How difficult is it to get a job?

Hi

We are moving to Torrevieja, Spain in 8mths time.  My husband has his work all sorted but I'm wondering how hard it is to get a job.

Currently I work in the Residential Property Management field at Manager level but don't necessarily want to stay in that area.  

Any comments would be appreciated.

Sharon 

Or you could buy youself  this http://spain.businessesforsale.com/spanish/Established-Property-Management-and-Holiday-rental-Company-for-Sale.aspx

Please bare with me here.  This will be a long-winded answer to the simple question, 'How difficult is it to get a job?'.

Our love affair with Spain ended last year when we decided to spend a few weeks in the Costa del Sol area to make a final decision on whether to continue looking for a winter let.  Having owned a property in Catalunya and being lucky enough to sell at a profit before the Crisis really took hold, it had been our intention to buy another place in Spain further south where the weather is warmer.  For the past few years, we have spent time in Spain on the Costas Blanca, Tropical, Luz and del Sol looking for a place to buy and every year the prices have dropped, so much so that we decided it was a better idea to rent for 6 months of the year and do without the hastle of owning our own place. Part of that decision was based on the fact that we would (legally) have to pay rental tax whether we rented the place out in the summer or not (whilst we weren't there) and the possibility that we would be charged property tax on the price that the property WAS and not its present price.  The Spanish ideas to collect tax seem to know no bounds. Goodness knows, they need the cash.

Every year we have returned to Spain we've found it an increasingly-depressing experience.  It has saddened us to see so many unfinished properties decline to such an extent that they can only be recovered at great expense. Should they knock them down and recover the landscape?  Every time we visit an area we know, we see more shops/bars have closed down and, more worrying, we have seen the number of beggars increase.  When we came to know that some of those beggars (particularly outside Aldi and Lidls) are middle-aged men with families to feed, it brought us to tears. What could we do?  When we ventured inland to the small villages we prefer, it wasn't so bad. The Spanish are good to their families and neighbours and everyone seemed to be coping.  BUT, the real deciding factor for us was the feeling we had, wherever we went, that we weren't wanted.  The last time we were in Benalmadena, we felt like intruders.  Yes, the Spanish were polite when we spent money in their shops or bars but we were, largely, ignored on the streets where, previously, our smiles and holas were answered.  For the first time since we started to spend time in Spain, 15 years ago, we were happy to be going home to the UK.  We are now looking for a winter let on the Algarve amongst the Portuguese who actually like having us there. Britain has long- held an alliance with Portugal that has never waned.  We feel guilty that we've given up on Spain but, to be honest, as pensioners we want our winters in the sun to be a relaxing experience amongst friendly locals.  We are looking for a rental from a Portuguese family and will spend our money in the local Portuguese shops and bars.  We always remember we are foreigners, taking advantage of the best of what another country has on offer.

In answer to the question of jobs in Spain...there is still time to watch the program on BBC iplayer Costa del Sol:Last Brit Standing which you'll find in the Lifestyle category.  No doubt, it is very one-sided as all these sorts of programs are, but as far as jobs are concerned....take note.

I know people in Spain who love it there and won't be going back to the UK any time soon, if ever, but they are living in the villages or they have established businesses on the coast....and they are learning or have learnt to speak Spanish!  I couldn't beleive it when I watched the afore-mentioned program and saw Brits that have lived in Spain for many years and hadn't even learnt the language!  Doh! I can understand how frustrating it must be for an already-stretched Healthcare System to have to pay for interpreters. Us Brits can be lazy when it comes to learning a new language, yet we expect those coming to the UK to speak English. 

There will be people reading this that have a completely different opinion to the one we have formed and it would be lovely to read about them and the situation that makes life so much better for them.  However, the Spanish costas are out for us for now and I can almost hear the locals saying, 'Good riddance!' in Spanish, of course.  We can understand these sentiments and wish them all the best...

Sadly there is not a lot of work in the area for anyone and it is very difficult to get work of any description. Speaking Spanish fluently may help but still very difficult.

Many people out of work and looking

Arriving in 8 months time is one of the quietest times of the year

Windtalker is spot on

Good luck

Lived here now in our 11th year, Daughter done great so far gone through Spanish Education, now at Spanish Uni, Climate, people great. Jobs very very Difficult even speaking Spanish, they do the right and correct thing over here where the u.k has not i´m afraid looking after their own.And that´s how it should be

Good luck and keep us updated

Well, we've now been coming here for 15 years as well and moved in lock, stock and barrel about 4 years ago. Yes, there have been changes. Spain has been hit by the recession more than most but they are, in this area at least, still very friendly. I get a cheery Hola and a wave from our Spanish neighbours every day (and, no, I haven't counted how many fingers are in that wave!). Yes, there are more beggars in the towns but there are also many more in the UK as well.

Maybe getting older puts a different perspective on things. The majority of people in our town are foreign (I think it was 60% foreigners) which is very high but that is all nationalities. Most are also not of retirement age and seem to work in various jobs whether in shops, restaurants, estate agents and so on. Our solicitor has two English ladies working for them as receptionists and several of the solicitors are English, Scandinavian and German as well as Spanish.

The grass being greener on the other side also comes into play. Look at some of the expat forums in Portugal and you will get the same complaints there about feeling unwelcome, no jobs and so on despite their unemployment figures being low in comparison to Spain and expats being picked on by the authorities.

I have seen lots of changes in Spain, many of them for the better. There is virtually nothing you can't get here now which was not the case even 8 years ago. Big outlets for furniture and domestic items will deliver (free of charge) within a day or two instead of the 6 weeks plus. Shop assistants are getting more helpful unlike just a few years ago when they all seemed the Spanish equivalent of Sharon and Tracey in that they were doing you a favour. Customer service (with some obvious exceptions) has improved in leaps and bounds. (Shame the banks don't appear to have caught up yet).

I have just returned from a couple of weeks in UK and, despite the weather being pretty nice, could not wait to get back as everything seemed rather grubby, people very miserable (complaining about foreigners is now a national pastime) and rushed and crowded. Road repairs appear non-existent, even on the motorways, and the traffic is horrendous.

Obviously some will live in the nice, leafy suburbs where these problems don't occur but I covered quite a large swathes of the country visiting friends and relatives and found it the same everywhere (Bristol, Cardiff, Cheltenham, Leicester, West London and all points in between).

I met one couple who I've known for years who had a place near Valencia but moved back to UK about 5 years ago. They reckon it's the worst thing they ever did and wish they could move back to Spain.

Still, everyone's different or it would be a very boring world otherwise.

mariedav

very well put you have decribed the UK  very well

Strange how many posters can't be happy living in Spain unless they slag off the UK. I am very happy to have returned and I don't recognise the place you describe. If anyone returned to the UK 5 years ago (as someone said) then they will have made a good profit on their house and would be in a good position to return to Spain if they wanted to. I too don't find the Spanish as welcoming as they were, it is clear many resent us. Understandably really. Oh and I do speak Spanish well.

As for jobs, forget it. Even with improvement in the jobless figures Andalucia jobless is still around 32%.

It never takes long for people to completely stray off the original subject, and it never takes long for people to start making Spain/UK comparisons either. Talking about Portugal, the friendliness, or lack of it from the Spanish and claiming that the UK has gone to the dogs isn't much use to the OP. 

Those who have commented about the likelihood of finding work are right. It ranges from hard to almost impossible. It's not nice to get negative answers but in this case it's realistic. Torrevieja is a tourist hotspot so there might be temporary/seasonal work available if you're not fussy but that's no long term solution. Permanent work is extremely hard to find as companies even out of tourist areas are reluctant to give out full-time contracts, choosing to take on staff registered through job agencies as and when required. The company I work for has a very busy Christmas campaign which runs from mid-October until mid-December. It takes on an extra twenty five workers during this period and it's always the same faces that come in year after year. At best these people manage to find a couple of months work during the year elsewhere but the rest can't find anything. I know people who's unemployment benefits ran out a while ago and they still haven't found work. You just can't underestimate the seriousness of the situation. It has always been hard to find work in Spain due to the lack of movement but now it's almost impossible.

I have seen lots of changes in Spain, many of them for the better. There is virtually nothing you can't get here now which was not the case even 8 years ago. Big outlets for furniture and domestic items will deliver (free of charge) within a day or two instead of the 6 weeks plus. Shop assistants are getting more helpful unlike just a few years ago when they all seemed the Spanish equivalent of Sharon and Tracey in that they were doing you a favour. Customer service (with some obvious exceptions) has improved in leaps and bounds. (Shame the banks don't appear to have caught up yet).

Actually I have the opposite impression.

Traditionally in Spain you went to the ferreteria for any hardware item, and if they didn't stock it they ordered it. I have always experienced ferreterias to be extremely helpful and ready to go the extra mile in advising you and doing things for you, even if the money they ultimately made is insignificantly small. Mine regularly lets me have smaller items for free because the owner says I am such a good and loyal customer that i don't have to pay for that, or can have this at a discount. Britain had shops like that too at some point but they mostly went out of business a generation ago or more.

The big out of town shopping centres are largely destroying that experience and replacing it by the same anonymous souless retail hell that we have in the UK.

I still shop at my local ferreteria whenever I can. Several have already closed down or turned themselves more into Chinese miscellania shops.

This message was last edited by amogles on 08/05/2015.

It's the same everywhere, if you have skills that are required then you will have no problems in finding work, I don't know about Spain but Hungarian dentists are very sought after in the UK (probably because of their implant skills). Spain has terrible unemployment figures amongst it's indeginous population, why shouldn't it be difficult for Brits to secure Spanish jobs?    

You would have to have a very sought after qualification to find work here as a foreigner. If you consider the amount of Spanish youngsters who have university degrees and still can't find a job or at best find themselves working at Burger King, it puts into perspective the chances you have as a foreigner finding work here, with or without skills. Education is one thing that has improved greatly in Spain, and all these graduates with modern qualifications can't get their foot in the door of companies who could really do with them and that's why they're going to the UK and Germany to look for work. Jobs have never been easy to come by in Spain unless you have business owners amongst family and friends.

It's very different here to the UK. I'm generalizing here, but the Spanish don't move about as much as the British. Many more Spanish people leave school, get a job and stay in that same job until they retire. This means that the employment market is very static. Vacancies don't come up regularly as people don't go in search of better work, better opportunities and better working conditions. The Spanish say that the English live to work while the Spanish work to live and this is very true so why would they always be on the lookout for something better. Also, it's very expensive for companies here to make redundancies so a lot of the Spanish workforce are plodding along in the comfort zone fully aware that either the company they work for can't afford to sack them or if they could, they'd be walking away with a very nice golden handshake, enough to get them by until the economy picks up. Hence, no movement, no job opportunities.

Over the last 3 days , 6 hours a day A friend of mine who speaks fluent Spanish has just taken his friend around who speaks not one word of Spanish around Torrivieja and Alicante, to try and get work in a Garage with one of those gadgets that suck out car dents, Result is Spain is not in the 21st centuary yet (this job is still hammering dents out mannually) no work for him here second time of trying over a couple of years. If there is need for someting in Spain surley they would of done it by now.

A few years ago i tried setting up a Rolls Royce service Weddings, Hospitallity VIP service etc,done all the advertising T.V  Radio, English, Spanish, Newspapers, Wedding Planners etc result after 18 months 4 Weddings 1 Birthday no need for such service in this area sold out.

nitram,

Perhaps the guy should go mobile, servicing the brit expat market, he could advertise in the free English papers plus distribute flyers.

 to try and get work in a Garage with one of those gadgets that suck out car dents,

If this is any help to your friends friend, and I have got the correct gadget you are talking about, which personally is a hard way to convince garages this is the bee's knee's of kit, better still is to do dent removal, the dent man way.

I have a chap come to me and he is absolutely superb at his job, took him a couple of weeks to perfect the process, charges me £20.00 a panel no matter how many dents on each panel,  in the first instance to get the garages / body-shops to believe in him, and what he could fix he arrived in his own car and with a ball peen hammer knocked a dent in a panel then asked the garage how would they fix this, most said as expected, "Strip out bash out, fill, rub down, paint" after he set up it took him less then 5 minutes to remove the dent...Now you have to wait until he can fit you in, so much work.

I use the word garages / body-shops loosely as it's not them your friend wants to concentrate on, it's the car sales sites, and in Spain he wouldn't even have to bash his own car with the amount of dents I see on Spanish car sales.

Hi  Interesting to  read the replies to my initial query.

I guess I should have expected the thread to get off course, people to not actually read my comment, and the question ot be answered by people who don't actually live in Spain  but when you post on  the  'Working in Spain'  .. you have hopes.

For those who assume I'm British.. I'm not, although my hushand does have a UK passport he has not lived in the UK for many a year.  One should not make assumption on an international message board that everyone comes from the UK 

As I also said we are moving there with my husbands job..

It is about 5 yrs since we have been there  are are looking forward to being back there.

Thanks  New world,  Nitran  and Mariedav  for your commemts / suggestions.

Also pleased to hear bout your experience with the school system.. we have heard similiar  comments from several sources as well.

Maybe starting a biz that help employ the Spainish maybe a good idea although I see from their employment stats that their out look is getting better and unemployment rates are dropping.

Thanks, Sharon

The British aren't the only people who speak English.:)      I'm a Kiwi.

Yes I can speak some Spanish.. but how good I'm not sure.. haven't been to Spain in 5 yrs.

Although most people went off topic I think that the general concensus was that getting a job would be very difficult to impossible!

If you don't want people to assume, put up a profile.