are on a call with your customer? Here is the scale, what each level sounds like, and a 7 minute way to place someone on it.
Described by what you would hear, not by what a syllabus covers.
Fixed phrases and introductions. Cannot sustain an exchange.
Not viable for English-facing work
Simple, predictable exchanges on familiar topics. Falls apart off-script.
Narrow scripted tasks, colleague nearby
Handles routine situations and explains what they mean, with visible effort and error.
Internal roles, back office, scripted queues
Keeps up with a fast exchange, makes an argument, and recovers when a conversation goes sideways.
The usual bar for unscripted conversation with a customer.
Most customer-facing work
Fluent and precise. Handles nuance, tone and genuinely difficult conversations.
Escalations, client management, risk
Effortless and exact, including implication and register.
Rarely worth requiring
If you take one thing from this: most customer-facing roles want B2. Asking for C1 across the board narrows your pool for a level of nuance the job may never call on.
Sometimes it is spot on. Sometimes it means the person read a great deal of English at university and has never had to interrupt someone politely on a phone call.
You often cannot tell from an interview either, because an interview is a rehearsed conversation on a friendly topic with someone who wants them to do well. It is close to the easiest English a candidate will ever have to produce, which makes it a poor prediction of the hardest.
Testing gives you a level instead of an impression. Then “good enough English” stops being a debate between a recruiter and a hiring manager and starts being a number everyone agreed on before the role went live.
Speaking is marked from recorded audio, writing from real workplace tasks, five dimensions each and all weighted equally. The level is what the ten add up to.
Which means when you disagree with a result, you can see exactly where it came from rather than taking it on faith.
Speaking & Writing · English
Held the thread of an argument across a long answer and recovered naturally after losing a word. Vocabulary was appropriate to a professional register throughout.
Hesitation before complex clauses slowed the pace. Article use was inconsistent in the written responses, though it never obscured the meaning.
That is the speaking assessment on its own, which is enough to place someone on the scale. Add writing when the job calls for it and it is about 20 minutes. Either way: no test centre, no booking, no invigilator and no fee in the hundreds. Start free with ten assessments and no card.
Ten free assessments and no card. Send the first one to your own inbox and sit it the way a candidate would. About 20 minutes, and you will know exactly what your candidates experience.
No credit card required.