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International experience: Erasmus or after graduate?

1 points by Jokeris ↗ HN
Hi guys, actually I am at the first year of the Master degree in Computer Science in Italy. After the university, I would like to work outside my country. Therefore I think I will need a good English to be desirable in the jobs market. At present, I study english books, the course holds in english, therefore I have an acceptable level of reading and listening but, as you probably noticed, I haven't got a good speaking and writing. So, the big question in my mind is this: should I go on Erasmus for 6/9 months in UK or northern Europe country? Or should I stay in Italy, graduate, take a good certification and then look for a job from Italy? My fears are two: I will go in a foreign country but I won't learn a proper english and I'll learn bad habits that will be hard to unlearn next. Or I'll stay in Italy, I'll learn a "academic" english (and I'll gain a certification) but I will not have opportunities to find a job from Italy because I will not have connections in a foreign country.

4 comments

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brudgers
Your English is good enough that I understood your question. With use, it will probably improve over the many years of your career. I guess the answer comes down to whether studying English is more attractive than getting a job right now.

Good luck.

Jokeris
However I have to study now. When I'll graduate, how hard will be to get a job from my country in a foreign one, if I have a certification for English? Are recruiters interested in foreign graduates or is it just a waste of money for them?
brudgers
The way to know how hard it will be to find a job is to start applying for jobs. I'd recommend applying directly to the companies and markets in which you are interested. You will get good feedback [even no response is better than a false positive] relatively quickly. Using a recruiter is adopting a dependency. It may be useful later, but if it prevents starting to look for jobs right now, then it is not very useful in the short term.

I would caution against imagining what recruiters and companies will value for an arbitrary position. A customer facing position may favor English more than a head down programming one. Anyway, good recruiters want what the company paying them says they want. The reason companies pay them is for their judgement in evaluating the strengths and weaknesses and articulating those in terms of an actual position.

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