Is teaching English the only way for a foreigner to work in Poland?

Hey people,

Is teaching English the best chance of securing employment in Poland?

After spending weeks looking on the net for office based positions in Warsaw, I have come to the conclusion that this may be the only option left.

Theoretically, I would have thought there would be a lot of international companies based in Warsaw, but getting access to this information seems hard.

Does anybody know of any agencies etc in Warsaw or contacts that may be able to help me?

I have read on this forum, that its who you know as well that helps.

Cheers

You need to talk to the big international employers. I take it your Polish is not fluent so going through agencies may not be easy. All of the big accountancy firms have lots of offices in Poland. Many of the banks do too. If you have the right experience to get a job with them they may consider you for their Polish offices and may also stump up the cash for the language classes.

There's plenty of jobs in Warsaw, but we still speak Polish here, you know...

Forgot to mention that I have contacts with one such accounting firm in Warsaw so if you thinks you have the right experience.........

Hey globetrotter

Any info or contacts you have would be a real plus.

Currently an office manager, with an assortment of office skills inluding IT etc.

No, my Polish is not fluent, working on it though (yes Grzegorz, I realise you still speak Polish in Poland, I am trying to learn as fast as I can)

Sparky359,

OK. I'm talking with the senior partner tomorrow so I'll put out the feelers for you. I think getting an office manager job with them might be impossible because I know the incumbent in Warsaw and trust me she is very good and very well respected. He does know an awful lot of clients though !

Had a chat as promised. No openings in that particular firm but he thinks he knows a couple of clients who might have some vacancies. I can't put much pressure on him timewise but if I don't hear within a week I'll give hime a call.

Thanks globetrotter,

I really appreciate that.

Thanks again

See my other post relating to documents i can send anyone re working and living in Poland sent by a EURES advisor on behalf of the Jobcentre Plus International Team :)

i work in Poland being from the netherlands and i dont give language lessons .
there is a serious shortage on technical disciplines and its relative easy to find a job even not speaking polish .
last half year i work in electronics even without all to much polish .
but keep in mind learning polish is very much needed cause not all poles speak german or english .
anyway good luck i love living here poland rules !

No, there is increasing employment from BPO companies. This are companies who are oursourcing their business processes to Poland, mostly from the USA and Western Europe. If you like to work for such a company you can contact any recruitment agency in any large town in Poland

Contact the British Polish chamber of commerce and get a list of their members and send out your CV. ALSO contact the American Polish chamber of Commerce. It will be difficult at arms length and you ill have more success when you are on the ground here in Poland. I also know of some expats who work for film companies as english speaking actors and they will get 600-1000 plz a day. They have no previous acting experience they just signed up with an agency.

Teaching English isn't the only way for British to work in Poland. Ask Clarkson, Hammond or May they work in Poland now.

Brian May from Queen? I saw posters advertising their concerts here.

Actually James May from Top Gear

Not sure specifically about Poland, but I know that up until the mid-'90's, many countries were looking desperately for educated English native-speaker teachers as instructors. The reasons of course were that all pupils were typically subjected to years of mind-numbing classroom rote rot from non-native teachers and rarely if ever heard native US-English as taught by anyone other than Europeans who'd studied in the UK, yet often had such second-language interference, it was a surprise that the children learned correct, idiomatically natural English at all!

With the advent of the digital age over the past decade or so, English has become almost as though it were the first "second" language of the entire European continent, Poland being no exception.

When I taught English briefly in Germany, I was usually the first native English speaker most had ever encountered. As a result, many had to unlearn the mistakes handed down to them by their native German-born and educated English teachers:-)

Although I teach English myself I know quite a few non Polish speaking foreigners who have other jobs. I would concentrate on Warsaw or some of the other larger cities however.

Nowadays it's polarised. There are either (not really in Poland) the well-paying jobs (usually connected to petrochemicals companies or universities in more affluent countries) where you need to be able to create a syllabus with structures and lexis appropriate to the learners' levels, degree of educational attainment, personal situation and learning aims, create the threads and understand how to develop them and follow the syllabus you wrote without depending on textbooks and with the learners prepared adequately for any public examinations they're taking. Or there's a sort of race to the bottom in for example Spain or sadly now Poland.

I've even heard of lessons for less than 60 an hour now in Warsaw and some providers are now employing 'Teachers' without any sort of teaching qualification or even a degree! Ones who are doing English lessons of whatever quality because they're in the country rather than being in the country in order to teach there. That or some sort of hokey 'dual method' where a local presents the core syllabus and the native speaker does God knows what.

Many of the professional Teachers I worked with when I first came to Warsaw are still in the country having settled permanently there however very few are still teaching unless it's private lessons on top of their regular job. Most of those people speak Polish nicely and get the private lessons through personal recommendation. They tend to refuse more students than they take.

There are other jobs for English speakers in PL; in fact more and more. Monolinguals are at a disadvantage though, and unfortunately some of the jobs are at call centres etc.

There's online work, however this is of varying quality and not always stable employment.

Sounds a lot like the US.