Finding work in France without French

General Discussion
1

I’m in the middle of recruiting my replacement at work and the prime candidate is married with a spouse who would want to work in the Paris area during their posting. They’re coming from the UK and the spouse doesn’t really have any French and is a procurement specialist. It’s a bit of a long shot but does anyone have any insight into the chances of finding related employment without speaking French. I suspect I know the answer but the perspective of others would be useful.

P.S. There’s no issues around visas, etc.(well, there are, but not within the scope of this question) and I’m purely asking about work opportunities.

2

I am sure there is work in Paris for English speakers with little French, but… as a procurement specialist? I would have thought that involves a lot of negotiation and haggling over details (spec, quality, price, délais). First there would be the matter of understanding exactly what you need to procure if you are procuring it on behalf of francophones, then It would be difficult to negotiate with suppliers if you do not speak their language. Restricting yourself to English speaking suppliers in Paris is unlikely to be an effective strategy. Unless she can find a very international firm with international suppliers.

So I think she would need to be flexible.

3

I think that’s the challenge, he would prefer to work at a similar level to the UK job he currently has.

4

Couldn’t he take a UK job and work remotely? It looks like there’s a one-year extendable French visa that allows that, at least according to Msr Google.

5

Do you have a handy link - I didn’t think France was very “digital nomad” friendly.

6

France doesn’t appear to be one of them, not very surprisingly.

1 Like
7

I didn’t see this in January JohnH.

Procurement systems was one of my professional areas so I’ve worked with some types of procurement specialists.

It’s wide spectrum and it would depend on procurement for what industry snd what sort of procurement. eg third party/indirect vs direct procurenent, whether they are mass price negotiator/buyer for private industry or for government, or whether they are more at the ‘sourcing’ end such as issuing ITT’s for complicated specialist projects vs ‘buying’ etc.

But if they’re in one of the very multinational industries like oil or banking, and are specialist, then in some industries the local language may not be required much if their skills in demand. And particularly for contractor recruitment the good news is that the foremost agencies in the UK covering the more global industries do recruit for contracts delivered by specialists in other countries frequently.

Depending what the other half specialises in, AirBus in Toulouse would be a case like this and there would be some multinationals especially in or near La Défense that I’ve seen recruiting for procurement specialists, where English is a must have and French may even be just a nice to have.

8

Thanks, it’s all water under the bridge now and she didn’t take the job as there was too much risk. To be permitted to work, her partner would have needed a signed contract before putting in the application and that just wasn’t seen as practical