Every Job By Not Even French

Tutorial Transcript

Salut YouTube I hope you guys are doing well today comes a very very highly requested video which is every visa and every job I've ever had since arriving in Paris France and I guess it's coming from people that are interested and maybe moving here especially obviously on the visa side of things non EU citizens who are considering moving here European citizens they don't really realize how hard it can be but I don't actually have the right to live and work in France as a default I'm not from the EU so how did I do it how did I get my visa and how have I always managed to find work in English I'm going to tell you guys about that in today's video as well as the visa that I very recently applied for and I got rejected for so when I first moved to France I actually wanted to find a job here I had already started working I work in HR and I'd already you know I was a couple of years into my career and I was happy to keep working and continue on and two things happened firstly I realized that the only way I could do that is if I could find a company that would sponsor me and I'm sorry but if you don't speak French and you're working in support function like HR you're probably not going to get sponsorship I mean sponsorship is more for like doctors or IT professionals all those kind of things so I very quickly realized that that's not going to happen and to be able to work professionally for big companies and stuff like that over here you absolutely need a master's degree so put two and two together and I decided to come here on a student visa so that was my first visa it was a a one year long visa which I ended up extending for a few months but it was to do the master 2 - so the second year of a master's degree as I had already the equivalent of an honours year what we call so you have your bachelor's and you have a post-grad year often called an honours year and then you can do your masters 2 - so that's what I did and that was a great visa to come in on honestly some people come in on a working holiday visa for example which is fine but you're actually not allowed to renew a working holiday visa so even if you find a company that's willing to sponsor you you would have to go all the way back to your home can you'd have to start from scratch back there like you're not allowed to change the working holiday visa into a different visa type aside from that there aren't that many options in terms of visas there are some long stayed visas but you often have to prove that you've got loads of cash and all sorts of stuff so that's what I did so I got my masters here in France and I was on my student visa and this is also my first job as well because this is very very very common in France but my master's was what we call in an apprentissage, an alternance program and basically what's that what that means is that I would spend a few months at school and then I would work for a company and then a week back at school and then to expect the company in a week back at school and two weeks at the company and you get the point so you actually spend I would say two-thirds of your time getting your master's degree working and of course writing your thesis but you do some classes some exams and then you work and that's such a great way to get your master's degree especially because it's so pragmatic but also because you're earning money so my fees which should have been ten thousand euros were completely paid for by my company that's compulsory if you're doing an apprentissage, your company will pay for your university fees or school fees and who earn a monthly salary so mine was fifteen hundred euros per month and even while you're studying at school you still earn there which kind of blew my mind but so I could study for the first three months and the company I hadn't even started at yet were paying me 1,500 euros a month so incredible incredible incredible and you'll find even if you can't find out a apprenissage, a lot of French schools or universities offer it's like you do your master's degree and it will be six months of course in six months of internship and internships here are paid so my apprentissage was at LVMH so Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy group obviously massive French luxury giant who owned brands such as Louis Vuitton Hennessy obviously Sephora Givenchy Guerlain Marc Jacobs and you get the point those in So I was in the HR function supporting executive learning and development so that would mean we'd run these trainings for top executives that fly in from all over the world to Paris and would often get to stay in chateaux and the most amazing venues and I helped out with the organization of all of these so it'd be me kind of sending the invitations and creating all the materials and being there on the ground to make sure that everything was working I don't wanna go into too much detail because I'm gonna do a whole video on my experience at this place because it was so French and it was such a strong strong strong introduction to the French culture and French luxury and I had some experiences there that I don't think I'll ever have again in my life so I'm gonna do a whole new video on that. So that I was at LVMH for over a year because I had finished my studies and everything but we extended my contract for a few months just to wrap up at this point of course I needed to think about what visa type I was going to convert to so that I could stay in France because I knew that I still wanted to live and work here in France and I personally had two options so option a was the relationship these are route and to get a relationship visa I mean outside of marriage if you don't want to get married you have to be able to prove that you've been living with your partner for at least one year and thankfully I could we had electricity bills in the same name we had a joint bank account we had both of our names on health insurance documents all these anything that's kind of official that has a letter head after a year basically we decided let's get PACSed so PACS is like getting the civil union and if you have that combination of living together for at least a year and proving that you've got a common life and proving that your relationship is genuine etc and you have the PACS then you can apply for a relationship visa a lot of people think that you just need to get PACSed and you have the right to live in work in France and it's not at all the case you have to be living together for at least a year so that's option A now option 2 is that when you graduate with a master's degree in France you actually have a special visa which allows you to look for work it's called the APS Jeunes Diplome and it lasts for 12 months and so you've got 12 months to look for work and you can work for it in about nine hundred and sixty four hours I believe which is around about six months full-time or one-year part-time makes it much easier to find a job because the companies if you have this visa status they don't actually need to sponsor you as a foreigner they do need to pay a small tax and that can be around you know fifteen hundred two thousand euros but honestly there's nothing in the grand scheme of things so they do not have to you know advertise your role for three months and prove that they couldn't find a French person or a European person to do the job they don't have to do any of that paperwork they can hire you as a foreigner pay the small text and it's very smooth and easy and then your visa type would be called Passeport Talent so talent passport and it would be about the fact that you are highly educated and you've got a good job offer in France obviously there's all sorts of conditions like you need to earn at least a certain amount excetera etc but in general that's a really really great route if you have studied in France now when I graduated it was the first ever year that this visa existed no one knew much about it we were talking to companies about this new visa they seemed a bit skeptical they're like no no because we'll have to advertise your role for three months and everything is like no no no you don't have to do that anymore but it was all new and it wasn't so clear and I said you know what let's do the relationship these are one because at least we know that it will work and I will have the right to work in France so let's just do that it's easy and then companies don't even need to be involved in my visa decision I can just turn up to the interview and say yeah I've got the right to work here you can hire me like that and so that's what we decided to do so I went onto what's called the Carte Vie Privee et Familiale as as I said before it's PACS plus-one year living together now my first job after my master's degree I really wanted a kind of like tier course star that kind of experience and so I went to work for a company called Deezer it's a French music streaming platform and it's kind of a competitor to Spotify it's the same kind of concept and I actually went in on a short-term contract it's called a CDD so it means a fixed term contract and to cover someone's maternity leave and I was an international HR manager in that role and so what that meant is that I was looking after employees who are based in many many different countries around the world and that is why I was able to do the job in English because just like at LVMH it was at the headquarters you're working at the international level looking out so I would definitely say that's a tip is to target companies target French companies which are headquartered in Paris because they're gonna have often that international teams the corporate level based in Paris with them because that's the headquarters so you can find a lot of english-speaking jobs and these kinds of companies which is really cool so that was really great and they did actually offer for me to stay at the end of my fixed term contract but I gracefully declined because I actually that was actually the time of my life that I moved into my role at L'Oreal where I work now L'Oreal is obviously a huge iconic French group and what I'm doing at L'Oreal is really around leadership development so if you take people who around the ages of you know like the Millennials like they said like 25 to 35 years old developing their leadership skills developing their ability to be really successful in the Loreal group and the Loreal culture I kind of upskill them through various training programs offline online all that kind of stuff so it's a really really great job so at the moment I'm still on the carte Vie Privee et Familiale I'm still on that original relationship visa and I've just been renewing it year after year this year you know I've been in France for five and a half years so I was eligible to apply for a new 10-year residency permit which is an EU so european residency permit so that would just be so great because I could stop worrying about renewing my visa and stuff all the time and so to be eligible for this you needed to have been living in France for five years prove integration so proof that you could speak French at a certain they've also got my certificate for that you know I had my tax returns for the last five years I had my pay slips in the last five years I had all the documents you can absolutely imagine I have a dossier like this to prove that you've got your own resources so I mean I've got a permanent contract and a really great French company you know I studied here of course on top of all of this I'm married to a Frenchman so I really thought that this visa would absolutely go through basically I applied for this in February and I was so excited for this and I got completely rejected apparently the years I spent as a student don't count towards it being a student doesn't count as living here not really in their eyes and I said well that's unfair because it's written nowhere online I obviously fulfill all of the requirements like can you please show me where it is and they're like I don't know you won't find it online it's not on an internal document that only we have so you can't know that but basically consider your years as a student as living in France so really get it about that so I got rejected for that visa so I'm still on the carte Vie Privee et Familiale but anyway it means that my my visa dramas continue and I will have to keep renewing it I've got another renewal coming up this yeah sorry guys if it looks weird but I had to move because the Sun is in my face like that that's all of the visas that I had or attempted to have while I've been in France and all of the jobs that I've had since moving to France I'm actually going to do an entire video on my tips for finding jobs in English and France. If you're excited for that kind of video please give this video a like so that I know any questions about my personal story or the ins and outs of my life in France so far please don't hesitate to ask me down below I can definitely get back to you and in saying that if you have very specific questions about your own individual immigration cases and visas and that kind of thing I probably can't help because I'm not an immigration lawyer and otherwise guys I'll see you in the next video on the not even French Channel at the end too