Warsaw - General Employment Situation for French man focusing on Business Development B2B and HR/Recruitment

Hi everyone!

I am 30yrs old French man with 5 yrs experience in Moscow and previously 5 in Dublin. I am currently considering to move to Warsaw for career development opportunity.

(meaning that I am not interested in translation job, and also not really enthusiast by Share Services/BPO). I am focusing on Business Development B2B and HR/Recruitment activities which are my experience.

I got some local contacts and the first feedback was: you need to speak the language.

I would be interested to know if you know around you some French people working for International companies on business roles (no SSC/BPO)? Are they under expat contract or found their role locally (local contract)?

Is that true that once you speak the language at intermediate level, the number of opportunities are important for foreigners?

Looking forward to your reply!

Jeremy

I think you would need the language to at least an upper intermediate level.
Still you should have no problem as you have already learnt Russian and English to a high level.

@ Jeremy, i believe that job-poland is run by a French man based in Lodz. Could not hurt to drop him an email through the website to see if he could maybe help you to establish some contacts in the recruitment industry in Poland.

@rozumiemnic
Well, I am sure that thanks to my Russian skills, it will speed up my learning... but I can not afford to stay in Poland without job for many months. That's why I try to understand the real situation. My plan was to come and to take intensive lessons, hoping that I could reach an intermediate level after 3-4 months.

I can see on forums many profiles coming to Poland to find "any-job" or receiving invitation to join Poland (usually IT, Customer Service, Accounting - or other support functions)... but I don't cross foreigner developing their career on Business roles. Is that an impression or there are no foreigners in international companies?

@JollyRomek
Thank you for the advise, will do it. Got their name and now looking for some contact details.

Foreigners of this type are generally hired in the home country of the international company and transferred to Poland. Not many off-the-street job seekers get hired for jobs like you are looking for inside Poland itself, unless they have impressive IT skills.

My advice is to get hired by a French company or other international company that does business in France while still in France, and get transferred to Poland, preferably earning Western wages.

Otherwise, there is little incentive for you to move to Poland. Wages are low, opportunities are limited, and numerous better opportunities exist elsewhere.


That's overly optimistic, even if you are fluent in Russian. It might work for reading, and probably also reading, but you will require a lot more time to develop speaking and writing skills, even at the intermediate level.

Hello Dominic. Thank you for your reply.

I share your opinion with the classical way to get hired in Poland while being foreigner which is to be transfer from your home country. It is similar in Russia and I believe in most of the countries.

Despite this fact, do you have any "success story" of foreigner people who could find the job without being transferred?

Jeremy

I lived 12 years in Poland, and the only such cases I saw were in information technology, and those guys has some serious qualifications and experience. They now own their own web design company in Poland, and it's doing very well.

Things are much harder in business-related fields, though, unless you really have something to sell in your CV and know the local language. Poland turns out a massive surplus of graduates with degrees in business, administration, marketing, economics and related fields each year, and only a fraction of those find relevant jobs, even those with masters degrees and MBAs. I wouldn't count on finding a job after arriving in Poland unless you had 1) serious qualifications and experience that make you stand out on the very competitive job market; 2) a pretty decent working knowledge of the local language, including speaking and writing at a reasonable level of fluency; and 3) lots of very useful contacts and connections close to those who make real hiring decisions. I'm sure exceptions exist, but it's not very wise to make plans based on exceptions and luck.

Otherwise, I would say that you are wasting your time trying to find work in Poland when there are much better opportunities elsewhere for someone with your qualifications. That is, unless you go the classical route of finding work in the West and getting transferred to Poland at Western wages.

Why are you interested in Poland, in particular?

Hi Dominic,

I am working in Russia for the past 5 years and could observe many decision from international companies (Fmcg, logisticien copines) to centralize some logistics department or hr department in Poland, using the country as a hub.

I really believe in a growth of the economy. Many investments (production, heavy industry) which were planed in Russia will be transferred on other eastern emergent countries, delivering the region around.

Therefore I really think that there is an interesting potential to develop in Poland, much more than in Western Europe which are already mature business.