I have an honours degree in French. Imagine I'm the managing director of a French engineering firm. Explain to me, in French obviously, just why I should hire a semi-literate foreigner who, by his own admission, is "pretty bad" at his job.
The first Mr Craft was an engineer and he was offered a job by a French company. However, the job was installing print presses all over the world, so they actually wanted him because he spoke English.
An engineering company in France that wants to do business in the UK might value having an English speaker on their team to front for them in meetings with their English speaking clients.