
International experience: Erasmus or after graduate? - Jokeris
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&#x27;t got a good speaking and writing. So, the big question in my mind is this: should I go on Erasmus for 6&#x2F;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&#x27;t learn a proper english and I&#x27;ll learn bad habits that will be hard to unlearn next.
Or
I&#x27;ll stay in Italy, I&#x27;ll learn a &quot;academic&quot; english (and I&#x27;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.
======
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.

