Finding a job in France

[Anyone for Cricket?]

Hi

Language is key to getting on in this country whatever you want to do and I can't recommend enough enrolling at a University to study french as a foreign language. 

I've posted on the subject before, it's tough, 20+ hours per week plus homework but after just one term (you sign up on a term by term basis) you move on  hugely.  I had no french when I came to france and can now speak freely, I have to admit that my written french isn't  great as I only did one and half terms, I can get by though.  A term is 13 weeks, not long to put you on the right path, to think that doing it this way you study 260 hours per term, I did 400 hours and to compare that to the one hour or so a week you could do in a local class and it's easy to see why you move on so quickly.

I did intend to try to get work here after the course and would feel ready to do that, luckly for me I was able to work remotely for my old UK employers and so have not yet had to, knowing that I could try is a safety net I prefer to have.

[Ron Avery]

I think there has been a healthy dose of realism from the posters here,    I really do not understand why people commit to buying or moving to a place without having researched the employment prospects well before hand.  As has been said above, Frances is  not going to work for French builder where he can point at an item or draw a picture for her, she wants to be a nursing sister and that means supervising French nurses and dealing with French people, as well as having detailed knowledge of medical terminology and practices in France. There are not many Anglais in the region so speaking English will not be a great asset, she must have a command not a smattering of French.  I live near Villefranche de Rgue and the hospitals are good, I'm not sure if there are any vacancies although unemployment is high here as it is in most of rural France I know one ex UK nurse who has secured via a neighbour a job as a care assistant, but her spoken French is good, however, a Spanish nursing qualified friend who also had a French boyfriend, did French classes for four years and only after four years was her French and her accent was considered good enough for employment as a nurse and to take the exams, I think many will agree the biggest barrier to speaking fluent French is to converse in and think in English, and that is what is so hard if you do not have good French and an English speaking partner.  If you are patient you will get there, but if you cannot afford private lessons get yourself to ASTI at the centre social and enrol there for September, the waiting list is very long but if you are seeking work you should get precedence over the retired English[:P].

[LanguedocGal2]

[quote user="Ron Avery"]  I really do not understand why people commit to buying or moving to a place without having researched the employment prospects well before hand.   [:P].

[/quote]

Ron,

I’m often flabbergasted when I read some of the questions on the forum. I’ve simply come to the conclusion that a lot of Brits tend to put the ‘house and land’ above everything else.  Many equate the house and pretty landscape with a  better quality of life and, in their euphoria, relegate the financial reality to the bottom rung.  But surely, even a more relaxed lifestyle has to be financed over a period of years and even decades. 

However, as so many Brits believe France to be such a ‘cheap’ country (Let’s kill those programmes[:@]), too many appear to grossly overestimate how long their savings will last and hence the importance of finding employment. Or perhaps, it’s simply British optimism telling them they can turn their hands to anything in the UK so why not in France? 

Problem; France doesn’t like that nasty liberal way of thinking and the State will happily stamp on you if you try to introduce any of that disgusting ‘’Anglo-Saxon’’ enterprise culture here. [:(]

I know a few people who have emigrated to Canada over the past 12 years.  The suitability of their qualifications and skills to the Canadian job market were always major factors determining whether they obtained the relevant settlement visa. Ironically, they have never suffered from unemployment in Canada. All spent years meeting the requirements of the Canadian govt in order to obtain their papers. All this despite there not being any linguistic barriers! 

 As there are no such requirements for France, unless Brits start putting financial viability over the beauty of cheap houses in isolated areas, they will continue to buy first and ask the truly vital questions later. 

This is my theory; any others?

 

[Cerise]

I think you are right.  Have just spent 3 weeks back in UK and friends and releatives got quite shirty when I dared to suggest that France was not a pink fluffy place where there were no taxes and everything was cheap.  We bought a whole load of clothes that were a great deal cheaper than here, went out for some meals which were no dearer and (hooray!!) contained no duck.  They were all surprised - but surely everything is cheap in France.  When we tried to explain about about cotisations and French salaries no one wished to know.  One of our student nephews was earning more shoving trollies around in Sainsbury's carpark in his holidays than my 47 year old husband earns working full time here.  We did all the homework before we came but can truly say we did not realise how damn difficult and expensive it is to work legally here.

[Will]

There was a piece on the news the other day saying that New Zealnad was crying out for qualified English speakers. Why not give it a try if you want to go somewhere other than Britain - plenty of jobs, cheap housing, friendly people, nice climate? I know this is a forum about France but we have to be honest, many of the reasons people wanted to come to France are disappearing, even if they were valid in the first place.

[Teamedup]

Cerise, who does want to hear all these things in the UK.

EVERYTHING indicates that France must be wonderful, when looking at it from the UK........well OK, everyone knows that they strike and march, but they have always done that, and they cheat with EU rules, but they have always done that too.........so everything else MUST really be wonderful in France and just like on the telly and in the newspapers.

People haven't believed me for a long time now and I dare say that they won't in the future either. Hard to say how this makes me feel really, I go through the whole range of emotions.

AND yes, I bring clothes back now,  the clothes that I would like and  that fit me, well, I can hardly find any and when I do they tend to be out of my budget..... so what can I do?

[RumziGal]

[quote user="Cerise"]I think you are right.  Have just spent 3 weeks back in UK and friends and releatives got quite shirty when I dared to suggest that France was not a pink fluffy place where there were no taxes and everything was cheap.  [/quote]

Cerise, I'm having pretty much the same experience!   

And my heart does sink when I think of youngsters in France, doing degrees and Masters and what have you, and still unemployed at 26 or 27.    OH's nieces, aged 22 and 21, are happily settled into the accountant life, no A-levels or anything, just went straight into the accountants' offices and did qualifications as they went.   The 22-yr-old is a wee bit bored with accountancy, so she cut her hours down and trained as a personal gym trainer.   Now she divides her time between the "real" job, some private accountancy services, and her dream job, teaching classes at the gym.   The younger one is buying a house with her gardener boyfriend.   My manager here is married to a French lady and was showing me some photos of her the other day, including one with her niece, who's studying.... accountancy!  26, still not earning.......     

The girl chez qui I'm renting a room just now has only been working in IBM for 3 years, but she's got this 3-bed house.  Okay, so she needs me or A.N.Other as a lodger for a while, but she has it. 

I know I'm repeating myself a bit from other threads, but it's because I am so astounded by the level of comfort here compared to France. 

It's certainly given me food for thought.