Graduates who typically have L1 English, have majored in one foreign language (FL, L2) or more at university and have gone on to occupy FL posts in the UK civil service have reported mismatches between their pre-employment L2 learning and the tasks they face in the workplace. Such reported divergences in UK civil service capability have not, however, been investigated in any detail to date. Correspondingly, to provide a more informed picture of the knowledge gaps of (typically) graduate language professionals working at a UK government department, a qualitative needs analysis was undertaken involving participants who principally carry out transcription and translation tasks into English from an L2. The needs analysis identified seven key gap subjects -- stylistic understanding; slang; dysphemism/swearing and euphemism; humour; language and culture; multilingualism; and discourse analysis -- but also pinpointed narrower questions vis-à-vis each gap subject that participants reported to merit particular attention. Examination of both the key gaps and narrower questions suggests that more formal familiarisation with subjects such as pragmatics, sociolinguistics and other linguistic disciplines vis-à-vis FL use would give graduate FL professionals more informed analytical scaffolding for exploring the seven gap subjects. Furthermore, insofar as the gap subjects and narrower questions are identified as important needs in their own right, the study's results suggest that knowledge of linguistics and associated disciplines is occupationally relevant. While the study is small in scale, its results lend support to calls to better integrate linguistics subjects into FL learning, including within professional development and higher education.