Job Discussion Forums

[roywebcafe]

I am thinking of going to Budapest for one week and look around for work. Is it worth it right now or should i wait until January or whenever?

Because I am unemployed I thought it might be best to time it so I don't have to sign off the dole and back on again when i got back. If i am succesful I won't go back if not i won't have to go through all the hassles of reclaiming unemployment benefit.

Krakow is my second choice but went through the same problem last May without success and because i missed my sign on date I had to go through the reclaiming process again because i left the country!!

In UK btw. If that wasn't bad enough I am in the West midlands which has the worse of the recession

[Deicide]

[roywebcafe]

Hi Deicide

My goal is finding a job and earning some money. I got the impression there were more around in Hungary but if thats all they pay i will forget it. I have a goal to emigrate from the UK. There are several countries i could think of. Teaching is my career now so will stick with it unless i can make good money at something else. Have triied many countries including the better paying ones like Japan, spain and Germany with little success.

[Deicide]

[roywebcafe]

-CELTA,
-First degree also two acadmeic modules in ESOL towrads another course i never finished.
-Another tefl certificate but that was online and very grammar focused

Started teaching in 2003 but added up together I have three and a half years experience.

Can speak German and just a little chinese, spanish, french

[jonniboy]

Possibly you're looking in the wrong places, while I don't know for sure I would suspect that due to Krakow and Budapest being popular destinations, there is serious competition there. In contrast Riga is not top of people's lists, especially with Latvian unemployment overtaking Spain's for the doubtful honour of highest in the EU last month. I can count the number of native speaker teachers I know here on one hand. However, possibly as a result of that, I have as many hours as I want and have recently had to pass students on to contacts. This week and last I worked crazy hours - about 36 clock hours in total over six days - the most I've done up to now in what is my seventh year of teaching. (It's a temporary thing and will be scaled down to a more reasonable 28 hours come 2010.) As a result I've cleared �400 for this week and expect around �450 a week in hand in coming weeks. The lat is tied to the euro and thus the pound has been performing pretty dismally against that.

You might think that romance languages would be pretty useless in this part of the world but for me they've been a help. As I speak Spanish with a fair degree of fluency, I have students from the Spanish embassy who've been only too happy to have a teacher who can put things in a "Spanish context" for them. (Read: do the odd translation when necessary or anticipate problems they'll have/synonyms which they'll know.)

I'm not saying that you should come to Latvia, the situ is dire here at the moment and I built myself up here from a low base over the course of several years. Also wherever you go, you'd certainly have to put in a few years in any destination to get the best out of it - there are slim pickings for newbies in European markets right now. What I am saying though is that in a crisis, you may have to think "out of the box" and ignore popular European destinations where your earning potential will always be limited by competition.

[roywebcafe]

Thanks Jon

How is the best way to find privates in Riga? If the flights are cheap enough and i can find a cheap guest house i might try it. Otherwise wait until after Xmas and then look around when i have better finances - can get non-teaching work in UK at Xmas.

You can PM me if you have any ideas about living and working in Riga.