Easter here and Resurrection there, Greeks struggle to make a living amid rampant unemployment. 1,000 people were losing daily their work places in January 2012 and unemployment exploded to 21.8%. In comparison: 14.8% in Jan 2011 and 21.2% in Dec 2011). The efforts to get a job and make ends meet are endless and often fruitless. Then there are no jobs available.
Characteric for the bleak situation in the labour market are two examples brought to light by Sunday newspaper Proto Thema.
Greek Passion Week by Todos somos griegos
A supermarket in Thebes, one hour driving distance from the Greek capital, published an ad to fill two positions for store managers. The company received 1,700 resumes by men and women, candidates from several Greek cities even from far away Crete. Many candidates had more skills than required, among them graduates with MBA, versed with several foreign languages.
In another example, a super market chain offered 100 job vacancies in Thessaloniki. Within very short time 25,000 resumes arrived at the company’s personnel office.
Many candidates avoid to mention all their studies, skills and experiences in order to get the job and not being rejected as ‘overqualified’. (Proto Thema via News247.gr)
PS Greece slowly turns into a country where in order to get a job all you need to is writing, reading and some basic arithmetic 🙁
Good news! 25.000 applications have to be read. That store will have to hire some extra staff to do that. And they have a great choice of candidates. That will be a Super Store Manager. Last good news: in most countries people with low education are the first to feel the full brunt of any crisis. It looks like that at least the Greek undereducated and underprivileged are not…
And now for the bad news: Lately I keep hearing stories around me from highly educated people here in Greece who try to find jobs in other countries and are failing to get one. Most think that it is because of some kind of hate against Greeks. But one, with several university degrees in engineering (even a recent one) and 20 years of working experience, told me that the personnel manager who called her to tell her the bad news mentioned the (in her opinion) sub-standard of Greek higher education compared to the country where the company is active… If that is true it will be an even longer and harder crisis than most of us thought.
here the public sector fires first those with low education. Substandard? possible. possible also over-qualification.
Wasn’t there this week the result of the census among state employees? Just of the top of my head: I think it said that a lot of them (maybe even a majority?) had higher education?
Sorry can’t find it at the moment.
To give you an example about Germany: After the “reunification” – that in the meantime everybody should know wasn’t called reunification to get away with German debts fixed in the Paris treaty – most of East-German skilled workers haven’t got their graduates excepted and had to do a second education to “proof” their skills; even Garcons!
So, that might be one reason but language will be main reason, although lots of Greek people speak German.
So, if Greeks try to find a job in Germany they might make some contact with the Greek community – in every main German city they have minimum a centre or at least a church – and although the Greek state cut that since two years there are also possibilities to perfect the language. At least it’ll work the same volunteer way like there are trucks with humanitarian aid going from Germany via Switzerland and Austria to Greece.
But one thing is for sure, unless you don’t have some business ideas: Berlin’s Greek community is too small, it’s better to go to Hamburg, Cologne, Munich, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt.
And emigrating to find a job is not an easy thing! I mean, changing country to work is often not a mater of weeks or months. If you really want to come into high grade jobs, if the company is not so much in an “international” mood, it will also take one or two years so that your language skills, knowledge of the culture, social behaviour and so on… are good enough so that you can trully integrate the job market.
I mean, it doesn’t have to be put on any sort of “racism”, but the application might be much better accepted if you’ve already been living in that country the past two years…
The “global village” exists only for the people of the top 1%, the rest of us still live in an old school world…! And the differences between country are much bigger that one could imagine.
And about Germany, you should look at the map in that article to find a destination :
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/weiter-positiver-trend-arbeitsmarkt-kommt-in-fruehlingslaune-11701399.html
Forget Berlin if you don’t have a specific plan or idea, and look at south-germany…
Stuttgart, München, Nürnberg… Unfortunaltely, the south is also the most consrevative part of the country!