[jblimato]

Hello all,

I am a 19 year old Accounting student from the United States. I just came back from a semester abroad in Salamanca, Spain and absolutely loved it! Ever since I was little, I always loved travelling and always wanted to live abroad.

This summer I am planning on finding a job/internship in Europe, specifically Spain, Italy, Switzerland or France. I would love to find an internship related to business/accounting but I do realize that with the Eurozone crisis, it might not be realistic.

I was thinking that maybe getting a job teaching English would be a better option? I had a few offers while in Salamanca but they didn't fit well with my class schedule.

I have office experience as a data analysis assistant at my university, but don't really have experience in teaching except when I went to South Korea on a service trip and taught English in an organization for handicapped children for 10 days.

I have dual citizenship with the United States and Switzerland so visas aren't an issue and I speak fluent English, Spanish and can get by in Italian.

Does anyone know of any language schools that only hire for the summer and not year-round? Or any other recommendations?

Sorry for the long post and thank you all for the help!

 

[Bevdeforges]

To land an "internship" ("stage") in France, you have to be enrolled in school and the stage has to be part of your academic program. You would have to sign a three-way contract (called a "convention de stage") between yourself, the employer and your school. There are some tax benefits accorded the employer based on their hiring stagieres rather than just temps, so they are generally keen to do things by the book to take advantage of the tax benefits.

Teaching English in the summer is a bit of a tough nut to crack, too. Summer in France really is vacation time. Those who "have to" learn English are usually taking classes through their employer, but most classes shut down during the months of July and August because of the vacation period. The language schools tend to focus on foreigners wanting to learn French over the summer, because the French themselves don't tend to do classes over their vacations like the tourists do. (Or they go to England to learn English.)

One option to look into might be something like Euro Disneyland. They hire folks for the summer season, usually holding auditions throughout Europe starting about now through April or so. Only problem is that you have to be somewhere where they are doing auditions.

The summer hiring season is definitely getting underway over here, but finding a summer job from a distance could be tough with so many young people here on the ground. If you could get over here for a week or two to look for summer work, you might get lucky, though.
Cheers,
Bev