I have an Italian degree so surely my best bet for finding jobs would be something that uses my language - translation, interpreting, teaching, manning Italian offices for British companies. Failing that, Italian companies are always looking for people that speak fluent English so I could always pop over there and sort myself out with something.
I'm going to take a moment to unpack the reasons I haven't done that.
If you think the job market is bad in the UK, it's so much worse in Italy. 8.9% of all Italians are unemployed, a few points of a percent ahead of the UK and where 22.3% of young people are unemployed over here, it's a whopping 25.4% over in Italy. This leads me to draw two conclusions - firstly that it's very unfair to fly over to Italy and waltz into a job that one of the 25.4% could have had; secondly, if I can't get a job here (where unemployment is lower), what chance do I think I have over there!?
I did try and get a job in Italy for my year abroad and then over the summer after I'd done my year at university. This was more than a little tricky - the only place that would have employed me decided my Italian wasn't good enough (this was before my year abroad). No matter how many CVs I sent, the tumbleweed kept rolling in (instead of the cash).
If you think about all the schemes that the British government are employing to get people working, for the majority, it shouldn't be hard to get at least something. Italy don't have that - they're too concerned with the sorry state of their country post-Berlusconi.
So the problem in Italy is the same on in the UK, but much worse - people don't get jobs, because there are no jobs to be had. Well there are if you want to answer phones all day, but not if you want to do something productive. In fact the job situation in Italy is so bad, that everyone is overworked and underpaid. I have some friends that were coping with the stress of working six days a week until their employees decided that it was high time they did a seven day week instead. Nice.
But there's no harm in working for a British multi-national in Italy, in fact I'd quite like that option. There are, again, two problems with that. The first problem is that the companies tend not to be media and broadcasting, the field I am very keen to get into. The second problem is that of bureaucracy. Taxes, bank accounts, Euros, housing contracts, car insurance... In theory it's possible to overcome it all, and it would be the second time I've done it as I've lived over there before, but doing it on my own is different from doing it with a bunch of friends for a grand total of a year...
The conclusion I have reached is that if I can't get anything over here, I'm going to approach the multi-nationals and see if I can work out there, but as I said yesterday, there are a few options open to me before I have to do that.
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