22yo grad wants to work abroad
Our son is graduating in January and would like to work abroad - first choice, Italy, with decent Italian. But, really, he'd just like to be in another country. He has experience as barista and waiter. He's a good worker, gets along well with everybody, and not expecting a red carpet.
All of the advice on BPN and elsewhere is mainly pre-pandemic and so many things have shifted. Back in the day, recent grads taught English but now, I'm sure, much of that is on-line. Are there places with needs for workers that they can't find locally?
How viable is it to work overseas? Are there avenues we could encourage him to investigate? Any advice, tips, pointers, websites, blogs, or stories appreciated.
Dec 13, 2023
Parent Replies
There may be exceptions I don't know about but work permits are no easier to come by in the EU than in the US. If he doesn't really need an income (big if), volunteering could be an option - friends have used https://www.workaway.info/ to find places to get free room and board while working in all sorts of countries. But a US passport allows only 90 days' stay for tourism/volunteering. Beyond that you need a different visa.
Honestly, it has gotten harder for Americans to go abroad and teach English. Because of how popular it became, the competition has grown, and the expectations have become professionalized - meaning, you would likely need some kind of TEFL certification to get hired. However, you can probably privately tutor kids whose parents want to ensure practice with a native English speaker, although in major urban areas, they may already have enough access. More rural areas may have fewer native English speakers around and therefore may be of more interest to ambitious parents who want to give their children a leg up on language proficiency.
I've heard good things about workaway. You can find them here https://www.workaway.info/
Hello! in my search for gap year programs I came across this site for international internships.: https://absoluteinternship.com I'm sure there are more organizations that do this. Could be worth looking into?
You don't mention what his major was, but global companies often have opportunities for employees to work out of offices in other countries. I have American coworkers who I used to work with in Oakland who now work out of offices in England, Germany, and Portugal. One worked in Australia for a while. I'm not familiar with anyone who was hired directly from the US into an overseas job, but that could just be because the ones I know about are folks who I met here in the US before they went overseas. FWIW, I work for a global consulting firm headquartered in Europe, with more than 300 offices across 100 different countries, and there are other similarly structured firms doing a variety of work.
This doesn't help for the immediate January need, but is there any chance he qualifies for EU citizenship by ancestry? Each country within the EU has its own requirements, and if his grandparents or parents are European by birth, you should definitely investigate that country. My kids have Irish citizenship because we can trace back ancestry to Irish born great grandparents (Ireland was very lenient about this during one era), and I am definitely hoping they use it post college to explore the world more!