Job market motto:”please come home” March 19, 2008
Posted by armina in Uncategorized.Tags: education, gen y, job market strategy
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i read an article about an ingenious idea: a Romanian job market organized in Italy for Romanians that work there. They had 700 curious people and almost 7000 jobs. All of them in constructions.
i think this is great strategy…let’s see how it works…
but how about schools? these guys will get old, and i don’t remember hearing of “constructions high school” or something similar. is the ministry going to re-”build” these schools? and…also “re-brand” them?
in Switzerland almost 90% of the young people go to a “profession school” because they consider it takes too long to pursue an university and is too much theory…
on the other hand i guess Ph.D.s are most of the time pursued just to follow your passion or to get a salary in no matter what field…delaying the moment when you will have to “face it” and actually get a job…
so is the future going to bring us only 10-12 years of school? could it be that our kids will study gymnasium and than a “profession school”, gaining practical experience from 14 years old and than study an “online university” while being an employee? or maybe the employer, desperate for workforce, might offer them courses in exchange for a “10 years” contract?
i think the way things are in Romania right now contradict a lot with the spirit Generation Y has, and many changes have to happen in education and companies’ attitudes. and i bet these changes will be huge in 5 years from now…
i reached 15… March 18, 2008
Posted by armina in Uncategorized.Tags: satisfaction
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15 projects as a freelancer…i had bad clients and great clients…i had horrible moments and wonderful moments…i had 2 full months of excitement…i made many hours of underpaid work but also easy money…overall i feel wonderful..and today i have my first “Repeat client” – yuhhuuuuu!! it is such a great moment of satisfaction:)
PS: all these last 3 messages are actually referring to what i have been through the last 2 months…but i have no idea if i can change the date of publishing them or not…so …whatever, let them be all on 18th March 
enjoying life and not giving a damn March 18, 2008
Posted by armina in Uncategorized.Tags: philosophy of life, relax
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and it feels so good:)
many things happened and i was so busy and exhausted…since 10 Jan i slept only 3-4 hours per night and i worked 2 jobs…but who cares when one is as a freelancer:)…i had extremely lazy weekends to compensate…i sent 20 job applications (and sending a job application in Switzerland is a huge challenge)…i had about 4 interviews…i refused a Ph.D. position…i eat the best ice-cream in Italy and i traveled through people each fortnight…i was happy to say “i have enough money and i don’t care for more”…i was so fucking stressed that i made my dear ones worry…i got fat…i cooked the strangest food ever…i negotiated salaries…i studied for my masters less than ever…i dared for the first time in the last 10 years to buy shoes with heals higher than 3cm…i stretched my knee for the 3 time in the last 8 years…i fell in love everyday and missed my fiance every night… i started to make the guest list for my wedding…and managed to detach from the feeling my stupid clients awoke in me…i am becoming a business woman…2 full months…very tiring and exciting…10 more to go until the deadline for my goals:)…i fell in love with Bucharest once again after i thought i will hate it forever, especially after living in such a great city like Zurich is…now i am back at home in Valcea and i am enjoying my work&study holiday:)) …is nice being home and receiving greetings on 8th of March…you don’t get these anywhere else than in Romania…and there are so much many more things you don’t get elsewhere than here…semplicemente tiamo…and it’s so great not giving a damn about anything…if i find a job..ok…if not…ok…if i get fat…ok…if not…ok…if i leave Zurich..ok..if not…ok…the most important thing will happen…end of June or end of October…after more than 2 years, i will finally live together with the love of my life…and nothing else matters…well…except my travel plans…
to be or not to be in Switzerland March 18, 2008
Posted by armina in Uncategorized.Tags: career, switzerland, uncertainty
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this is my present question…
Since i wrote last time, it’s been really long…since then, i moved in a new flat (a real adventure…2 trips with the smart of a friend:)) and i am living alone now…really cool after all…i live 30 meters away from the Red district…the place where the…sex life of this city happens…i guess…the only place:)) people here are…workaholic. all they do is: droll for a nice job in a bank, stay a while, and than in spring take the bonus and go for a better job…most probably, in another bank…
Anyways…about me…i can’t extend the contract where i work now..so i was looking for a job for a while, but all the offers i got were assistant, administrative assistant, project assistant…well…and it seems the reason is that i am coming from the Eastern Europe. so these recruitment experts around here don’t care about my academic background or work experience, they just offer me the lowest jobs in the trophic chain ever…and with contracts that would tie me up for like …2 years. These guys have a lot of nerve…they really don’t realize that we, the Easter Europeans, the slaves of Europe, can CHOOSE where to be slaves…i can get a job wherever in EU…why would i be so mad to want to stay in Switzerland when they don’t want me and offer me to “give the badges to the new employees, and make the introduction round in the company with them”. This sounds nice…but not for 9h per day!!! For Chris’ sake, i have a bachelor, now i am working on a master thesis, …i know better than wearing a nice skirt and heels, smiling and giving badges to the newbies!
Well…i feel better now…
Ok…to get a constructive conclusion out of this: the ones that want a job in Switzerland, be aware that you are just a second hand CV for the unexperienced recruiters around here…i mean, i asked him more questions than he asked me…he was making me a job offer and he was asking me if i am familiar with MS Office…the jerk didn’t even read that i have a bachelor in computer science!
It seems Switzerland is not the country for my dream life, so the plan is, if i don’t (by a miracle) get a nice challenging job that i would enjoy doing, i will just go to Italy for a 3 months break, write the book i am so anxious about writing, and sun bath in the beautiful Genova, with my darling beside me…and then we will decide together, in September, where to go…any ideas?:)
Romanian imigration laws…surprises surprises November 13, 2007
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until now it was difficult to employ a foreigner in Romania. there was a law saying that the minimum salary a foreigner can get has to be equal to the medium salary a Romanian has. On top of this, the employer was requested to offer accommodation.
Cheap labor, especially in factories, is hard to find in Romania, because the people that know their job very well, already work in other countries…for better salaries…
Now they changed the law and foreigners’ minimum salary equals to the Romanian minimum salary (100 euro), and accommodation is not required anymore. This means more foreigners in Romania…most probably people coming from far East that speak a bit of English and are tempted by 100 euro per month.
A few weeks ago there elections in Switzerland and many intellectuals are a bit worried about the xenophobic signs showed by the party which got a majority of votes, on the other hand, in Italy some Romanians were killed because…the number of xenophobes being so high that it is said to be dangerous to talk Romanian on the streets. (it appeared in the newspapers that the extreme-right wing party even put a banner in a major city saying “Holocaust for Romanians”). Now that Romania opened it’s borders for cheaper labor force from the far east… i wonder how xenophobic are we? or how xenophobic are we going to be in 10 years from now?…
It is incredible people can fear so much other cultures or nationalities that they wish the extinguished… and i thought we should get smarter…in the XXI century…but i guess not…yet.
waiting…and apartment hunt October 26, 2007
Posted by armina in Uncategorized.Tags: apartment story
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is hard…but it can be bearable and even fun, if you put some effort in making it so…
i am waiting for my contract and work permit (more precisely). i got the job offer and i accepted it and now i have to wait. which is ok, because waiting doesn’t mean “will not happen” – it just means there are many procedures which take time.
the bad part about it is that i have to find an apartment in Zurich until the end of December. From what i heard from different people, and read on www.englishforum.ch (a very useful forum with a lot of information and helpful people, made by expats in CH for expats in CH), it is very very hard to find a place to live in Zurich.
So even if i didn’t have the work contract, i said i could use some “interview for apartment” rehearsals and i sent around 10-14 e-mails this Monday for some flats which seemed nice in the ads. I got 4 answers and the visits started. i saw the first one and the girl chose someone else. i saw the second one and the guy said he likes me, so i found a place to stay in 3 days…incredible…i should still have visited the other 2 places next week, but i just wrote back and said i already found something…
Overall it was a very very interesting experience and…i am looking forward to my next apartment hunt in 7 months from now )… so my waiting became fun and fruitful also…
Theoretically here only 5% of the apartments are on the “for rent” market, and there very many people looking for a flat, which makes the “apartment hunt” even harder for the foreigners…especially when you don’t have a work contract to prove you can pay the rent and when your German is not very great so the potential landlord looks very concentrated at your face during the entire conversation . For me this was just in theory and i guess i was really lucky…but the idea is that it is possible, and that “waiting” is not healthful, and it can be productive if you decide so…
Xenofobic Political campaign in Switzerland October 19, 2007
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it is very hard for me to believe what i am seeing in here…
there will be national elections in a short while…and there is this party with a very xenofobic political campaign.
here you can see the games they created to support the messages they want to transmit: http://www.zottel-game.ch/
in Switzerland are 7 mil people, out of which most probably 1,5 mil are foreigners…most of which have a secondary education, having a white collar job or doing research or a Ph.D. It is true that the rest are “political asylum” people from poor and tormented countries, but still this campaign is, i think, extremely aggressive.
And this party has 25% of the votes…which is quite a lot and might mean they will have quite a big slice in the Parliament and so on. I think it is a disgrace to Switzerland – such a beautiful and great country, with such a leading party that will bring it back to the 15th century…what a shame:(
MBA October 7, 2007
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in my plans for the future …an MBA is included…so i have been searching a lot about this topic and i read through many websites and brochures.
the best one i recommend is: www.findmasters.com enjoy searching and choosing:)
to smoke or not to smoke October 5, 2007
Posted by armina in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
i have no doubts that is better not to…and i have no wish of starting it…but it is amazing how many breaks the smokers get…
i mean…where i work you are free to plan your time as you wish as long as you do your job and your hours…but these gusa see more sun than the non smokers cause the need to stay outside the building (where the smoking place is) …and they also socialize…so …15 minutes for each cigarete…in total is a really nice break…
for the entire day i see only neon light, and i try to make breaks to stretch my muscles and bones a little bit…like 3 times per day or something…but i don’t really stay in the sun…i just see it through the window…
so i guess is it breaks and cigaretes or neon and seldom stretching? which option is healthier?
horrible services in Zurich October 3, 2007
Posted by armina in Uncategorized.Tags: switzerland
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today i was with my friends in a restaurant. it seemed to serve specific food, it was crowded…which is a “quality” hard to find in Zurich and the atmosphere was really nice. …until…we told them we want just some soups, deserts and drinks. the lady who took our order told and that there people come to eat and that they don’t give deserts before 10 o’clock. we didn’t know what to do…she took our order but they way she acted seemed she wanted us to leave. especially when she called the bodyguard to tell us that people EAT here they don’t come just for drinks…so i dared and asked if they want us to leave? she didn’t say anything …she just left.
she didn’t speak any English, but that wasn’t a problem, we all speak and understand enough German to order something and explain what we want from a menu…but she seemed annoyed that we don’t speak proper German…incredible…i thought a client is a client, no matter the fluency in different languages….the money have the same color!
i have to say the desert i took was great, really great…but the service made me feel like eating it fast and leaving as fast as possible…the same the others…so it wasn’t such a nice evening as we hoped…because of the “Swiss quality”…and should i mention they also had the “1Q” for quality? (on a scale from 1q to 3q, is the way the quality is measured in here…you can find 3q in 3-4 stars hotel, and 1q for…in general really good restaurants…the food was good, but the service…i never got that lousy service in a restaurant in Romania
i mean…i had great service at Uncle Sam (American foreknown pizza place) where a happy opened Spanish native speaker, Afro-American served us..that was real quality, and it was NOT the “Swiss quality”…even though in Switzerland…
not criticizing…just facts…
