Hi guys, let’s see how to find a job in Italy. I want you to have a better image of what’s going on, before you get in trouble. In the beginning some facts about myself:
I’m graduated. I have 7 years of experience as a translator from 3 languages and 6 years as HSE Officer. I have about 7 IOSH certificates and about 10 Russian and Italian local certificates. Basically, I’m not a particularly brilliant professional, but certainly not an entry level, and it’s not the worst resume in the country. So I expect to find a place and don’t really care about salary and career level, because obviously locals will have a better chance to get my position. I’m totally okay with it.
With this baggage I prepared a good CV in Italian and English, following advices from Internet – key words, structure, good-looking, etc. I created a complete profile on all possible job boards, and switched to LinkedIn Premium for a trial month. And started applying for every single possibility matching my profile, day by day. Just to give an idea, this is how many applications I sent in the last 80 days.
LinkedIn:
Approximately 150 applications per job board. I used ten of them equally much. It makes roughly 1500 applications only with job boards. To this number you should add numerous direct company site applications, which is around 150 again. It is supposed to be more effective but more time consuming. And add 10 applications which I did personally visiting companies. Let’s minimize all to 1600 applications total to be absolutely fair.
1600 job applications in 80 days, this is 20 per day. This is how a spent my summer. To be fair again, I didn’t always write cover letters.
Now what I got:
- 1 call from an HR for HSE position, she asked me to fill in different forms and DISAPPEARED.
- 1 call from an HR for a multilingual secretary position, for 1000$ a month (!??) with no benefits. I agreed for this, but she DISAPPEARED.
- 1 call from a real manager, who offered me a stage for quite a high position (not paid though), with possible contract after 3 months. It was Friday evening and I agreed for that. I called him back on Monday, and he started classical “I’m at the meeting” and “I’ll call you back” bullshit.
- Tons of SPAM. If you are a professional spammer, write me, let’s compare our mailboxes. Obviously, my personal data leaks from job boards…. Consider, that every time you register, you agree with a privacy policy. Zing!
- 2 calls from abroad, both applied just to see if something was wrong with me or with the country.
Well, frankly speaking, by now it looks like the country… Something is so sick about it. Like I told you, I’m not a brilliant professional, simply try to compare my profile and results, and think of your chances. Because they don’t depend on anything. Italians simply ignore e-mails. I would appreciate if you share your experience in comments. As you see, some people really need it!
P.S. I got a call from my previous job, which I hoped will never happen again. Later I will tell why. But now I have no choice but work with them again. In the meanwhile, I was also passing exams for Civil Engineering degree.