Re: first job/international opportunities? (long)

[Niebergall Peter-APN001C <apn001c -at- EUROPE -dot- MOT -dot- COM>]

Hello gang!

My name was mentioned two times in the recent messages, so I feel compelled
to add my 2 cents worth of mustard (don't you hate literally translated
idioms...):
<RANT>
I've mentioned "waiting for that H1 (intracorporate transfer, I believe)
visa route to become possible (my experience so far is that my chances of
getting a green card via lottery are way higher than any US company going
through the hassles imposed for that "visa route")", but I follow that
approach leisurely by working for American corporate subsidiaries throughout
Europe - I eventually expect an international company to tell me: Peter,
your ops procedure for department xyz is excellent, now go and adapt it our
American site xyz and create some corporate standards worldwide (and I'm not
talking about the contentless review-cycle defining sorry ol' SOPs I've
seen/rewritten so far). I'd do that for a year or so, since American food is
great, but on the other hand the "culture" is far too shallow to enjoy for a
longer term. 8o)
</RANT>
Until that happens, I'll keep participating in the annual green card
lottery. If anyone has specific questions about working and the cost of
living in Ireland, the UK, France or Germany, I'll be happy to give some
primers on taxes, infrastructure, etc.

<Now for something completely different...>

To Stacia Pickle, and the other (under-)grads, who initiated this thread:
Have a shot at the UK based database called JobServe for IT professionals.
<snip> JobServe is accessed by sending email messages to:

      <command>@jobserve.com

   where <command> is one of the following:

      help      - request a copy of our help message.
      subscribe - subscribe to JobServe.
      cancel    - cancel your subscription.
      today     - request a full copy of today's issue of JobServe.
      filter    - specify key words for filtering your copy of JobServe.
      services  - request information about our other free services for
                  freelance IT professionals.
      directory - request a copy of The JobServe Directory of IT Recruitment
                  Agencies.
      dbhelp    - request details about receiving JobServe in a format
                  suitable for importing into a database.

   For example, to request a full copy of today's issue of JobServe you
   would send a blank email message to: today -at- jobserve -dot- com   </snip>

I can add a warning: a complete download of today's (!!) job offers is about
1 to 2 megabytes in flat text, there are about 4000 to 5000 new offers
weekly...Employee's markets are great !!
On www.jobserve.com you also find piles of agency profiles, which in turn
offer online brochures on "Contracting in the UK", etc.. Look for Kudos, a
very recommendable agency.

Here's a small excerpt on contract job offering websites in Germany, not all
solely IT jobs, though:
www.dv-job.de
www.sercon.de
www.heise.de/stema
www.stellenboerse.de
www.stellenmagazin.de
www.jobs.adverts.de
www.wdr.de/jobs
www.jobware.de, et cetera et nauseum....

To Richard Guziewicz and George Mena: Thank you. It is always a pleasure to
see people with good global attitudes and understanding, your discourse is
like a soothing massage. Good to see that common sense hasn't vanished
completely ;D

<RANT>
To John Cornellier, who admitted that <snip> Expats are notorious
for living here for years with virtually no contact with the locals. They
can be seen driving to the mall, oblivious to "foreign" traffic regulations,
wandering around Marks & Spencer and Gap discussing that morning's news seen
on CNN....</snip> I feel very sorry that these "expats" will never know what
they've missed, since British guys buying British TV-dinners at Marks &
Sparks in Paris (!!!) will go back home and even complain about the
different culture without having the vaguest of ideas what they're talking
about. If you go to Rome, eat what the Romans eat...BTW, how did the
"monoglott" get into your project in the first place, bad interviewing by
chance ??
</RANT>
Last, not least:

Bernd Hutschenreuther stated: <snip>
Don't expect too much from the Internet, because of e.g., in Germany
internet is available but the usage of internet is poor yet. That's why you
will seldom find job announcements in the internet. The costs of internet
are very high, and only few people have private internet access. Only very
few offices hire their staff here using internet. [...]
In my office people from many countries are working, and this is seldom in
old re-unified Germany. </snip>

Bernd, please limit your assertions to East Germany, since for the old
republic this simply isn't true: ISDN bandwith is still a little more
expensive than elsewhere on Earth, but many providers allow channel-bundling
these days. Another year and the market is saturated. As for availability of
online job offers, check the above URLs, you might just be surprised! In the
Rhein-Main area, in Munich/Ingolstadt, in Stuttgart, in the
Cologne/Duesseldorf area as well as Hamburg I have yet to find a company
that doesn't employ British, French or American white collar workers (or
doesn't grant Internet access to employees)...and my experience includes
banks, telcos, refineries, electronics and advertising companies. But East
Germany is different <g>.

Cheers, and a good weekend to all of you....

Peter

Private e-mail: Niebergall -at- csi -dot- com

 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=