Which city, please

[cafecafe]

Hi all!

My first post in here so hi to all!

I am Dutch and in my forties. I am currently working in Tunisia. Contract will end soon or rather I will be ending my contract due to poor pay and work conditions and wish to relocate to France.

I speak French fluently. I am an experienced TEFL teacher (TEFL Diploma from leading UK Uni + 19 years of teaching experience in the Far East at schools and universities) but this time I wish to try and secure some kind of a position as a data entry officer or a web/IT support officer as I have been updating websites in my spare time for the last 6 years for multiple companies through different CMS (Control Management systems) and I'm a bit bored with teaching, I must admit.

Question:
1. Are there opportunities for me working in some kind of a IT support role in a company (French or multi-national)?
2. Are my recruitment chances higher by sticking to what I have been doing full-time for the past 19 years, which is teaching English?
Or
3. Which city offers job ops the most; Strasbourg, Lyon, or my favourite... Nice?

Salary is not an issue as I got some $$ saved up, and not too bothered about Paris either even though my guess is that most job opportunities are in the capital.

I enjoy working so if you know of job vacancies not necessarily related to my skills/experience, please shoot the info my way.

Thanks!

[Bevdeforges]

Offhand, I'd say that you'll have the best opportunities in the field where you have the most recognizable "qualification." As we've often said here, the French are nuts about "qualifications" - sometimes even over whatever experience you may have in the field. But, IT is a young field and may offer a bit more flexibility in that regard. You won't know until you try.

You may want to initially have two CVs, one oriented toward teaching English and the other toward IT work and just see how they fly. Though one thing I've noticed here in France is that the French definitely prefer having a "native speaker" teach them English, which could put you at a slight disadvantage.

As far as question #3 goes, Lyon is the big "tech" hub in France, so your chances could be better there in the IT area. Nice is close to the Sophie Antipolis tech center, which is another interesting possibility, though there you really may need the "qualifications" to be recognized as an IT person.
Cheers,
Bev

[cafecafe]

Great stuff, Bev. Thanks for this!