Working in France
by Léo Parpais
This article was written by Global Graduates, published on 12th May 2010 and has been read 13678 times.
Surface area: 643,801 km2 .
Population: 66.7 million.
Largest cities: Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille, Nice, Nantes and Strasbourg.
Unemployment rate: 10.5% (Apr '15).
Minimum wage: €1,457.52 per month (Jan '15).
Average costs
- 50 m² apartment: €700 - 1200 per month
- Loaf of bread: €0.75
- Cinema: €8
- Meal in a local restaurant: €15
Where are the jobs?
- Engineering
- Design
- Manual work
- Property sales
- Customer services
- Catering
- Sales
- IT
- Secretarial
- Carrefour- retailer with job and internship opportunities in marketing, finance, risk management, etc.
- Sodexo Alliance - food and facilities management services.
- La Poste - the French postal service.
- France Telecom - one of the world's leading telecommunications operators.
- PSA - Peugeot-Citroën car manufacturer.
- EDF - leading energy player active in all major electricity businesses.
- Vivendi Universal - world leader in communications and entertainment.
- SNCF- French National Railway enterprise.
Tips and advice
- In France, you are expected to have studied towards a professional goal (i.e your degree leads you to gain a certificate to get a specific job). It's not as flexible as in the UK, so make sure your work experience is highly relevant to the sector you're interested in.
- You are expected to have a high level of French language skills.
- Recruiters hesitate to give permanent contracts so you're most likely to be offered a CDD (contrat à durée determinée) or CTT (contrat de travail temporaire)
- Send your CV in with a photo and without references.
- We tend to use verbs to express our job activities, the French use nouns (I liaised with = liaison avec) Most students/graduates are having to work as interns or stagiaires.
Useful French websites
- Official government job site
- French job board
- Advice on careers and documentation for students in France
- News and direction of the student job market
- Cultural updates about French cinema, TV, music, books, arts and sciences
- France 5's job page
- French Yellow Pages
- 1000s of jobs with email alerts, personality tests, CV advice... the works.
- L'Étudiant - one site for all French students
Newspapers
For more information and tailored help, visit eures.europa.eu.
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