What is the best way for an American to get an office job in Europe?

Easiest route I've found for an under-30 Canadian or American with French language skills (though by no means French fluency) who wants to get their feet wet in France: http://www.ciep.fr/en/assistantetr/. Not an office job, but a chance to live/work/earn money in France for 7 months. I've been told a similar program exists for Spain, but I don't know the specifics. With some Spanish skills you might be able to make it work. Many North Americans also come to France to work as au pairs. Again, not an office job, and not long-term, but a chance to see if you like the culture before beginning the (as mentioned) very difficult process of trying to find a long-term job in Europe.

Previously: http://ask.metafilter.com/137516/How-to-move-my-unqualified-behind-to-Europe

Yeah, I'm a language assistant in France right now. I don't know if you've already ruled that out for some reason, but if not, I can tell you that, for me at least, it's been very good times. Work twelve hours a week, get paid, live in France! It's almost not fair. The longest contract is only nine months, though, and that involves more responsibility than my seven-month one.

When I was in Amsterdam last year they had ads everywhere for http://www.undutchables.nl/, a recruitment agency for internationals. I can't vouch for the service but it does suggest there's some market for external candidates at office jobs in the Netherlands.

1) How can an American find an office job abroad? And what is the best way for an American to get a job abroad? As has been mentioned above, the biggest obstacle is obtaining a work permit. I'd first narrow down to one or two countries, then research their specific immigration requirements. You should really do this anyway -- you've listed some extremely different countries. I'm sure they're all wonderful places to live, but they will all offer different challenges. For example, an English speaker is going to have a much easier time living in the Netherlands than in France, at least from a language perspective. It gets more complicated when you consider subtler cultural matters. Europe is not homogeneous. I can only speak for the Netherlands, but I was able to immigrate here as a knowledge migrant (AKA highly skilled migrant). This basically hinges on a) how much your potential employer will pay you and b) how well your potential employer can justify hiring you instead of an EU citizen. In the Dutch knowledge migrant program, you must have a job offer from a company; this is different from, for example, the UK knowledge migrant program, which does not require you to have a job offer before you enter the country. 2) Can Americans apply to jobs in Europe through European "Monster"-like job listing sites (like monster.co.uk)? If so, what are some good European job listing sites? You can apply for anything, but the vast majority of companies won't consider you unless you're already authorized to live and work in their country. The job ad will usually say so. Again, you're better off narrowing down your country list and focusing on job sites for one or two countries. 3) Is it difficult to get a decent office job in Europe? Yes. There are tons of non-Europeans who also want to work in Europe for a few years, and you're all competing against the many educated, multi-lingual, non-work-permit-requiring Europeans who need jobs. "Office job" is very vague -- what do you actually have an education and experience doing? It's easier to find a job that requires an easily quantified and somewhat rare skill; for example, if a company needs a person who has 10 years of C programming experience, it's easy for them to prove that they need a certain person who might not be European, and it's a lot more rare than "person who can file things". Fortunately, being fluent in Cantonese is most likely a rare skill. If your main goal is just "to work in Europe", your job searching strategy should be to focus on exploiting your rare skill, not to focus on what you want to actually do. So search for ads that ask for Cantonese, not ads that are for a specific job title. I've been told that one method of getting a job abroad is that I could work for an American company in the States and just hope to get transferred. I wouldn't bother with this method. As whatzit points out, most American companies aren't going to bother to transfer you to a non-American office unless you have a rare skill and they for some reason need you physically at that office. And again, you'll be competing against any colleagues who also would like a free move to Europe.

Since, as has been discussed, you're going to need some kind of a special skill that can't be filled easily in the local job market to justify a visa, the thing that jumps out at me is that you speak Cantonese. I don't imagine that Holland or Sweden are exactly drowning in fluent Cantonese speakers, but I do imagine it would be a very useful skill indeed for, say, somebody in a supply chain management position for a company that did a lot of their sourcing from factories in Guangzhou.

I recommend checking out the local Cragslist like websites For example, in France kijiji.fr is very popular. In England, the most popular classified site is gumtree.com I would first apply to jobs available in the area you want to travel to (tell them you're from US) and see if you can get an interview with them. If you can get an interview from an online application, you can surely land a job when in need. Also, I don't know about office jobs, but there are a lot of babysitter jobs with decent pay that can help you make your first money no matter where in Europe you want to go. You can spot them pretty easy in Classified sites. Teaching the children English could be a nice extra bonus for the parents. Hope it helps.

Afraid I'm not sure about teaching English in other European countries. Though if you do wind up teaching (bear in mind this still requires prep and the necessary language skills, and some luck), why not use it as an inroad into Europe, rather than trying to land that office job immediately? I can only vouch for France, but as mentioned, English language assistants here have ridiculous amounts of free time/holidays. I can't say for sure if you'd be permitted to find other work on top of the teaching hours (sites like assistantsinfrance.com can clarify these sorts of questions), but you could presumably intern/volunteer your time in some office cor another, formally or informally. Disclaimer: I'm not aware of specific visa rules on volunteer work, though they may well exist. The gist of this is that the teaching wouldn't take up much of your time, but would give you enough money to live in France -- albeit frugally, unless you have some savings stashed away - and a legal way of staying here for 7 months. Whether you'd be able to find a company to sponsor you to stay here is a big question mark, but you could also use the time to look at grad school options.

The names are different here and there, but yes, the permission to work (and then there is permission to be a resident, and they are often separate). In general, you need a sponsor to get a work permit, who would be your employer. It's an irritating circle where you can't get a permit without a sponsor/employer, and it's damn hard to get an employer without a permit. A few countries have a different set-up where you can apply for permission to work before having the job offer; iirc the UK is one of them, but those other countries you're looking into aren't ones I recall doing this.