|
Young Poles Climb the Career Ladder Abroad
It seems that soon gone will be the days of low-skilled manual labor for young and talented Polish professionals who go abroad to look for jobs. Well educated and highly qualified Polish university graduates begin to realize their real market value and start to get jobs which correspond to their qualifications.
Joanna Najfeld reports
Since Poland joined the European Union in 2004, hundreds of thousands of young people left the country every year to look for better paid jobs.
Many landed on the British Isles, where initially they were happy to undertake any kind of jobs - often hard manual labor requiring no skills or experience - even when they were much better qualified.
However, gradually, some of young Polish professionals working in low skilled jobs started to climb up the career ladder and found work corresponding to their real abilities and talents. Malwina Kruszewska is a good example:
'During my studies at the university in Poland, I used to come to England to work as a waitress or cleaning personnel and when I graduated from university in May, I came straight to London and after two weeks I found a job at a quite big office, it's like almost three hundred people now and it's still growing. I'm working on quite a big project. It's good, because you work nine hours a day, and you have weekends off, and you have a life, not only job. I'm very satisfied, I'm really happy.'
Malwina got the job she wanted, but many young Polish professionals are still too shy and doubt their real value. Even when they have graduated from good Polish universities, they are satisfied with unskilled positions, as long as they are better paid than in Poland. Anna Godek, human resource consultant from a large international recruitment company hopes this is about to change:
'I'm just very surprised that young Polish professionals don't believe in themselves and they are not trying to find a job related to their experience and real abilities. I would like to strongly support all those young people who would like to move to another country - they should start looking for better jobs than in construction or in restaurants, hotels, etc. I'm not only sure, but I know, that many companies in the UK will be happy to see qualified young people in Poland in the same positions that they could have in Poland. I would strongly recommend to start looking for a job which corresponds with their skills and experience, in any of the EU countries. This very valuable experience that they will bring from abroad will help them easily adopt in Polish and international companies.'
One problem is that young Polish professionals underestimate their value. But very often they just don't know that it's not so difficult to find a good job abroad. For, Malwina, it was just a matter of sending out her cv to several places:
'I graduated from architecture in Gdansk, I came here and just sent my CV and portfolio to agencies and all offers of work that I could find on the Internet. Within two weeks, several offices responded and I just picked one. It's not that hard to find it as everyone thinks, it's enough just to put your CV on the Internet and basically they find you by themselves.'
So, our advice to international corporations is - if you want good talented and hard working young Polish professionals - go look for them now and - what's most important - better make your offer attractive, because employers in Poland are are also actively seeking them.
Source: Poland Today, Joanna Najfeld
28/11/2007
|
