working in france

[overthemill]

ok, just wondered those of you in France - what paid work do you do?

we are planning our move and just wondered really.

Bilingual customer service.

What's your French like?

One of my customers who doesn't speak enough French to work in a French office became a registered CM. She speaks English to the children. Certain parents are keen for their children to be exposed to other languages from an early age.

my french isnt brill but i'm learning! Plan to have an immersion course once we move. Am hoping initially to get a job as a campsite rep which will help my french too i think (applied and got through 1st stage) crap money but will help me get to know area too. Was hoping to get training work with uk companies with french base as qualified trainer.

Have been looking for over a year. Despite making 'enquete metiers' ie having meetings saying I'm not asking for a job, just finding out how it works, and looking at teaching English as a fall-back position, not even had an interview.

Just started a course, through the Greta, which I hope may lead to something. It's for complete beginners, in accountancy, hope it might give me more chance, despite being qualified, but in the UK.

so, tb, are u qualifiedraccountant in uk and got good french? I know it's hard to convince our quals are equivilent.

We wont need huge amount of income but do need some. Want to get something meaningful! But money is good!
Where are u both? We will b poitou charente.

Quite often, frustratingly, qualifications aren't equivalent. The French are extremely hot on you having the right bit of paper and extremely good about using European laws on equivalency to wriggle around you being qualified or registered to do something elsewhere in Europe but not being able to transfer that to France.

I teach English....funnily enough!

Hi over, yes I'm ACA. To get an attestation of 'comparability' - they're very careful not to say 'equivalent' there is an organisation called naric who have offices in Paris. You send them all your certificates, together with a statement from the awarding organisation and they then decide what if anything is the French equivalent. It costs about ?70-80 from memory, and you agree to pay when you send off the form.

What do you do at the moment? There is work for good tradesmen, as in our experience, the French ones aren't as good as in the UK. Maybe we were lucky there, and not so, here.

When we left, Nov 2006, we knew we had just enough to last after the house was sold and the mortgage paid off, to last until Feb 2009, which was the earliest dh could take his pension from work, albeit reduced. However, with the drop in the pound, we could really do with an income in euros.

We're in the Limousin, about 40mins south of Limoges, so not so very far away. Fortunately the Correze isn't as depressed as the Creuse, but it's still a very agricultural area. There's someone is my accountancy class, she's a qualified medical secretary, originally from Paris, and all she's been able to find is some seasonal apple picking.

Do remember, if you are thinking of working for a UK company, legally, it needs to set up a French subsidiary if it hasn't already got one.

the work i do at the moment is as a trainer - it's my second career having been made redundant 8 years ago. I am almost PGCE qualified now too (will be completely by march). So I was hoping to get some training/assessing work via UK holiday comapnies and then maybe even set up some training courses myself (like i do now though most of my work now comes via word of mouth). Having heaps of customer services type experience I thought that might be good. Also know masses about disability esp kids with disabilities but don't think that would transfer so well!

My dh will be made redundant next year and he will then be 3 years of his earliest possible work pension retirement age. we always wanted to retire to france but now think ' what the hell' we could go now if we could get some work and we would definitely be mortgage free - would like to have a gite/rental to have some little bit of money but tbh that might be in UK! and we have 2 other, older kids but need 11 year old to come (obviously, i wont leave her!)

I've been looking for a job for the last two months, before that I was a temp accounting assistant at a french company. Have also had fixed term contracts at a supermarket & as a library assistant. Did a bit of cleaning too... I was a SAHM for the last few years though and wasn't really looking for a job.

I studied for a french accounting qualification while being a SAHM & hope this will help. I am in quite a rural area & am wondering if I should move to a larger town/city but Dh works here so can't just go somewhere else!

I agree that the French do want french qualifications, but I live in hope that my UK business degree will be useful for something, at some point... I can't have done all that work for nothing lol

I can't imagine working here without speaking French tbh. Maybe it's possible in Paris? That said I did have an interview with a company in Marseille where English is the "langue de travail." Interview was entirely in French though .

My Dh originally arrived from Algeria with no qualifications (imagine how that went down at Pole Emploi ) managed to work and study & is now a patissier (makes nice cakes :) ) But we did have savings or that wouldn't have been possible.

Overthemill if you have formal training qualifications (like a PGCE), speak French and know about disabilities plus are prepared to swot up on legislation there are lots of organisations aimed at improving employability for the disabled. I usedt o teach English to one of them and they ran courses both fir the disabled and for companies on disability awareness/adjustments.

What's your PGCE in? You could always do a concours and the additional trainingto teach here.

The other thing, over, is that anyone 'inactif' arriving here after September 2007 has to have 100% private health insurance. It's illegal for anyone French to have this, so there isn't really a market for it.

So, unless you work, you will find it difficult to get healthcare after your s51s (used to be E106) run out. They last for up to 2 years after you move. It all depends on the NI years, and the date you move.

Gite businesses have had some hard times. Have a look on some of the expat sites to see how people are faring. Some are selling up and going back because they can't make ends meet.

Also, Sarkozy is very keen on the EU law that prohibits you staying in an other member state if you don't work or are not self-supporting. You only have the same rights as a national for social security after 5 years. That's the legislation that was behind the Roma expulsions, even if it was used discriminately.

It's not 'difficult' to get a 1er Euro policy (for people not entitled to a social security number). But it is very expensive.

frakinup that's really interesting - I had n idea that might be possible - I would love to do that as it is around 70% of what I do now. It's basically what I did when building a new career here - built up work slowly in an area i had some knowledge in to now being 'an expert'. And I love it even though not especially well paid.

My French isn't good enough yet but I'm guessing it'd take a while to convert my qualifications - do the expat sites have info? And if you don't mind what was the name of the place you worked - I can google them and then look for others, similar.

we know that a gite wont support us in any complete way at all though we'd hope to still do it as another way - if we can afford to buy one - but might be rental property here instead. We aren't head in the sand, we just want a lifestyle change now rather than later and it has to be soon to be at all possible for the 11 yr old, or not at all!

any more ideas very welcome - it's very interesting.

If you want to teach in a school it's not a case of converting, it's a case of redoing, sitting the concours, doing your PGCE again effectively and then going where you're sent as a civil servant BUT you can teach in the private (hors contrat) sector or freelance, especially to adults with almost any training qualification. The concours is always an option though.

The disability work is out there because legislation demands that businesses with more than 20(?) employees have a certain percentage of those with disabilities - which covers a whole range of things. So the businesses need help adapting and the disabled people need help acquiring job skills and working out what changes are necessary. That's the very brief version!

It would all need to be done in French though.

ok, so i will start looking into this seriously. Slightly fed up at the moment as it seems events are conspiring - we want to move so much!