logo This page was last updated 28 May 2008.
Finding a Job and Working in France
 

 

External Links

Transitions Abroad: Working in France. How Non-Europeans Can Work Legally. Article by Finn Skovgaard.

Transitions Abroad: Dos and Don'ts in France. Living Abroad Requires Tact and Cultural Insight. Article by Finn Skovgaard.

Google Web skovgaard-europe.com streetwise-france.com
Bookmark with: What are these?
 Delicious  Digg  reddit  Facebook  StumbleUpon

Finding a job and working in France

There is no miracle cure for finding a job in France. The job market is difficult. The best way is to know someone who knows someone who can put you at the top of the stack - the principle known as piston in France. Not easy if you've just come in with a budget airline at 4 PM.

You can be almost certain that speaking French is a requirement. Hence, I have left the list of the job sectors expected to employ most in 2008 in French without translation. If you cannot decrypt it in French, your chances of being employed are virtually zero.

Should you find a job, be aware that strict respect for hierarchy is expected, unless you are told otherwise. Cutting across reporting lines is not well seen.

Status and diplomas are more important than experience.

Permanent jobs are know as CDI - Contrat à Durée Indéterminée and are very difficult for the employer to end. A breach of such a job contract could be very expensive for the employer if the employee goes to the employment court le conseil des prud'hommes and wins. Because of the draconian job protection measures, many employers don't want to hire anyone on a CDI. If they should hire some lazy chap and he or she only shows it after the end of the trial period, it can be a true nightmare to get rid of that employee. Holiday entitlement is 5 weeks per year.

Fixed term contracts are called CDD - Contrat à Durée Déterminée. The employer is only allowed to use them in very particular cases, such as replacement for someone on leave or temporary extra workload, and it can only be renewed once. The total duration cannot exceed 18 months. Again, the penalty for breaching one of the many rules can be expensive for the employer, so they hesitate too with this type of contract. You are entitled to 10% compensation at the end of the CDD to compensate for being out of a job and 10% for holiday compensation if you have not had paid holiday.

Seasonal contracts are allowed in job sectors where this is needed, typically tourism. This may well be the type of contract you end up with.

There is an ocean of various other schemes and types of employment, mostly intended to encourage employment, but the result is that it's a big mess that not many understand, so for fear of getting it wrong and being penalised, or because many employers don't have weeks to study employment law and hundreds of exceptions, many of these schemes are not sufficiently used.

The social security charges weigh heavily on the employment budget. As a rule of thumb, your employment costs at least twice as much for the employer in direct charges as what you are paid, not including the cost of your workspace and other overhead.

These are some of the odds you're up against when searching a job in France. The whole system is gridlocked because those already in CDI jobs refuse to give up their privileges so that more can get jobs. Be patient when you look for jobs.

The following job sectors are expected to hire the number of employees shown to the right:

Métiers Recrutements prévus en 2008
Employés et agents de maîtrise de l'hôtellerie (serveurs, maître d'hôtel...) 101,612
Agents d'entretien 65,042
Animateurs socioculturels, de sport et de loisirs 60,364
Caissiers, employés de libre service 45,521
Employés de maison et assistantes maternelles 41,988
Ingénieurs et cadres spécialistes de l'informatique (sauf technico-commerciaux) 39,390
Cuisiniers 36,982
Représentants, VRP 36,873
Maçons qualifiés 31,666
Secrétaires, assistantes 30,130
Cadres commerciaux et technicaux commerciaux 28,142
Conducteurs routiers 28,130
Vendeurs autres qu'en alimentation et équipement de la personne 25,017
Agents et hôtesses d'accueil, standardistes 24,707
Ingénieurs et cadres d'études et de recherche 22,709

The following table shows employment expectations for 2008 grouped per major sector:

Should you have landed a job and find yourself ill, you must of course call the employer in the morning, but that's not enough. You need a doctor's certificate very quickly. It's called an arrêt de travail. It must be posted to the employer almost immediately. It will certify that you are ill, how long time your illness will last, and when you are allowed to leave home to buy food etc. If by the end of this period you are still ill, you can get an extension from your doctor.

Job Related Web Sites

Open Directory. Listing of French job sites.
Optioncarriere.com. This site indexes more than 220 job sites and provides a useful starting point for job search, guiding you to the sites offering the best possibilities for you.
FedEE. Federation of European Employers. Organisation for international employers operating across Europe. Founded 1989 with funding from the European Commission.

Keljob. Keljob searches more than 1450 different job sites.

01net. IT.
AnnoncesEmploi
Annonces de France. Free. Organised by region. Still very new, so yet few ads.
AnnoncesJaunes. Job ads from the publisher of Pages Jaunes - the French Yellow Pages.
ANPE. The public job centre. Search facilities are very bad.
APEC.
Cadre emploi. For managerial staff and other qualified personnel. Owned by Le Figaro.
Cadres online. For managerial staff and other qualified personnel.
Cmonjob. For non-managerial staff and other less qualified personnel. Owned by Le Figaro.
Craigslist France. Free classifieds. In English.
Decideur.com. Job ads on business information site.
Emailjob.
Emploi.biz.
Emploi.com.
Emploicenter.
L'Étudiant.
Eurolead. IT freelance only.
Evannonce.
La Guilde des métiers du logiciel . Software jobs.
Hitechpros. IT.
Infosearch.
Jobline.
Jobpilot.
JobMarket.
JobTransport. Jobs in the transport and logistics sector.
Manpower.
Michael Page.
MixAd. PriceMinister.com's site for job ads.
Monster.
Option Carrière. Lists jobs from many different sites.
OLX. Free.
Les pages emploi.
Stepstone.
Studyrama.
Trefle.
Vediorbis.
Voila.
Webcible.

See also our link pages in the category Other Ads, Used Cars and Other Goods, Auctions.

 

Bookmark with: What are these?
 Delicious  Digg  reddit  Facebook  StumbleUpon

 

Google Web skovgaard-europe.com streetwise-france.com

 


http://skovgaard-europe.com/immifran-job.htm
© Copyright Finn Skovgaard 2008. All rights reserved.
Entreprise individuelle registered in the name of Finn Thomas Skovgaard with the trade name of Skovgaard Europe
RCS Tarascon 439 844 952. SIRET: 43984495200036. VAT: FR24439844952.