This is the question I hear most from Serbian candidates, and it usually arrives as an apology. “My English is not perfect, but…” After nine years of interviewing people for U.S. roles, I can tell you that nobody’s English is perfect, including plenty of native speakers, and perfection was never the bar.
What employers actually check
A U.S. company hiring remotely needs to know three things. Can you understand a task the first time it is explained? Do you ask questions when something is unclear instead of guessing? Can you write a Slack message or an email that the reader gets on the first pass?
Notice what is missing from that list. Accent. Flawless grammar. A rich literary vocabulary. Remote work runs on written communication far more than spoken, so a small grammar slip in a clear message costs you nothing, while a grammatically perfect message that buries its point costs you trust. Clarity is the skill. English is just the medium.
You know more than you produce
Serbian professionals have a real head start here. English instruction starts around age seven in school, and films and series run subtitled rather than dubbed, so most people here have absorbed the language passively for decades. The typical gap is between what you understand and what you comfortably produce, and that gap closes with practice, which is much cheaper to fix than missing knowledge.
The bigger obstacle I see is confidence. Candidates who understand everything in a meeting stay silent because they are afraid of making a mistake out loud. Meanwhile, the native speakers on the call misspell things daily and think nothing of it. Nobody competent is grading your grammar. They are listening for whether you understood.
A quick self-test
- Read a job description in your field. Can you explain the role in your own words?
- Write a five-sentence update about your current project. Would a stranger understand what happened and what comes next?
- Hold a fifteen-minute conversation about your work with someone in English. Uncomfortable is fine. Impossible is the signal to wait.
If you passed all three, apply now. Your English is already better than you are giving it credit for, and it will improve fastest on the job.
If you need to close the gap
Skip the generic advice about watching movies. You have done that your whole life. What changes your level now is producing English about your own work. Write daily, even short posts or comments in professional communities. Speak weekly, whether with a conversation partner, at a local meetup, or in online communities in your field. Listen to podcasts about your profession so you pick up the vocabulary you will actually use in meetings. Three to six months of that beats years of passive consumption.
How we look at it
When Kaymack vets candidates for U.S. employers, we assess written English through real samples, such as your application answers and portfolio, never through grammar quizzes. That mirrors exactly what an employer will judge you on. If you can make yourself understood in writing, you are ready to compete. (The exception is positions strictly related to high-level English language skills, such as client-facing roles.)
Start with your resume, which is the first English writing sample any employer sees, then get comfortable with the interview. Both guides are on this blog, and registering as a candidate on Kaymack Careers is free, always.
