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Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Maribor, Slovenia.
Portoroz, Slovenia.
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• Natalija Verboten
Slovenia has tons of interesting job opportunities on the horizon.
Dear Michael,
I have been kicking around the idea of moving to Slovenia for years. However, I fear that I would leave my ok paying, unsatisfying job only to find myself unable to get a job in Slovenia. I would then have to dejectedly return to the frozen wasteland that is Wisconsin. What info or advice do you have as far as job hunting in Slovenia? I speak Slovenian, but I have difficulty reading or writing. I would appreciate any words of wisdom that you could spare.
Thanx!
Mark
I’m asked this question pretty frequently, so it’s high time that I tackle it. I’m hoping that other people will chip in with their advice/experience in the comments. I’ll get the ball rolling.
In my opinion, the easiest job for a foreigner to get here is English teacher. They’re almost always in demand (especially "native speakers") and you don’t need any special skills besides knowing how to speak English. The turnover rate is also high: many foreigners come for just a few months and then return home, meaning that there are job openings pretty regularly. Native speakers will usually be given "conversational classes," which aren’t terribly demanding and often fun. The pay ranges from decent to excellent. For one academic hour (45 minutes) you can expect somewhere between 2000 SIT (8 euros) and 5000 SIT (20 euros). There are exceptions, of course, but those are the general parameters.
For reference: earning 200,000 SIT (800 euros) a month is a decent salary in most of Slovenia, although Ljubljana and parts of the coast are relatively more expensive to live in.
The highest salaries for teaching English can be found at the universities, advanced schools or at Slovenian companies. It’s very difficult to get work at the universities, but it is possible. Slovenian companies (banks, agencies, etc..) pay extremely well and are much less difficult to find. There are plenty of language schools in the country. Here’s a good list of some of them.
In my personal experience, the worst salaries are at Berlitz, which has schools in Maribor and Ljubljana and pays its "native speakers" the same as other teachers. Most other schools will usually make allowances for the fact that fluent English speakers are hard to find and pay them slightly more. Berlitz doesn’t. Their advantage is that they give you the job before you move and help get you situated. In other words, you accept an artificially low salary in exchange for security. If you would rather arrive with a job, this might be the option for you. (The U.K. version of this is The British Council, which arranges for people to teach at Slovenian schools around the country.)
Either way, teaching English is a good way for a foreigner to get a foothold in here. It will also give you time to meet people and survey the country yourself. The thing about Slovenia is that it’s very small, so that almost everybody knows everybody. This plays a big role in getting jobs, because the unknown foreigner will always lose to the guy whose sister went to the same high school as the boss. And since every Slovene has a sister/cousin/uncle/friend who knows the boss, the chances are very strongly stacked against you. Not speaking the language fluently is another handicap, so learning as much as you can will only help you.
Once you’ve been here for a while, though, various opportunities will inevitably present themselves. Of course, the only way to get near them is to make the plunge and come over. Best of luck!
Send your questions about Slovenia to AskTGoC@gmail.com!
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And since every Slovene has a sister/cousin/uncle/friend who knows the boss, the chances are very strongly stacked against you.
I think this is called six degrees of separation for finding a job.
Of course, you can always work in an American burger-chained company. As long as you know how to say “Do you like fries
with that” in Slovene
For one academic hour (45 minutes) you can expect somewhere between 2000 SIT (8 euros) and 5000 SIT (20 euros).
Is this net??
Some adverstising agencies and research companies do give a job to English spoken people. So why not try there?
“In my opinion, the easiest job for a foreigner to get here is English teacher. They’re almost always in demand (especially “native speakers”) and you don’t need any special skills besides knowing how to speak English.”
A little off topic, but this really amazes me - I know people in Vienna who are native speakers and “teach” English. What I don’t get is what actually qualifies them. In Austria and in Germany for example it takes a university degree in Pädagogik/teaching to work as a teacher in public schools.
I know Berlitz is not a public school, but I still prefer to learn a language from someone who at least has some teaching skills and knows about teaching methods. I can’t imagine anybody who is “just” a native speaker to be such a good teacher as those I had for example at the University of Ljubljana for Slovene as Foreign Language. And they are trained teachers.
Is this net??
Yes, but keep in mind that classes are usually only once (or a few times) a week.
fxas: I think Slovenia has something like two degrees of separation for every person. It would actually be an interesting experiment to do.
The degree with which some people come teaching English in Slovenia varies very much.
In my high school they had some kind of a program which hired British people (I don’t know if it was governmental) to come to Slovenia for a few months to teach in concert with a Slovenian English teacher for a few hours a week (mostly explaining their culture and history).
One was an university psyhics teacher, another one left school at 16 (A Levels)…
This thing with “native” English is a bit silly to me…
I am two degrees of separation away from Bill Clinton, George Bush, Paris Hilton to name but a few, and all by virtue of the fact that I am a very average Slovene. However, I still have not managed to establish a connection to the elusive Michael M., hmmmmmmmmm….
T.
Untrained native speakers, the vast majority of the time, know a lot less about their language than a trained non-native. The only thing you get is near perfect application of all phonetic and syntactic irregularities, which is indeed important for advanced levels.
I was kind of wondering about the whole “native speaker” thing as well. I mean… if I’d go to the US or Canada right now to teach Slovene to a bunch of people, I’d do a horrid job of it. And it’s not like I’m clueless in grammar or anything. And I speak basic english at least. Just that that I don’t know any technics on how to get stuff in people’s heads. Most of what I could do would be talking to them actively.
The least of what native speakers should know is the basic command of the langauge their students speak. We had a native speaker as a teacher in grammar school - a funny toad-like British guy. I think his name was Peter, but I’m not sure. But he was there only for the last year and only as an auxiliary teacher. We still had a primary slovene teacher. I couldn’t imagine him teaching us full time. 0_0
Even more amazing to me is that some of them are allowed to “teach” other subjects as well. I don’t mean to be arrogant - I am just really surprised.
In Germany there are even special university courses for teaching German as a foreign language, because as JF says “Untrained native speakers, the vast majority of the time, know a lot less about their language than a trained non-native”.
On the Degrees of Separation, well I know one person who met the late Pope John Paul II three times. He met him in Rome, and in the States, and apparently got to talk with him a bit.
Degrees of Separation is an old theory in the world of Intelligence, and there is some merit to the notion, BUT who you might have met or might know isn’t everything. A lot of companies would like an outsider better.
“Native speakers” don’t really teach English in the “conversation” classes. It’s just an opportunity for the students to interact and speak with someone, who actually speaks the language. I was taught proper Oxford English by my slovenian teachers, yet when I visited USA for the first time, I was the source of some amusement. I asked for a “torch” to go to a dark basement and I asked some girl if she was going to a ball. Don’t remind me of the laughter that ensued when I pronounced “sausage” in the proper British way. hehehe. In any case, conversation classes are basically just that - you sit around and talk. You don’t need pedagogic training and all that for it.
As far as the job market in Slovenia, all I can say is - it’s horrible. The two degrees of separation thing definitely plays into it, as well as very constraining labor laws and huge taxes. Slovenian university students often linger on, dragging their graduation date, since they can’t get decent jobs. They are probably too picky, too, however. If you’re a foreigner, an ideal situation would be for a huge-ass multinational to send you there. Good luck with that.
I do beleive that Ljubljana needs a good ol’ fashioned American BBQ and Grill, along with a sports bar with huge-ass TV screens, though. Or Hooters. Just wait for W to finish his mandate, so the US culture can get more popular again
He he, since you’re from Wisconsin, you could sell cheesecake and cheese curd….American Bakery? Apple pie and cheesecake, chocolate chip cookies and brownies? 254 types of ice-cream? Key-lime pie? Muffins and cinnamon buns? I don’t think there’s such a place in Slovenia, yet. You can tell I have a sweet tooth…
and I can open up a Tim Hortons
Sure. Just please don’t try to sell the “cofee”.
Croatia already has a Hooters. In fact, you could say that there’s a “Hooters Gap” between Slovenia and Croatia, something the Defense Ministry should be seriously concerned about.
crni, if you opened a BBQ place in Slovenia, I guarantee you that I’d there for breakfast/lunch/dinner.
Crni you got off easy. As long as you didn’t request to smoke a fag. :S
People can be trained to drink bad coffee.
Look at all the crap they serve at Mc Dumps
and people drink it.But I have always had
a desire to open is a combined bar sports goods
and book store
freddie, toad-like Peter here. I ‘taught’ in III Gimnasija, Maribor in 1998/99. Same person? I wasn’t supposed to teach (my job title was English Assistant) and had no formal training. The Slovene English teachers I was with threw me in at the deep end and then sat drinking coffee in the staffroom. They marvelled at the chance to learn from a new, young teacher but never observed me. I found the experience VERY difficult but tried my best. On the whole I found Slovene pupils disinterested in whatever they seemed to be doing for whatever reason. Teachers seemed to just teach over the constant talking which made it difficult for those pupils wanting to learn. I am now married to a Slovene, in my 6th year teaching 11 to 18 years olds French and Spanish in England and I’m 2 i.c. in my Department. We have a choir trip planned to SLO at the end of Oct. 2005. See you then?