Jobs for expats

While I may have always dreamed of visiting Budapest, it was visiting the city that made my mind up about living here.  Yet I didn’t go about it the best way, in hindsight.  Today, I will give some tips for expats looking for work here in Budapest.

First things first, misconceptions.  Speaking English, without any other language, will NOT get you a job in Budapest anymore.  There is still a school of thought that any English expat travelling to a non-English speaking country will easily be able to find work if not for a company, then teaching English.  Here in Budapest, there are a lot of English schools, and if you either have the qualifications, or prove your aptitude in teaching your native language, they will give you work.  But not much of it.  Your hours could be inconsistent, and they are not known for paying a lot.  My thoughts were that I would only become an English teacher if I had no other choice, and as such, I am yet to become one.

There are a few areas that will get you a job in Budapest speaking just English.  If you have qualifications and experience in finance and human resources, or if you are a computer programmer - especially C and its variants as well as Java, then you will probably have your pick of jobs.  As a lot of companies streamlined their business,  the idea of the Shared Service Centre (SSC) was born, and Budapest provided a good balance of regulations, workforce and location to attract global companies such as IBM, BP and GE to set up their International SSC’s in the city.  At most of these SSC’s, the workforce deals with finance and HR only, and in some cases it also deals with IT and customer support.  But know that jobs at these companies will be very popular, so the number of applicants will be huge, and it will take an age to get a response.

So, how about the rest of us?  One thing always available are telesales jobs.  I did this, and it can be soul destroying for very little income, yet it can also provide a decent income if you show aptitude.  But I’m sure that it isn’t most people’s top job, and if I had the choice again, I would probably avoid it.  There are a few jobs that can be found by just surfing the internet repeatedly.  Try looking for individual company websites, SSC’s based in Budapest, job sites such as cvonline, profession.hu or monster, other sites such as LinkedIn or just talking to people.  Yet the number of jobs for expats who only speak English is not high.  The best way to find a job in Budapest may well be if you can speak multiple languages.