Working in the European Union

European Commission Directorate-General For Employment Social Affairs And Inclusion

Description

A guide for graduate recruiters and job-seekers
Employment policy
Education policy

Sujets

• Diploma
• Labour economics
• University

Informations

• Publié par: EUROPEAN-COMMISSION-DIRECTORATE-GENERAL-FOR-EMPLOYMENT_SOCIAL-AFFAIRS-AND-INCLUS
• Nombre de lectures: 51
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

WORKING
in the
EUROPEAN
UNION
A guide for graduate recruiters and job-seekers
FOURTH EDITION
VV. H. Archer and A. J. Raban
EURES
MEURopean Employment Services f
EUROPEAN COMMISSION Working
in the
European
Union
Fourth edition
A guide for graduate
recruiters and
job-seekers
W. H. Archer and A. J. Raban Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg
ISBN 92-826-9133-0
Hobson Publishing pic, Bateman Street, Cambridge CB2 1LZ
ISBN 1-86017-038-2
© ECSC-EC-EAEC, Brussels · Luxembourg, 1995
Printed in Italy Page Contents
Acknowledgements 5
1 Introduction 7
2 EURES and the EURES network 13
19 3 Europe — A general view
4 Starting out 31
5 Belgium (België/Belgique) 43
65 6 Denmark (Danmark)
7 Germany (Deutschland) 83
107 8 Greece (Ellada)
9 Spain (España) 123
139 10 France
163 11 Ireland
179 12 Italy (Italia)
13 Luxembourg 195
205 14 The Netherlands (Nederland) Page
15 Austria (Österreich) 223
237 16 Portugal
17 Finland (Suomi) 251
18 Sweden (Sverige) 263
19 United Kingdom 277
20 CVs across the Union 299 Acknowledgements
The text of this edition has drawn heavily on the contributions made by a
very large number of others to the earlier editions of this book. The
authors are indebted to these individuals and organizations and to the
many more who provided advice or information for this new edition.
Special thanks are due to Mark Batten and Keith Moor, to Nuno Netto
Lopes, Dino Pistevos, Nannette Ripmeester, Torsten Lüppecke, Christian
Hunt, Andreas Swahn, Stefano Tronconi, Britta Stalling, Stephan Wajs-
kop, Sharon MacBeath, Georges Duboeuf, Andrew Crisp and Lindsay
Archer for additional material and inspiration. ι
Introduction
Over the past 10 years Europe has experienced a social, cultural and
economic transformation to rival any in its written history. After centuries
of internal strife a new European generation has emerged; aware of the
differences between cultures and nations, but facing those differences with
interest rather than fear. At the heart of this transformation is education,
not just within Member States but between them. The front line in Europe
is now employment, within andn those countries.
This book is a practical'guide designed to help make the mobility of
young university graduates a reality by providing them — and those who
would recruit them — with basic information on recruitment mechanisms
and qualifications.
The idea for this book sprang originally from the fact that membership
of the European Community (EC) was having a dramatic effect on the
patterns of trade of the Member States. As a result, commercial and
business organizations more and more needed graduates who spoke several
European languages and, if possible, were personally familiar withl n countries.
It became increasingly common for recruiters to demand language skills
and local knowledge as a subsidiary qualification for all sorts of new
graduate jobs. Equally, many new graduates began to look to other EC
countries than their own for jobs. These might only be short-term but it
became increasingly common for people to consider spending significant
periods of their careers abroad.
Now, following the removal of trade barriers, the EC has become the
European Union (EU). And when making career decisions graduates have
15 countries within the Union and more within the wider European
Economic Area (EEA) to choose from, without the need for a work
permit. Equally, employers can now visit universities from Helsinki to
Lisbon in their search for students. Never has such a range of education,
employment and expertise been so widely available.
The European Commission has been fostering mobility both for work
and for education through a wide range of programmes. In less than four 1: INTRODUCTION
years the ERASMUS and LINGUA programmes alone facilitated the
mobility of over 280 000 students and 35 000 teaching staff before the
launch of the new, improved SOCRATES initiative (see Chapter 4).
Initiatives like this and the COMETT programme which will be subsumed
into the new LEONARDO programme ensure the creation of a group of
young people whose education and training transcends national frontiers
within the Union. So integration and mobility within Europe are becoming
increasingly important and increasingly common.
Businesses have been reorganizing themselves to take advantage of a
single market which no longer needs separate and different operations in
each country. The same products or services can be sold throughout the
EU and manufacturing locations or distribution networks no longer need
to take account of national frontiers. As such businesses increasingly see
themselves as European, rather than national, so their need for staff who
can cope with the challenges of this new environment grows.
Organizations are therefore building up pools of employees who can
operate effectively at a European level and not just at a national level. This
change of emphasis has the important consequence of involving them in
direct recruitment from foreign universities or colleges.
A second trend, which has reinforced the first, is that there are evident
shortages of certain sorts of people emerging from the higher education
systems of many of the Member States. Despite increasing participation
rates in higher education, these shortages are likely to grow worse as
demographic trends lead to a decrease in the number of 18-year-olds.
Moreover, even where there is no overall shortage of graduates, there is
still a lack of high-quality graduates of all sorts.
Most employers now recognize that the root of competitive advantage is
people. They know that ultimately their businesses will succeed or fail on
the basis of their ability to hire and hold on to better people than their
competitors. Good graduates, of any discipline, are hard to find. The
European Union multiplies many times the size of the pool of such highly
qualified and able candidates.
One strategy, which organizations who look for new graduates from
other EU countries can adopt, is to look for European nationals studying
at local universities, colleges or business schools. This is a sensible course
to take since such students will be fluent in the local language and familiar
with the local culture as well as their own, but it is almost certainly not
large enough to meet the objectives outlined above.
As far as students are concerned, a growing sense of internationalism
and increasing familiarity with other European countries through family
holidays and educational exchanges have been leading them to look for
jobs with employers who can offer a European career rather than a purely
local one.