Working in London

Your chances to find a job in London and other big cities is relatively high. However, it always depends on several factors, which might affect your opportunities.

1. Knowledge of English

It is not easy to find a job, especially if you cannot speak a word of English. You should definitely have at least basics of the language to understand what your employer want from you or when and where to come. The importance of English depends also on the type of work. For example in hospitality, where majority of my clients work, it is not that significant to speak English very well, if you work as a kitchen porter or chambermaid. On the other hand, as a waiter, waitress or receptionist, it is required to have high level of English.

Over the years of meeting people either with very good English, or only elementary proficiency, I realised that the level of English does not really matter. However, what really matters is the willingness to work and have results.

2. Arrival time

You might be surprised, but the summer months (July or August) does not necessarily promise to find the best job.

Generally speaking, it doesn’t really matter when you come. You can always find work in London. Therefore, if you really want, you can find something easily, probably with exception of Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

In ideal case, I would recommend you to arrive either in mid-January, or mid-June.

It is just ideal to come from mid-April to mid-June. The summer season starts during this period and the firms are hiring new employees, mainly in hospitality.

From the other perspective, to come in mid-January is advantageous for those who returned to their home countries before or during the Christmas holidays.

To conclude, it does not really matter when you decide to come to London, or the UK respectively. However, coming to the UK in specific periods, you should take into account that the employers might not be that interested in your applications that often. During the season, there are more people searching for vacancies and therefore the competition is higher.

Speaking about London, it has its own specifics and rules. It is a huge and cosmopolitan city with many opportunities to work. Six years ago, I told myself that there must be plenty of job vacancies available for the 8 million people. And yes, I found it, within a week.

3. Sending your CVs and cover letters already before you arrival to the UK

I offer my client as option to make their lives easier and arrange some of the interviews or practices in advance before coming to London.

I have available a database of 2, 200 contacts for hotels, restaurants, bars, cafés or English pubs, etc.

Majority of my clients start sending their CVs and CLs already two or three days before coming to the UK.

Over the last 7 years, I came to the following conclusions:

1. It is enough to send the CVs and CLs two or three days before arrival, as if some of the employers find your profile interesting, they call you immediately and invite you to the interview straight away. In case you contact the employers two or three days in advance, it is easy for you to arrange a meeting after your arrival. Majority of the potential employers wait for you. To start looking for the job too early (two or three weeks in advance), you would not be able to come to interviews or practices and they would prefer somebody else already present in London. You can for example say that you are travelling and coming back on the day of your actual arrival to London.
2. It is important to have the UK address and mobile phone number in your CV and cover letter. It happened to me before that my clients were not contacted by the employers and then we got to know that they have Czech mobile number and even more without the dialling code. If you don’t know the exact address, I usually give my clients an address in the area where they are going to be accommodated. It is essential to show that you are living in London.
3. You must have some kind of experience with hospitality or gastronomy in your CV. Even if, you have never worked in the field, you must write down something like a summer or part-time job, or as I like to put it, helping out to the friend. Simply choose a place that you often visit and mention it in the CV that you used to work there. You write down concrete tasks that you did there according to positions that you would like to do in the UK (cook, kitchen porter, waiter and waitress, receptionist, chambermaid, luggage porter, etc.). Obviously, it takes some time before you can fulfil all your duties at the new workplace. Therefore, you don’t have to worry that you would encounter problems. However, you must at least understand what the requirements and instructions are.
4. Other details that might make you special, when applying for job. You can find everything on the Internet, using your contacts, friends or people you know, or you can contact me.

I cannot tell you what is the exact rate of success of my clients, but I can assure you that it is rather high! As I always say, I cannot guarantee you job for 100 %, but there is really high possibility that you are going to be invited to an interview. After that, it is all about yours and how you can show yourself.

Moreover, I don’t work as an agency and you are not going to be registered anywhere or fill in any forms. Your CV comes to a specific company and then it is a matter of time and luck, when and if you are contacted and invited to an interview.

How much does it cost? NOTHING!!!

You might save hours of going from place to place offering your services in hospitality. I am not even mentioning, how much you save on printing all the CVs and cover letters.

It takes a lot of time to send all your CVs and CLs, usually 3 to 4 days (if you spend 3.5 to 4 hours of sending each day). I would recommend to send it to step by step, for example, 500 – 800 contacts, visit the places and then send another part. This means higher effectivity and relatively higher success rate.

Above all, after sending the first 200 contacts, you might have several interviews, where you can find something interesting and agree on terms. Therefore, it is not necessary to contact more addresses and you can only continue later when you want to change the workplace.

Statistics of success rate (until summer 2018)

To conclude, I would like to include a short statistics of success rate (from June, 5th 2013 to July 2018):

Every time, I send a feedback to each of my clients, but I don’t get all the answers.

• CVs and CLs sent: 6 825
• Job within 3 days (extremely lucky): 1 952
• Job within a week: 2 009
• Job within 10 days (7 to 10 days from sending): 981
• Job within 14 days (10 to 14 days from sending): 673
• No reply: 1 210

There are many advantages to working abroad. You can practice the language, meet new people and last, but not least gain new experience.

If you are planning to work not only in London, you should read my advice what to do before going to the UK, think about accommodation in London, decide how to get to the UK and travel around London (resp. the UK).

I can help you with majority of these things – and you can only concentrate on searching for jobs.

If you decide not to make use of my services and you think about choosing a work agency, read what tricks to pay attention to.

Many Czechs want to work in the UK to improve their English, and therefore they decide to visit some of the language schools.