Live the Dream: Finding a Job in Brussels

Published on May 1, 2014

SocietyEU-TOPIA: Time to VoteEU-TOPIA: Brussels

In the coun­try of Specu­loos, we find work­ers from all over the world. Els Schep­pers, the Specu­loospasta in­ven­tor had a motto, back in 1968: “If you re­ally want some­thing, you can do it”. And that could also be the guide­line for Nuno Loureiro, an As­so­ci­a­tion Co­or­di­na­tor at In­terel, the Eu­ro­pean Pub­lic Af­fair Awards Con­sul­tancy of the Year 2014 Win­ner. Be­fore this job, this am­bi­tious 27-year-old Por­tuguese man, who has mas­ters in Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence, had done some un­paid in­tern­ships, worked at Del­haize Su­per­mar­ket to earn some money, had de­pended on his girl­friend for help for a while; did night classes and sent thou­sands of ap­pli­ca­tions. Any­thing to achieve his dream of work­ing in Brus­sels in Eu­ro­pean af­fairs. "I have re­ceived hun­dreds of nos in my life. After a hun­dred nos, you be­come ‘im­per­me­able’ to re­jec­tions. Al­ways ask for feed­back on your re­jected ap­pli­ca­tion and the key is to for­get that you did it. Then when you get an an­swer it’s al­ways a nice sur­prise. If they an­swer, that will help you for fu­ture ap­pli­ca­tions. But don’t wait for it."

Don't feel trapped!

Work­shops, lan­guages and con­tin­u­ous learn­ing are his so­lu­tion. "Don’t adapt only to what is re­quested by your job. There are thou­sands of op­por­tu­ni­ties out there. Don’t be stuck in your job, even if you like it. Don’t give up send­ing ap­pli­ca­tions."

Nuno had jumped from in­tern­ship to in­tern­ship and sev­eral times had to go reg­is­ter him­self as un­em­ployed in Ac­tiris, the Brus­sels Fed­eral Pub­lic Em­ploy­ment Ser­vice. "There is a Lack of op­por­tu­ni­ties here in Brus­sels for young grad­u­ates", and that mo­ti­vated him to be­come an en­tre­pre­neur through B!ngo. This Brus­sels In­terns NGO helps young pro­fes­sion­als to find a good, fair and qual­ity in­tern­ship in the Brus­sels re­gion. There­fore, he rec­om­mends every­body to "think about your CV wisely. Con­sider the photo. Some­times I don’t write the word in­tern­ship but in­stead write what I was doing like Pro­ject As­sis­tant. Oth­er­wise, my CV could look bad with so many in­tern­ships. Every­body does that here in Brus­sels."

His six years of pro­fes­sional ex­pe­ri­ence were spent in Vi­enna, Kiev and Brus­sels and he comes across the ma­jor­ity of his pro­jects be­cause he keeps his con­tacts. "Net­work­ing with peo­ple that you have met or worked with is key and Linked in is a good tool", he ad­vises.

What about love?

Mar­ciano Silva came to Eu­rope be­cause he found love. Now he finds him­self in love with Brus­sels. He is a Man­ager at Exki!, a fran­chise com­pany with more than 70 restau­rants spread across six coun­tries. But this 35-year-old Brazil­ian works in the cen­tral one, be­tween the main sta­tion and Grand Place. It’s a place where he has to switch from Eng­lish, to French, to Span­ish, to any lan­guage in which he can help peo­ple from all over the world. When they ask him about job op­por­tu­ni­ties, his main ad­vice is "to look for of­fi­cial in­for­ma­tion ac­cord­ing to legal doc­u­men­ta­tion and to not work il­le­gally. With­out pa­pers. Never."

While prepar­ing fresh sal­ads, a latté and serv­ing cheese­cakes, Mar­ciano ex­plains that he has worked here for seven years "to look for fi­nan­cial sta­bil­ity, but with­out for­get­ting what I love to do". After his shift at the restau­rant, Mar­ciano does what he re­ally loves: paint­ing. Gal­leries, ex­hi­bi­tions and in­ter­na­tional clients are his focus. And sell­ing the acrylic paint­ings helps him to send money back to Paraná; to be able to fol­low his artis­tic dream, using his cre­ativ­ity and knowl­edge from an arts ed­u­ca­tion and to spread the word about mod­ern Brazil­ian art.

Look­ing to the city from Mi­lieu Law & Pol­icy Con­sult­ing’s bal­cony, Mari Tepp re­veals how Brus­sels’ mul­ti­cul­tural en­ter­prises con­tribute to the in­ter­na­tional mood of the city. "Every day you work with peo­ple from dif­fer­ent back­grounds and feel very dif­fer­ent as­pects, like the way peo­ple use their lunch break and how long it lasts, for ex­am­ple. Peo­ple be­come more tol­er­ant and re­spect­ful." She is a young Es­ton­ian who has lived abroad for three and a half years: Ger­many, France, the USA and now Brus­sels. Work­ing in a mul­ti­cul­tural of­fice as a Pol­icy Re­searcher, Mari al­ways tried "to pay at­ten­tion to all op­por­tu­ni­ties open in­ter­na­tion­ally, and some pro­vided schol­ar­ships". Her rec­om­men­da­tion to her un­em­ployed friends is "to not lose self-con­fi­dence, even if it looks like no­body wants you. There is a place for every­one. If it takes a while to find that op­por­tu­nity, stay ac­tive. Vol­un­tary pro­jects, cre­at­ing a startup, learn­ing lan­guages, build­ing up your skills; that is all very valu­able for your CV, too."

In the city where you can use at least three dif­fer­ent lan­guages to ask for a hotel room, Mirela Mis­tor had to learn all three. Ital­ian is also on her list of lan­guages, com­pleted by her mother tongue Ro­man­ian. She has worked for four years in a hotel com­pany and came to Brus­sels when Ro­ma­nia was a fresh EU mem­ber state. She left her lit­tle sun be­hind and started to clean houses, ob­tain­ing a job in the Tourism sec­tor and mak­ing use of her de­gree in the field. Her main ad­vice is "Study, in­vest in your­self, and study at any age, even when/if you al­ready have a job, keep study­ing". She man­aged to bring her son and en­cour­aged him to "keep in mind that what­ever you do, or want to do, you have to be the best". Mirela goes to Ro­ma­nia every sum­mer, but she feels dif­fer­ent. "Com­ing to Brus­sels changes your men­tal­ity. You open your mind. Peo­ple don’t look at you; they don’t judge you by your clothes. Of course if you have your par­ents there be­hind, sup­port­ing you all the time, you would not have the courage to come and fight. The stronger are the ones that can live amongst strangers, in­stead of amongst friends, be­cause any­body can do that’, she says proudly. ‘If I had to live again what I lived so far, I don’t know if I could man­age it. You know, the mo­ment makes you stronger. Every­thing is pos­si­ble if you want it!"

This ar­ti­cle is part of a spe­cial se­ries de­voted to Brus­sels. It's part of "EU-topia : Time To Vote", a pro­ject run by Cafébabel in part­ner­ship with the Hip­pocrène foun­da­tion, The Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion, the Min­istry of For­eign Af­faires and the EVENS foun­da­tion. The whole se­ries will soon be avail­able on the home­page.