Language Industry Recruitment Specialists
Specialized recruitment solutions for the Language Services and Technology Sector.
Adaptive's track record spans independent language service agencies to Fortune 500 companies, hiring market-leading talent in Translation, Localization, Translation Technology, Interpreting, Language Learning, NLP & Machine Translation.
Since 2005, Adaptive Globalization has recruited exclusively within the language services and tech sector.
We help translation, localization, interpreting and language training companies build winning teams in operations, sales and technology. We also partner with client-side localization teams and human language technology companies to source the best available talent from the global market.
Learn more about our expertise below:
Latest Jobs
Candidate placements in 20+ countries
1,000+ interviews per year
Partner to 80% of the top 100 LSPs
-
How can M&A impact your localization career?
9th November 2018
#Localization
M&A activity is shaking up the global language services industry as ambitious LSPs buy and sell to capture market opportunity - but what effect does this have on agency employees? The translation and localization sector has experienced rapid consolidation in the last five years, with unprecedented levels of M&A activity: LanguageWire purchased Xplanation. Technicis acquired AAC Global. Straker Translations added Eule prior to their recent IPO… In the mid-market, multiple deals are published each month. Anyone with a broad network in the space will know someone whose company was bought out or merged with another LSP, and plenty more will have seen their company management in talks with potential buyers or private equity investors behind closed doors. While for shareholders this rush of deal-making can mean exciting new opportunities to grow quickly and generate profits, the impact for employees affected by corporate restructuring can be different. What managers describe as the ‘integration’ period following a deal often translates into months of uncertainty, rumours, meetings, re-trainings and stress over job loss. So what can you do to make sure M&A doesn’t detail your career, and what opportunities can it bring? Look for opportunities to upskill Even when two companies are not formally merged following an acquisition, M&A inevitably brings about change within both the buyer and the seller as the two companies interact. While this change can be intimidating, it can also be a great opportunity for learning and personal development. Whether it means a new direct manager, working with new regional offices, adapting to new corporate cultures or working to support a new client base, the environment created as a result of M&A is usually one that opens multiple doors for ambitious professionals looking for ways to broaden their experience. Often acquisition brings together two organizations with contrasting strengths, and this opposition offers plenty of scope for employees on each side to learn about the other’s domain. Explore your new environment Employees have two options when it comes to how they react to M&A: waiting in a state of perpetual nervousness, following rumours about office closures and speculating on the outcome of closed-door management meetings, or meeting the situation head on and looking to see how they can benefit from the situation. For those being acquired, opportunity can mean becoming part of a larger parent company with more extensive resources and a bigger global structure. It can also involve working beneath new leadership teams, often with decades of industry experience and expertise. It can include learning to work with new technology platforms, or customer markets. Although layoffs and downsizing can be part of creating an efficient new organization as two businesses merge together, acquisitions also create new business needs and can provide chances for promotion, retraining, travel and more. Focus on what you can control A lot of the tension following the announcement of M&A deals stems from employees not being fully informed of the changes that lie ahead. This can be deeply frustrating – loyal and long-serving team members may worry that their jobs are at risk, and as much as management may wish to calm fears by keeping everyone looped in on evolving plans and discussions, there are lots of moving parts to a post-acquisition integration and leadership can only responsibly share what is certain (rather than what is ‘likely’). Sage advice in this scenario, from Adaptive candidates who have been through disruptive M&A integrations, is to concentrate on the elements of the situation that you can control and avoid wasting energy worrying about the parts you can’t. In practice, this means doubling down on doing great work and making a positive impact to the business. Delivering results, projecting a positive attitude, building networks and working to close skills gaps are all positive steps that position you optimally to emerge in a good situation from any change, and if you are impacted by something outside your control – such as a restructure or layoff – then these things will carry with you into you next career step. Keep your network warm Although there is often a lot of positive opportunity that comes with M&A, it may not work out perfectly in every case. It’s better to be prepared than surprised, so it can sometimes be helpful to refresh contact networks in case the changes resulting from an acquisition make your position uncomfortable or untenable. You may not see eye to eye with your new boss, may find yourself bumped onto a new team, or may simply not gel with the newly-established corporate culture the change brings about. Although it’s always best to give the new situation a chance before jumping ship, leaving it too late can also be costly. You may not be the only person thinking about making a move elsewhere - if multiple colleagues all decide to take the same route, you don’t want to find that the best jobs locally have already been filled by the time you start applying. Learn from the market Along with the micro-level impact that M&A can have on individual careers, acquisitions do offer insight into broader trends of where management and investors perceive value in the industry to be. Although short-term adaptation when your company is bought or sold may be all about survival and making the best of an uncertain transition phase, there are long-term lessons to be learned in many M&A stories. Why was your company acquired, and why did investors find it attractive? What is the vision for the future of the business, and what kinds of skills will team members need to excel in delivering that vision? Look at who’s staying and who’s going as teams are re-engineered – who keeps their place, or gets promoted, and why? Responding to these clues can help you build your professional profile to weather future storms and ensure you have the upper hand in guiding your career trajectory. *** Adaptive Globalization fills jobs in Project Management, Sales, Account Management and Localization Engineering around the world – browse our full list of vacancies here.
Read more -
Navigating Localization Careers – Which Sector?
23rd October 2018
#Translation/Localization Project Management & QA
A guide to 10 major vertical markets in the translation and localization industry. With so many niches and sub-sectors, it can be hard to take a backward step and objectively assess your options and think clearly about the range of different business environments and project types that are available for your next move. But along with salary package and working environment, the sector of the industry in which you work can also have a big impact on your daily role, the skills you build and the long-term direction of your career. Whether working as part of an in-house team or within an agency, there are significant differences between different vertical markets. If you’re curious to know what’s our there, take a look through our quick-start guide to 10 of the most prominent sub-sectors of the global language services market. 1. Transcreation What’s involved: Transcreation is a term commonly used within the marketing and PR sectors, and usually refers to the local adaptation of promotional or advertising materials. A nuanced form of localization, transcreation deals with how to successfully adapt things such as ad campaigns, slogans and endorsements into new markets. As opposed to traditional translation, transcreation may involve creating entirely new content in the target language to accurately replicate the tone, style and context of the original in a way which will resonate with local audiences. What to expect: Exposure to marketing, PR and advertising communities, working with creative professionals and copywriters, developing an understanding of international brand management as well as online and offline marketing channels. 2. Legal & Financial What’s involved: Legal and financial are among the most highly specialized niches of the translations market owing to the high levels of accuracy demanded by documents supporting major financial decision-making or legal processes. Within legal a growing sub-sect is Intellectual Property translation (IP), which deals with the management of international patents and protection of innovation. What to expect: An environment centred on quality and specialism (from vendor selection to rigorous QA processes), potential late hours accommodating ‘rush’ projects, a geographical focus on major global cities, awareness of information governance and possible exposure to e-discovery and data forensics technology. 3. Gaming What’s involved: Supporting the videogaming sector blends multiple service and technology requirements. Localization of game content requires not only translating in-game content, but also access to resources such as foreign-language voice artists and recording studios for in-game audio and advanced graphic design capabilities. What to expect: Colleagues passionate about gaming (many gamers in their free time), understanding of platform nuances (mobile, PC, console), robust QA and testing services to detect and fix functional and linguistic bugs. 4. Life Sciences What’s involved: ‘Life Sciences’ is a broadly-used umbrella term that usually covers scientific industries including Medical Devices, Pharmaceutical, Biotechnology and related fields. Language projects within the sector can range from adapting marketing and promotional materials much like any other sector to supporting deeply specialized processes such as Clinical Trials and Linguistic Validation. What to expect: Focus on Quality Assurance (quality audits, securing and maintaining ISO certifications), highly specialized translator vendor base, awareness of regulatory constraints and requirements. 5. Multimedia What’s involved: Language services for the media and entertainment industries typically have a greater focus on audio localization (e.g. dubbing) and on-screen captioning / sub-titling. With an ongoing explosion in digitally-available content as platforms including Netflix and Amazon Prime Video begin to generate their own content, multimedia localization continues to expand rapidly. What to expect: Local and in-country networks of recording studios and voice-over artists, captioning, dubbing and sub-titling, supporting traditional broadcast and digitally-distributed media, potential exposure to related markets including e-learning. 6. E-commerce What’s involved: E-commerce localization focuses on helping e-retailers successfully reach and engage customers on a global basis. With its origins in website localization, the industry has now evolved to include many elements of digital marketing to ensure that translated websites and digital stores not only read and function correctly for the user but also convert visitors to sales. What to expect: Multilingual SEO, User Experience / User Interface design, e-commerce infrastructure platforms (e.g. Magento, Shopify) omnichannel marketing and conversion rate optimization (CRO). 7. IT (Software & Hardware) What’s involved: The ‘IT’ bucket remains a large and complex sector in itself, incorporating giant technology corporations (such as Oracle, Facebook, Microsoft and Salesforce), up-and-coming Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies, mobile apps and hardware providers (think Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Canon). Depending on where you are in the market, you could be working on the technology industry’s next hottest thing, or helping translate a troubleshooting manual update for an obsolete device. What to expect: Exposure to product development, internationalization, content management systems, localization engineering, QA and in-language testing and UX/UI design. 8. Industrial & Manufacturing What’s involved: A market sector traditionally centred on high volumes of technical documentation, Industrial & Manufacturing can include industries such as automotive, aerospace, mining, chemicals, construction and energy. Projects can be varied in nature, from technical manuals to health and safety communications or training materials. What to expect: Technical documentation and drawing, user manuals, installation and maintenance guides, regulatory compliance, R&D, catalogues and inventory lists. 9. Travel & Hospitality What’s involved: The global Travel & Hospitality niche combines a few elements from several other categories, with obvious components from E-Commerce and also Transcreation. Largely focused on website localization and online sales, this space focuses on successfully reaching global audiences for hotels, resorts, accommodation rental and the travel sectors (airlines, car rental etc). Along with site design, effective international branding and seamless user experience, multilingual SEO is also part of an integrated strategy to drive relevant traffic to sites. What to expect: Website localization, app development and adaptation, exposure to multicultural marketing and branding, social media strategy, booking engines & pricing algorithms and international search engine marketing. 10. Government What’s involved: Both at the national and regional level, government translation requires much of the same service delivery as other sectors whilst remaining commercially unique. Typically controlled by rigid procurement processes which aim to be both selective and inclusive simultaneously (ensuring service quality whilst sharing spend across a diverse range of business suppliers), the public sector can mean predictable long-term contract opportunities across areas like health services, defence, finance and communications. What to expect: Complex purchasing frameworks, highly structured bid & tender processes, focus on document and website translation projects, multi-year contracts, transcription and exposure to security clearance requirements. *** Are you looking to explore new areas of the global translation and localization market with your career? Adaptive Globalization places professionals in 30+ countries from our 4 office locations across the US and Europe. *** You can check out Adaptive Globalization’s full list of jobs across the translation, localization and interpreting sectors here.
Read more -
Top 10: Weird and Wonderful Job Titles
19th August 2018
#Jobs
Here at Adaptive Globalization we spend our days and weeks searching for perfect candidates and it leads us to look in some of the dark corners of the job-seekers section of the internet. As we trawl through many webpages, job boards and speak with a lot of our clients and candidates, we come across some fantastic job titles – from Mischief Maker to Wizard of Lightbulb moments, I recently discovered that there’s a market for an Emoji Translator – what a job that would be, especially as Adweek reported in 2017 that more than 60 million emojis are used daily on Facebook, with a further 5 billion (plus!) on its Messenger platform. In the localization industry, it’s important we’re across every single language, even emojis! So, after a few laughs in the office, we thought we’d share our top 10 picks of the weird and wonderful we’ve discovered across a range of industries and have translated them for you… do you fancy doing any of these? Wizard of Light Bulb Moments – Marketing Director Emoji Translator – Not sure where to begin… Mischief Maker – Content Creator Chief Evangelist – Brand Ambassador Sales Ninja – Sales Executive Disruptor in Chief – Head of Daily Business Operations Problem Wrangler – Counsellor Talent Delivery Specialist – Recruitment Consultant Digital Overlord – Website Manager Great Service Agent – Receptionist I’m sure all of you have seen some weird and wonderful job titles in your time, why not share with us your favourite ones? Better still, find out if we can get you a new job with an even better title. Get in touch at alex.ross-scott@adaptiveglobalization.com, or check out what we've got on offer over at our jobs section.
Read more -
The Translation Agency Industry’s Top-Earning Career Paths
13th July 2018
Adaptive’s recruiters are often asked by candidates how they can build their careers to raise their market value and earnings. Here we share our map of the paths which lead to some of the top-paying roles in the global language services industry. First things first - you don’t have to be a salesperson to make big bucks. Often when Adaptive is approached by candidates looking to up their earnings in the language services industry, there’s an expectation that only the high-flying BDMs and C-suite management are making top money. After all, BDMs are on commission plans and signing big customer deals can be very lucrative. And it’s true – top BDMs and sales managers can be making as much as anyone on this list. But salespeople not the only ones with strong pay packages in the language industry. In fact, we’ve left sales out of our list below to offer alternate options to translation and localization industry professionals looking to build their careers. So here we go - four routes to top-paying roles if cold calling isn’t your thing: 1. Business Unit Leadership e.g. VP Life Sciences, VP Engineering Broad-ranging VP titles usually signify a role that is a mix of client relations, operations and specific expertise in a particular area. Professionals in these positions are in charge of ‘business units’ which operate like mini-companies within the larger organization, focused on one specific area – such as services to the Life Sciences market or engineering services. This means the VP’s responsibility is wide, often covering a separate profit and loss account for their unit. VPs leading these areas can come from a variety of backgrounds, but have often worked their way up an internal hierarchy where their increasing experience makes them more and more valuable. They head up hiring, account management and ensure that their company’s service offering continues to be competitive and evolve with the market. Career Entry Point: Project Manager, Account Manager, BDM Key Skill: ability to combine rounded business skills with deep subject-matter expertise Average Salary Range: $100,000 - $160,000 + bonus 2. Internal Technology Management e.g. CTO, VP of Technology At the highest level, technology managers need to be more than just experts in localization workflows, and lead areas such as networking, security, compliance, training, technology change management, data recovery and more. Their focus is on the role technology plays in helping the company reach strategic goals and impacting overall P&L. Localization career paths typically go from specialist to generalist with candidates building a base in CAT tools, internal and client workflows and then rounding out generalist IT competencies to continue progressing. Career Entry Point: CAT Tools Specialist, Localization Technology Manager, Localization Engineer Average Salary Range: $120,000 - $180,000 + bonus Key skill: ability to visualize and implement technology changes which make high-value improvements to the global organization 3. Operations & General Management e.g. VP Operations, General Manager A great goal for Project Managers! Many of the industry’s top-paid professionals in operations (production) leadership started ‘in the trenches’ as PMs. Growth in this career channel comes from deep first-hand knowledge of internal workflows, aptitude for working directly with key customers and versatile operational skills – organization, planning, financial management and personnel leadership. As operations candidates move up the career ladder, they broaden their generalist business skills and combine them with their expert knowledge of localization processes to eventually step up and take overall responsibility. Career Entry Point: Project Manager, QA Manager Salary range: $120,000 - $150,000 + bonus Key skill: ability to design and maintain efficient teams and workflows to deliver reliably and profitably for customers 4. Client Solutions Development e.g. VP Client Solutions, Global Solutions Manager A specialist team within most LSPs, solutions professionals focus on bridging the gap between sales, production and IT. Their focus is building creative solutions for prospective and existing customers, which involves customizing, integrating and potentially selecting new tools to bring together clients’ existing technology systems and those used by the LSP. Many client solutions experts get their start in engineering and are well versed in CAT tools, but also work to develop strong client relationship skills throughout their careers. Often professionals in this space work on the client side for at least a few years, building inside knowledge from the buyer perspective. At the top of the tree, global managers for solutions teams build some of the most advanced workflows in commercial localization. Career Entry Point: Localization Engineer, CAT Tools Specialist, Project Manager, Account Manager Salary range: $130,000 - $150,000 + bonus Key skill: ability to think creatively to create unique technology-based workflow solutions * * * Adaptive Globalization recruits within the translation, localization and language technology sectors from entry-level to VP+. Feel free to get in touch to discuss hiring or career development – ray.green@adaptiveglobalization.com You can check out Adaptive Globalization’s vacancies for PMs, Account Managers, Loc Engineers, BDMs and more in our job listings here.
Read more
