Jan Virt, former IDCN Communication Team Volunteer, has landed a position at Johnson & Johnson as Senior Business Analyst.
What is your story?
Bonjour! My name is Jan, I am Czech and we moved to Paris two years ago with my spouse, who currently works in L’Oréal.
However Paris wasn’t our first out of home destination, since we arrived from Miami where we lived for five years prior.
We took a big leap of faith by leaving Prague, going to Florida, almost seven years ago. But american culture and environment were already familiar to both of us since we worked across the USA independently as students during the summer programs.
When the next assignment in France came up, we felt little assured about moving back to Europe, but the truth was the exact opposite. Not easy to admit, but the US culture has formed us in certain ways and France greeted us with her different rules laid on the table.
It’s generally understood the move of a following partner is always harder although the partner company has supported my integration to a large extent. Biggest challenge for me was obviously language barrier and I was lucky enough to attend Alliance Francaise courses upon our arrival. It’s laid solid foundation, but when the classes were over, I had to step outside the comfort zone many times and just start talking, making mistakes and faux pas on regular basis.
What steps did you undertake to find a job? What did work for you?
With ten years of experience in finance controlling management, I wanted to use the opportunity of our move to Paris, to try something new and to pursue my photography and passion for climbing. So I have established a photography business.
It has involved a lot of networking in the climbing circles, going out, travel in France and take photos for my growing portfolio. They say if you love what you’re doing you will never work a day in life. The truth is, you will work twelve hours a day, but you will not glance at the watch to see if it’s a time to clock out. After about sixteen months into my photography adventure, the new invisible enemy entered our world and the fragile small business, which barely started, got into trouble. When clients started cutting their budgets and restrictions on travel became significant, I found myself locked down completely. So in the sake of becoming busy again and feeling useful I have started looking for a job, during the first wave of our confinement.
I have refreshed my LinkedIn profile, with help of various online professional blogs and started to ask around my corporate friends, and colleagues of my spouse if they could share their HR contacts and contacts from their former job hunts. France is all about personal connections and friends. And after a dozen of CV’s sent out with motivation letters, I have landed a job in Johnson & Johnson as a Senior Business Analyst.
How did volunteering for IDCN contribute to your job searching?
Volunteering has helped to show the hiring managers that I am staying active and keen on improving my skills. And despite the fact that my volunteering time at IDCN has been rather short, it has brought a lot of new and valuable contacts.
What advice you can give to IDCN partners?
Moving to a new country is always difficult, leaving family and friends behind is easier when you’re in the twenties, but raises in importance the older we get. So in order to get the most out of such sacrifice we learned to be open, listen, take a deep breath and enjoy our expatriation as much as we can. We would never exchange the experience gained abroad for anything else. When asked what’s better, if Miami or Paris I struggle to give an answer, because it’s not comparable. We learned to take the most out of each experience. Start a new business, write a blog, take photos or learn to cook Asian cuisine. And if you’re keen on getting hired by corporation, practice resiliency. The jobs are out there, virus or not. It all pays in the end.
