Moving to France for work: salaries, visas and resumes

Below is a brief overview of how you can now move to France to work in IT: what kind of visa you should expect, what salary you need to have for this visa, and how to adapt your resume to local traditions.

Current political situation

Not a baththurte for the sake of, but purely facts for. (with)



The situation now is such that all non-EU immigrants, regardless of their level of education, are considered as an evil that must be resisted . In practice, this means a very high (more than half) percentage of refusals in salarié visas — a working permit for

a specialist who has not studied in France and with a salary of less than 54 brut / year (approximately 3 thousand euro / month net, use this calculator to recalculate).

')

Moreover, if your salary is higher than 54 - you fall under the European agreement on the “blue card” ( carte bleue = passeport talent emploi hautement qualifié ), and you are required to issue a working permit. In addition, the blue card makes it much easier to transport a family. With salarié, you either do everything synchronously - the children and the wife get visas with you, come with the same tickets at the same time, or you come alone, wait a year and a half (!), Apply for the reguropement familial terribly bureaucratic procedure, wait 6 more 18 months and then transport the family.



Therefore, for simplicity, we will continue to consider moving with a salary higher than 54.

54 - what level is it?

In general, the figure 54 was not taken from the ceiling, it is one and a half average salaries in France.

Considering that the local system is to a general leveling, one and a half average salaries are a lot, for example, we open Glassdoor in Google Paris , and we see that the average salary of Software Engineer = 58.



Local recruiters will tell you that 54 is a gentleman with 10 years of experience, but in fact depends on the region and on your specialty. Salaries in Paris are about 5-10 thousand higher than salaries in the south, and salaries in the south are about 5 thousand higher than in the north of France.



The most expensive are the devops / fulstak dudes like “I will do everything you want on django / react and deploy it on OVH (local cloud service, very cheap and crappy)”, as well as the datentists (image / video processing especially). These categories can receive their 54 even in the south, and if you are from the frontend or, for example, Java Finance Senior, then it is easier to immediately look towards Paris. All of the above is my personal impression of the current local market, but the situation is changing rapidly. Now American companies like Texas Instruments and Intel are actively leaving the southern market, while eastern giants like Huawei and Hitachi are actively expanding their presence. Both of these effects together inflate salaries in the south.

At the same time, Facebook and Apple are coming to Paris, which contributes to an increase in wages in Paris - now you can leave Google for Facebook, and earlier you raised your salary in Google with a complicated scheme “to leave Google - to set up your startup - to return to Google”.



But these are already lyrics, a review of salaries and how they can be raised separately, if it is interesting.

What to write in the resume?

You are going to a non-politreturnal and non-lethal country - this must be immediately understood.



For example: the hashtag #MeToo was translated about the same in almost all countries of the world (# I do not say in Russia, #MoiAussi = “me too” in Canada), except for France. In France, it was localized as #BalanceTonPorc = “hand over your pig” (difficult to translate, in fact, there are many politically incorrect meanings).



Therefore, if you are a white man, then you should add a photo to your resume - this will play for you.



A standard resume occupies exactly one page and the practice of “throwing it into a two-page basket of sins for lack of professionalism” is quite common.



The exception is the date of the scientists with a degree and publications, when you are, in fact, a researcher working for the industry.



If your education is not French, and not profile, just drop this item from your resume.

If CS - write so that it is clear that this is CS.



As for projects, do not write phrases such as “2016-2018 Name Bank / DevOps: Prometheus, Grafana, AWS”.



Write according to the STAR = “situation, task, action, result” scheme:

“Devops in the technical department of a large bank, in a group of 10 people responsible for monitoring and preventing incidents.



Project: transition from a home-made monitoring system to Prometheus, 100 machines in production at AWS, a project of 3 people, I am the project leader, the duration of the project is one and a half years. What was done: I deployed a test system on one of the test machines in a couple of days and have been waiting for the approval of the security service for a year and a half. The result: the chef is satisfied, the group was given more money after the demonstration ”, and so on.



In conclusion, is this a good way to move to France for work?



The answer is no, from personal experience — I had a relocation to work — no.



My personal experience says that it is necessary to relocate for study , if with my wife - then on two student visas, that is, both are enrolled in studies.



Thus, it is easier for you to look for a job (after receiving the wizard, you are automatically given a visa, which allows you to live and work in France for 1 year, which greatly facilitates the search for a job, because you are there, you can start even tomorrow + a French education) reduced to about 3 years (from 6 years old when moving to work), and you have an invaluable year to calmly learn the language in the environment (it is really very necessary, but in the environment it quietly learns six months before B1 = minimum conversational).



More about my wife - I am often asked in person, what if I come on a student visa, and my wife does not want to work and study. There is an option to register a wife for study and let him “study”, staying for the second / third / fourth year until you find a job, and then apply for citizenship together and get it in a year. So often do guys from Algeria and Tunisia, for example. The problem in this case is purely monetary - it will be hard to buy an apartment + to travel + to have 2 cars per family, but to live on rentals + travels + 1 car - without any problems at all. It is difficult in what sense - in order for one person to raise a salary as two developer salaries, in IT you need to be the head of about 50-100 people, or look for some very specific niche in Eastern companies - see above for the datentists, or, for example, now big plus became the basic conversational Chinese.



Thank you for reading.