How to Find a Job in London as a Newly Arrived Foreigner

I moved to London in August 2018 with my boyfriend. Since then, I have been in search of my new long-term position in this wonderful city.

My boyfriend was very lucky in his job search since a recruiter reached out to him to let him know about the perfect job in London, while we were still living in France. He received an email about a job opportunity that didn’t look that great when we first read the job description. He then called the recruiter to get more details, and the ball was set rolling. My boyfriend grew more interest for the offer as the job description, surely written by a non-expert HR employee, didn’t do honor to the responsibilities and benefits of the job at all.

We went to London the following week for an interview that went very well, followed by a second interview with three Managers (the team my boyfriend is currently working with). The job offer came two weeks later with a start date, a great salary, and promotion prospects.

Our new life in London started on August first, as my boyfriend’s contract was set to start on August the sixth at his new company. With a few weeks into this role, it appears that the job is perfect for him, and that he is perfect for the job. He has the exact experience and skills the hiring company was looking for, while this opportunity represents everything he sought in his next role.

With this story of how my boyfriend got a job in London, you get a good example of effective and successful recruiting, clear and efficient objectives set by a hiring company to fill a need, and attract a talented new hire in a timely manner (the hiring process took three weeks in total, which is pretty fast if you’re asking me), and a well-performing organization able to choose and welcome a recruit in good time in its offices.

It pains me to say that this story is the exception in the UK recruiting industry, especially in London, a city crowded with recruitment agencies. Add to that the fact that anyone (without exaggeration) can be hired in the recruitment firm, or an HR service in London (literally anyone). No qualifications or previous experience are needed. If you think I'm not being honest, check recruiters and HR's LinkedIn profiles in London; you'll see.

How to find a job in London

Most of the time, you don’t even need to actively send resumes to hiring companies. All you ought to do is put your information and CV on job boards, and wait for calls from recruiters. That’s exactly what happened for my boyfriend, as he didn’t send many CVs, and was approached with a job opportunity that wasn’t advertised on any job board or website.

Still, I actively sent resumes to numerous companies, wrote cover letters when asked to in the job ad, and didn’t mind filling long automated forms on companies’ website to submit countless applications. You can call me a control-freak, or just understand that I had been out of a job since February 2018, as my fixed-term contract ended at that time, and that I wanted to find my next position as soon as possible.

My boyfriend, who is calm, collected, and in perfect control of himself in most situations, had a more confident and relaxed approach when it came to job-seeking. He optimized his resume with a clean and concise presentation of his experiences and skills, and only sent it to apply for targeted job opportunities.

I must say that he was right to proceed as he did since, in most cases, we didn’t get any reply following these applications, or when we did, it was mainly automated email replies stating the company “decided not to move forward with your application” for no explicit reasons.

As I will explain later in this post, there are way more impolite ways of responding to a candidate’s application than sending an automated rejection reply.

Recruiters, HRs, and Professionalism in London

There is a clear disctintion to make between recruiters, who work for recruiting agencies, and HRs, who work in the hiring company.

The recruiter’s job is to put a candidate and a hiring company in contact, possibly leading to a job offer proposed by the company, and accepted by the candidate. The recruiter is also in charge of the salary negotiation with the company, as his/her fees will depend on the candidate’s salary. In other words, it’s in the best interest of the recruiter to negotiate the highest salary possible in order to receive the highest fees possible at the end of the negotiation.

The HR manager’s job is to deal with either candidates' direct applications, or recruiters introduced candidates. His/her duties include drafting the job description (they can’t even get that right most of the time), setting up meetings or phone interviews with the candidates, sending acceptance or rejection emails, and processing the new hire information when the application is successful.

I went to several job interviews since I've been in London, but I've never met directly with a HR manager.

I was contacted by them through phone calls and emails, and they would just ask me about my availability for an interview with the managers (project managers, legal managers, consultants) I would work with if my application was successful. At least in London, HR Managers don’t meet directly with the candidates (in most cases). They are reduced to working as mere pen pushers most of the time, and I must say that it’s relief, as I will give several examples (among many) of why I’m convinced that HR managers are, for the most part, useless bottom-feeders, with yet oversized egos (check their LinkedIn profile to have a good laugh), who shouldn’t have a say in the hiring process.

Throughout my job-seeking experience, I have seen both recruiters, and HR managers make blunders, or act in the most impolite manner, but I eventually came to the conclusion that HRs are way more incompetent and clueless than most of the recruiters I dealt with.

They can even be considered as dangerous: for the company who wants to attract talents and misses them, because the HR obviously lacks the necessary skills to identify a good fit, AND for the candidates who actually possess valuable skills and experience to offer, and end up without a good job, because they were told they were not good enough by an incapable HR manager.

In the case of recruiters, they have to deliver good candidates, and secure a job offer to get paid. I think that’s part of the reason why they appear to be more effective than HRs, since the latter get paid whether they hire someone or not.

Recruiters often specialize in specific sectors, which make them more aware of the skills and experience needed from a candidate to succeed in the job. They are more prepared in interviews, and their questions are sharper and more relevant. You can clearly see that they know exactly what their clients want, and that they’re capable of looking beyond what’s written on your resume to pinpoint transferrable skills and human qualities that could benefit the hiring company.

In all the unfortunate times I had to deal with a HR Manager, I felt more like the poor thing was here to verify a check list: “Oh, you have three years’ experience in that field, not four as indicated in the job description. That won’t work…”, “You already held analytical and research positions, but not in our sector, that’s a problem…”.

With time, you will be able to identify qualified and effective recruiters, and stop wasting your time with unskilled wannabe head-hunters. Now, how are you supposed to navigate in this sea of good and bad recruiters?

How to set good recruiters apart from bad ones?

Efficient, qualified and worthy recruiters:

• They won’t withhold information, and will give clear answers to your questions.
• They will make themselves available to answer your calls, and provide you with updates regarding your application.
• They will prove that they carefully read your resume by asking relevant questions, and they'll explain clearly why they believe you’re a good fit for the role they’re trying to fill.
• They will let you know what the hiring company is looking for, for you to decide if the company’s needs match your career aspirations, and to prepare you for a potential interview.
• The most serious ones will arrange a Skype or face-to-face interview with you to learn more about your experience and skills, and let you know about other job opportunities.

You want to stay in touch with the ones who gives you constructive and helpful feedback on how to present your profile on job boards, and how to position yourself on the UK job market (which sectors match your profile, which position or role to hunt, which companies in your field are hiring, how to improve your resume, etc.)

A few examples of bad experiences with dishonest, lazy, opportunistic and impolite HRs and recruiters.

The recruiters who contact you, and completely blow you off.

Most of the time, recruiters will contact you to tell you about this amazing job opportunity they have, that you would be perfect for! After a few times this happens, you start to realize they don’t contact you because you’re special, or because the role they’re trying to fill is wonderful. It’s just their Modus Operandi to tell you so. They say the same thing to every job-seeker, and they start to sound like a broken record after a while.

They will contact you, give you information about a job opportunity, and explain why they think you could be a good fit. If you’re convinced, you can send them your resume, so that they can submit your application to the hiring company. In most cases, it doesn’t lead to anything…

If the hiring company is not interested in your profile, the recruiters won’t even call you, or send you a message to let you know about it. Don’t bother calling them, or harassing them with emails; they won’t answer, and if they do, they will talk to you in the most impolite way, by saying they’re busy, and they don’t have time to take care of all the candidates they work with.

After the hiring company rejects your profile, you’re no longer of any interest to them, so they won’t even take the time to talk to you.

The recruiters who contact you, and then tell you that the company hired someone internally.

Some recruiters will waste your time by telling you about fake job opportunities they heard from dishonest companies. In this case, a hiring company post a fake job ad and contact some recruiting agencies to start searching for candidates, while this company’s top management already decided to hire someone internally. It’s all about pretending that their hiring process is fair and transparent, while nothing could be further away from the truth.

The unqualified recruiters who try to negotiate the lowest salary possible.

Some (most) recruiters are cruelly lacking in experience (and training, skills, technical knowledge, market understanding, common sense, self-esteem, respect for others and themselves, etc.). As a result, they won’t even have the confidence to efficiently represent your interests, and negotiate a good salary on your behalf. If they’re aware of it (most of them are), they will try to convince you that your experience and skills are not as valuable as you think they are, and to make you accept a lower salary than what you deserve.

Avoid these recruiters like the plague. They’re worthless, dishonest, and make the world around them a worse place to live in.

The HRs who reply to your application, and ask you to do their jobs for them.

I was once contacted by an HR Manager regarding my application at her company for a Project Manager role. The email was only one line and asking me to tell her if I was lacking any experience and skills mentioned in the job ad.

I tried to answer the question as accurately as I could by detailing my experience and explaining how it matched the job specifications. This is the reply I received: "Hi, I’m afraid we would need someone with closer experience in our business field, but thanks for your interest."

This "recruiter" received my resume for the role advertised at her company, and instead of reading it and assessing my fit to the role, she sent an email asking me to do exactly that, for her… She couldn’t even do her job herself, and wasted my time, because she was too lazy (and stupid!).

I checked her LinkedIn profile, and when you see how she presents herself on her profile page, you immediately understand how she spends her time and energy: “Head of People,” "Ambitious experienced head-hunter and recruitment business leader," "executive search specialist within IT," “specialist headhunt projects,” who “look after candidate sourcing and selection.”

No wonder she can’t do her job correctly. She spends more time polishing her LinkedIn profile than doing actual work. I keep telling myself that a company hired this person, and I’m struggling to find a job…

Companies who waste your time because they're only after the free work/insights/knowledge you can give them.

I had managers or directors of some companies invite me to interviews, asking me to answer many questions, prepare presentations, case studies, mock meetings with clients, to end up with no news from them whatsoever afterwards. In some cases, they will send you an email to give you a fake explanation of why you were not hired: "You lack experience in this…" "You don’t have these skills..." Always details they can’t have missed when reading your resume.

For example, I once applied for a Consultant role in an energy consulting company. The hiring manager arranged a 30 minute phone interview with the team managers. They asked me questions about my background, my career aspirations, and the kind of responsibilities I liked to perform. It was about knowing me better, and seeing if my personality was a good fit for the company culture.

The second stage of the interview was at their offices, and lasted one hour and a half. They asked me to prepare a presentation on a subject defined in advance, and the questions were mostly about this presentation. The HR lady looked bored, and uninterested during my presentation, and kept scribbling on her notebook the whole time, which I found very rude and unprofessional. The interview carried on with a case study on how to run a business and make profits.

After those two interviews, they didn’t even have the common decency to send an email to let me know that my application wasn’t successful. I saw the same job ad on LinkedIn weeks before, applied, and didn’t receive any reply. When the job ad reappeared, I applied again, and this time they answered, and the two interviews followed. My guess is that they were not planning on hiring anyone. They just wanted some people to come and prepare free presentation materials and give them insights for them to use on the reports they commercialise.

The same applies for the London branch of a French bank who invited me to an interview that lasted one hour and a half, including a lot of questions on my background, and how I handled specific situations.

Two days after this interview, they said that they were interested in my profile and wanted me to complete the second stage of the interview process. They asked me to prepare a case study on the UK meat market, detailing the current state of the market, opportunities, and risks, competitors, and potential partners for French distributors. As I didn’t receive any news after sending the case study, I sent messages to get updates regarding my application, and waited two weeks to have a reply from them.

The message they sent me was a one-line message stating that my profile wasn’t what they were looking for, and that they expected something different regarding my case study, without further explanation. I replied to this message to get more details, but it seems my attempt to understand their decision was completely ignored. Three weeks later, the same job ad, for the same role, at the same bank reappeared on job boards…

I have found some interesting temporary assignments on my fields of expertise, but I'm still looking for a long-term and challenging opportunity, to this day. Despite some heavily flawed recruitment processes, and countless unqualified recruiters, I'm not giving up on my career aspirations and professional dreams.