Tips for getting your first job in Hungary

Expat.com wrote:

What are your tips and advice for getting a first job in Hungary?

Learn the Hungarian language.

I personally would think it over before coming to Hungary without a job offer waiting for me.
I had an American friend here in Budapest who was from Calif. as I am.
She moved here with her HU in-laws and husband .
She had worked in Calif. doing hair, she was really a specialist in haircoloring.
She got set up through family connections to work at one of the Laszlo Hajas salons.
This was a while ago, more then 10 years back.
She only worked there for less then one month because the money was terrible for all the effort she put in, not even close to what she thought she would make, the tips were very low, less then 200 fornits for a coloring that took hours to do.
She and her husband moved to Canada from HU after giving HU 10 years of her time. Every business and job they both tried out never worked out for them. The father-in-law was very wealthy and had to support them and their 2 kids, it caused allot of tention with her husbands siblings who saw their inheritence being spent on their rent and schooling and everyday life for the bro that couldn't make it in HU.

Her 8 year old son and toddler were both born in HU, I give her allot of credit for living here for 10 years and starting a family.
Her 8 year old had nothing but problems in regularHU schools. He couldn't speak HU very weel because she had been speaking only English to him at home, she didn't know much Hu herself and her husband was busy trying to make money.
Her FIL paid for the boy to go to the American school at a cost of $15,000 for an 8 year old per year.
It got to be too much for the siblings to take so she had to pull him out after a year. He was failing school in HU so they put him in Hebrew school, still had language issues with that school too. Her son was getting mental issues at only 8 years old so they had to leave HU.
I have meet many ex pats and I think it is for single people or older people but to bring a child here and try to make them fit in just doesn't seem right.

Here's a great article on the subject:

http://www.budapestinc.com/jobs-for-eng … -budapest/

andrewjdavison wrote:

Here's a great article on the subject:

http://www.budapestinc.com/jobs-for-eng … -budapest/

Not to rain on your parade as you are the apparent author of the article, but I would reckon divine intervention would be needed to help anyone if that's the limit of information available.

You think I missed some job opportunities?

andrewjdavison wrote:

You think I missed some job opportunities?

Yes. 

You should have covered different age ranges, different skill levels and education, starting ones own business or telecommuting from existing jobs for example. Medical jobs, engineering jobs, IT jobs, part-time jobs, jobs for retired people, part-time jobs for working mothers with kids in school, jobs with visas, jobs where local languages are not so important such guest lecturers, visiting academics or even jobs with international organisations like the EU or UN (it's only in Vienna and commutable from the border area) and there are some EU organisations based here.  If you are going to cover the market (and increase your visibility through essentially a written infomercial), then why not do a more comprehensive job and provide something more useful. Did you interview anyone? Pub crawl organising is not a job.

Starting a business is an upcoming post and telecommuting is out of scope for a job finding article.

The other jobs you've listed... care to point me in the direction of job boards or agencies that field these sorts of opportunities.

I spend a lot of time lurking in various expat communities and never see those types of jobs... perhaps they don't widely exist for non-Hungarian speakers.

For example guest lecturing... rather than finding that sort of job I imagine you'd be invited to do that sort of thing via the academic network you already have with the university you're doing your PHD at...

And bar-crawl leading not a job? Tell that to the people that pay their rent doing that. It might not be well paid, but it is work.

fluffy2560 wrote:

Pub crawl organising is not a job.

Others may disagree:

http://www.hungaryjobs77.com/job/German … 87485.html

It is not a career, but if someone pays you to do the work, it is a job.

klsallee wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

Pub crawl organising is not a job.

Others may disagree:

http://www.hungaryjobs77.com/job/German … 87485.html

It is not a career, but if someone pays you to do the work, it is a job.

No, it's not a career. "Pub crawl organiser" Sounds like a job for students or others without direction or messing about with gap years.

Hence why it was included in an article about jobs for English speakers in Budapest...

fluffy2560 wrote:

No, it's not a career. "Pub crawl organiser" Sounds like a job for students

And what is wrong with contributers to this thread helping students find jobs in Hungary?

andrewjdavison wrote:

Starting a business is an upcoming post and telecommuting is out of scope for a job finding article.

The other jobs you've listed... care to point me in the direction of job boards or agencies that field these sorts of opportunities.

I spend a lot of time lurking in various expat communities and never see those types of jobs... perhaps they don't widely exist for non-Hungarian speakers.

For example guest lecturing... rather than finding that sort of job I imagine you'd be invited to do that sort of thing via the academic network you already have with the university you're doing your PHD at...

And bar-crawl leading not a job? Tell that to the people that pay their rent doing that. It might not be well paid, but it is work.

yes, ok, I didn't try to hard on the details but try here....

Jobserve, 9 jobs on there when I looked just now, all IT.

There's 3 here with international organisations: UN type jobs

I would not exclude telecommuting. It means you could live in HU but also work in your native language while enjoying whatever it is one enjoys in HU. I believe there are people who do pull the trick off elsewhere, it could be quite something to do it from HU.  There's always Ryanair, Wizzair and Easyjet for part-time, 3 days a week elsewhere, 4 days in HU.  I've heard of lawyers doing that from the south of France back to the UK.

Academic jobs do come up. Obviously places would be Debrecen or CEU in Budapest. Anywhere where there's an English language based academic course I'd have thought.

Pub crawling for bored middle aged spouses at home on accompanied assignments in HU is a highly unlikely scenario.

klsallee wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

No, it's not a career. "Pub crawl organiser" Sounds like a job for students

And what is wrong with contributers to this thread helping students find jobs in Hungary?

Nah, course not. All welcome I am sure.

While I'm on here when I should be working but not finding work very interesting, I wonder how many here are actually of a student age?  I expect we're mostly over 40 (and I'm being generous). Maybe our monitors in Mauritius can give us some demographics indicators on our age breakdown?!! I assume of course we're all telling the truth age wise!

andrewjdavison wrote:

care to point me in the direction of job boards or agencies that field these sorts of opportunities.

The aggregate search site Jobs77 you listed in your post has rather extensive search option that covers a lot.

klsallee wrote:

andrewjdavison wrote:

care to point me in the direction of job boards or agencies that field these sorts of opportunities.

The aggregate search site Jobs77 you listed in your post has rather extensive search option that covers a lot.

Really? 77? I didn't try too hard as I said. Better result than I found then! Maybe a better class of job?

fluffy256 wrote:

I expect we're mostly over 40 (and I'm being generous).

So adding topics of interest for the youth might mean more 20-something web traffic to this site. Seems like good business for expatblog. No need to cater only to old buggy whips like us.

klsallee wrote:

..... No need to cater only to old buggy whips like us.

Speak for yourself !!!! Haha...!!!

Hello everyone,

Please try to focus on the subject of the discussion here and share only relevant infos. We are straying a bit.

Expat.com wrote:

Hi,

What are your tips and advice for getting a first job in Hungary?

What are the job hunting steps to follow? Where to look for offers: newspapers, Internet, recruitment agencies, word-of-mouth?

What are the top hiring sectors?

What would you recommend to young professionals wishing to start their career in Hungary?

Thank you in advance for your participation!

Thank you,
Bhavna 

It took me 4 months and about 7 interviews. I'm a Web Developer from the US and unfortunately I really don't speak Hungarian so that limited me significantly. In the end it came down to just constantly building a strong portfolio and CV. With each rejections my portfolio just became stronger and my CV tailored more precisely.  In the end I ended up with the best job with an outstanding package working for a company out of Graphisoft Park. Couldn't be happier. So I say just go to it, hammer away and never get discouraged. Learn from each interview and expand your skill set. It's a sales game, consider yourself a product, now make everyone want to purchase what you selling.

On a side note, Hungarians are extremely slow for the most part when it comes to the hiring process. Depending what you are going for, it can take weeks or even months before someone gets back to you. So don't wait around. Also be prepared for several interviews. This is something completely different from the US where I am from. Also headhunters, I secured my current position on my own but beforehand I was using various headhunters and I would say they are efficient and overly fast with finding suited positions.