Q & A

Subject: Working in Paris.

Question: I am currently a senior at Columbia University in NYC. I am a European Union citizen (I have dual EU-US citizenship) and I speak French fairly well -- not quite fluently, but enough to get by pretty easily. I'm interested in moving to Paris for a year after I graduate, but I'd like to line up a job before I get there, preferably in one of the media industries (magazines or TV -- I have extensive internship experience in these fields). Would you know a good way for me to go about doing this? Should I look for American media companies with offices in France? Or are there French magazines looking for American contributors? Your advice would be much appreciated.

Answer: Thanks for your question. Here is what I can tell you, I have been through the experience of looking for a job in France, I found a job that starts in December but in the mean time I am looking for temp work. When I was in the US and knew that we were moving to France, what I did was look for work through the Internet. I started with monster.com and anpe.fr(The French unemployment agency.) Then I found head hunters(Cabinets de recrutement or Chasseurs de têtes is what they are called in French) listed on fr.yahoo.com and e-mailed my résumé(CV in French) to every one that worked in the computer field. Also there a regional monster type French web sites that have job listings, I don’t have any names but there have to be some for the île de France/Paris.

But, maybe before you do that you need to make sure that your French CV is up to speed. The best thing would be to talk to someone French in the field your want to work in and ask them what needs to be in your CV. I could send you mine to give you a general idea as to how a French CV looks. I had my French in-laws look at mine and they okayed it before I sent it out. Also along with your CV the standard things to send along are a cover letter(lettre de motivation in French), hand written if sailed mailed and a photo of yourself. I have to say I did nether of these and still got a job, that is my cover letter was typed if sailed mailed and no photo.

As for your question about French or American companies, I would say both. I would start looking on the web for French/US media companies and sent out a few CV’s and see what happens. The problem could be with this and this is what I found out about my job search, is that it is hard to find work when you are not in the city/country where you want to work. Also once I started doing job interviews I found out what needed to be in my CV and how it needed to be written. Like anything it is hard to find out what people want or need when you are far away. Lastly, the fact that I spoke English did not really make me more employable, even in the computer field it did not seem to help as much as I hoped it would.

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