Hi there,
well done for thinking in advance about this issue.
I believe it is definitely a fair concern, not only in terms of the projects but also of the interactions with your colleagues (joking or in general create deep connections in another language is incredibly hard if you are not fluent).
If you are serious about moving to that country, I would be proactive and start to work right now on the language. This will be a great investment to create deep connections later on.
A few things I found particularly useful and I would recommend doing right now are:
- Find a teacher. I recommend Preply.com for that. You can filter them based on languages, reviews, budget, availability, etc, similarly to PrepLounge coaches. I am using it for a couple of languages and it works really well.
- Study daily new words. I recommend the app Anki, which uses the SRS system – the best way to learn new words. Focus on the words critical for your job – usually, if you master the 1000 most important one, you can talk and understand relatively well your niche
- Gamify your learning. I tried a few apps and the one I liked the most in terms of that is Memrise
In many countries, you don’t use English for local projects thus there is no guarantee you may use it at the beginning.
Once you start your projects, I would do the following:
- Verify with HR the availability of projects where you feel more confident in terms of technical words
- Align with your team on the fact you are working to improve your language skills upfront
- Check the availability of language courses offered by the company to speed up your fluency
Hope this helps,
Francesco