It’s Good to Give Back: Our New Bilingual Staffing Adventure

TLC was fortunate enough to have the chance recently to work on a humanitarian project that helped us realize how much we have to offer in terms of expanded service offering and flexibility. Our team, usually a little over a dozen, ballooned to over 200 people within a month. Our staff spanned 8 labor categories. The bilingual staff we were tasked to hire worked 30,000 man-hours and were scheduled for over 2,600 twelve-hour shifts. Not bad for a two-month project!

Our bilingual staffing experts – our Recruiter and two of our On-Site Coordinators – wanted to share some take-aways from the project. Our Recruiter staffed the project with an ample number of temporary employees for each role. Our On-Site Coordinators supervised and assisted the hired bilingual staff in person.

Bilingual staffing can be especially difficult when it’s such a unique project. Our Recruiter found the most challenging part to be coming up with a system to vet potential hires and classify them into the most appropriate role. Our On-Site Coordinators tackled the challenge of effective, consistent, and timely communication. Rules were changing often due to the nature of the project, and the fluid situation allowed managers to try out several different methods of interaction. At the beginning it was hectic, but by the end, the project was running like a well-oiled machine.

Despite the challenges, all the staff has expressed how rewarding the project was. A common theme for us was the joy of realizing what amazing people we hired  and seeing how grateful the new staff was to be part of this once-in-a-lifetime project. The people who worked on this project were also grateful for the possibility to support young interpreters in growing into their roles and becoming more confident in their abilities.

I asked for specific stories, and this is what they had to say:

Duby, Recruiter: “There really are endless stories of gratitude. What was also amazing to experience was how, at the beginning, people would show up with only a few hours of notice to help this great cause. For example, we were short-handed one night shift, and I reached out to someone. She quickly came in to help us out, in the middle of having dinner with her family.”

Jeanette, On-Site Coordinator: “I’m happy with how fast we grew in staff and how creative we got in communicating constant changes in rules and procedures. Most importantly, we gave interpreters an opportunity to make money while helping their community out during a pandemic. One interpreter informed me that this opportunity gave them a reason to wake up in the morning, not only because it gave them purpose, but also because they no longer had to worry about making ends meet or having to ask for help to pay bills.”

We excelled due to our attention to detail and ability to screen for excellence. Teamwork and cooperation are huge parts of our culture here at TLC and putting the right people in the right positions is of the utmost importance to us. Our flexibility, instinct for hiring quality workers, and ability to find employees who can integrate into a team has been second-to-none. Additionally, the on-site leadership we were able to provide is a model that worked so well that we will be keeping it as part of our bilingual solution. Our typical translation work has left us with a network of bilingual professionals ready to rise to the occasion.

We all learned so much from this opportunity. We now know we can take on any challenge thrown at us. TLC’s ability to give back doesn’t end here. It’s only the beginning. Contact us today for all of your bilingual staffing needs!