So I’m graduating in May, and I have been planning on moving to Taiwan to work for a few years as a break before grad school. I’ve been looking around for jobs, and there is a chance I’ll be getting a job as a proof reader for a Taiwanese translation firm. I’ve been in contact with someone at the company, and I’ve been trying to figure out what I’d be doing for a visa. In 2007 when I was studying in Taipei, I did two different language programs, for a total of 6 1/2 months, and had all sorts of issues with my visa. After buying a new one, I was still forced to leave the country.
Most of my experiences with Taiwanese visas have been student ones, and I have been trying to figure out what the visa situation is for work. Apparently in order to obtain a work visa you need 2 years professional experience, which is pretty absurd…how am I supposed to get work experience if I can’t get a work visa?
Maybe I’m missing something, but either way, I have a few questions. Are work visas and ARC’s the same? I know that you need to be in Taiwan for at least 4 months before you can get an ARC, but I thought that tourist visas only last for 2. Does that mean I have to leave the country at some point? Are there loopholes for work visas, or are they really strict about the 2 years experience? Is this strictly enforced? Is there some sort of website I could visit to figure out all this stuff? The TECRO websites are never very useful.
First, yes you absolutely need two years working experience to get approved for a professional ARC. You have to hand in reference letters in order to prove that employment, and although I haven’t heard of them ever calling to check on it, if your diploma will say 2009, they’ll know you couldn’t have two years of experience after graduating. Really your only options now would be to either get a job at a place with a buxiban license or go to school and get a student’s visa and then you are able to work 16 hours a week part time.
The ARC and work permit are different. You have to hand in documents through your employer in order to get a work permit from the government. Once you have a work permit you can get an ARC and resident visa, you just have to hand in the work permit and tell them where you live. I think the 4 month thing is only for student visas because I never had that issue.
First, yes you absolutely need two years working experience to get approved for a professional ARC. You have to hand in reference letters in order to prove that employment, and although I haven’t heard of them ever calling to check on it, if your diploma will say 2009, they’ll know you couldn’t have two years of experience after graduating. Really your only options now would be to either get a job at a place with a buxiban license or go to school and get a student’s visa and then you are able to work 16 hours a week part time.
The ARC and work permit are different. You have to hand in documents through your employer in order to get a work permit from the government. Once you have a work permit you can get an ARC and resident visa, you just have to hand in the work permit and tell them where you live. I think the 4 month thing is only for student visas because I never had that issue.[/quote]
Thanks for your quick response, Tiare! If I read your response right, I can’t work in Taiwan doing anything apart from teaching English. This seems pretty absurd to me, and also a bit of a Catch 22. How could I possibly obtain any sort of work experience doing translation/proof-reading if I can’t get a job there in the first place? The email from my point of contact in Taiwan seems to think that part-time experience would work as well. Perhaps I can convince my professor to fudge something for me, otherwise my plans are pretty much ruined
The only motivation for this law seems to be job protection, but the type of jobs that foreigners would take are probably those that locals are unable to do. Why do English teachers get special treatment, and those that want full-time jobs get screwed? Seems quite unfair.
There’s nothing unfair about it, you don’t have specialist skills or experience… so why should get a professional visa? You can always try to apply anyway and say you got experience during your degree, I’m not sure if that is accepted or not.
Who is to say I haven’t obtained specialist skills while in school? I would think that someone with a degree would qualify for having some sort of skill, and if a company wants to employ you, I don’t understand why 2 years of experience are needed. I will probably try applying anyway and see if my professor will vouch for me.
Who is to say I haven’t obtained specialist skills while in school? [/quote]
The government?
Yes, but probably not professional level editing skills. You could just lie and wing it? A lot of people do that, but there’s not much way to do that if you haven’t graduated yet.
Maybe you could get a job with a publisher, translation co, newspaper, tech company in your own country and then come back in a couple of years?
Speaking from first hand knowledge that’s now almost ten years old, the 2 years of work experience must be after your graduation date as per your degree… ie. anything on your resume before you graduated doesn’t count to that 2 year requirement… Things change though and in TWN each individual and each department assesses things differently on a each day of the week, so who knows… All I can say for sure is way back when I tried it, it didn’t float and I was only trying to add 6 months of pre-graduation experience to a legitimate 18 months of post graduation work experience, all of it documented… I should perhaps add that I wasn’t applying for a job in the linguistics field, but I’d hazard a guess that most fields would be treated and assessed similarly…
I don’t think it’ll work. They are pretty strict about the professional ARCs, and I’ve worked with several people that have been denied, multiple times…
It has to be two years post-university work experience, your actual degree doesn’t really matter, as long as you have one.
I’m not sure if this is true or not, but I’ve heard that 2-years working in Taiwan doesn’t even always satisfy the requirement.
I concur with the previous two posters - I was employed on a “professional” work visa in 2005/6 - they definitely needed two years post-university work experience to grant the visa.
There might be one variation to this policy. For example, you do not need a degree to teach in Taiwan. You only need a two-year diploma and a TESOL certificate (which many schools don’t realize).
So if you’re like me, and you received your diploma 10 years ago and worked in your professional field for most of that time, in addition to teaching, then went back to school to finish your degree (like me), then your professional experience would come into play because it was acquired after you earned your diploma but before you finished your degree.
I dunno. Maybe.
My ed. credentials and documented professional experience were accepted by the potential employer as satisfying visa requirements when I applied for a couple editing jobs in Taipei, but I never actually got the job so I didn’t test this theory to it conclusion. At the time I had no reason to think it wouldn’t be accepted. I was granted a work-visa on every other occasion.
I’ve just run into this same problem here. I saw an ad for a position with a government-related organization (don’t want to say as their reputation doesn’t seem to be too great here ), passed their translation test, did the interview, thought I did horribly, then got called for the job a few years later, only to find out that they can’t give me a visa because I lack any related experience. Okay, I’m studying at a language center, I can continue even if the classes are easy, as long as I can get some experience at the same time 沒關係 right? No…because then the office here tells me that I can’t apply for a work permit until I’ve already studied an entire year. Which isn’t going to be the case until September, and this organization is almost certainly not going to wait for me. I tell this to my contact at the job, she checks into it and says it’s true.
When I came here as an English teacher I knew nothing of Chinese. I busted my ass studying because I ended up loving it, not because I was expecting a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but now I’ve gotten to the point where that seems to be the only way to take things to the next level - certainly not going to get there continuing in a language center, and it’s too late to apply to grad school - I don’t know what I’d study anyway, I love Chinese but I can’t say I have any interest in doing Chinese lit and having to learn 文言文…my BA is already virtually useless, if I’m going back to school I’d rather do something more practical for once. So now I’m not sure what options are available to me to keep making progress. If it were an education-related translating or editing job, perhaps with my buxiban experience and a little fudging of my resume in America (I came here about a year after graduating and I did work during most of that time, so it’s the “related” part that’s stopping me, not the " 2 years work experience" part) I’d be able to meet the requirements. But it seems that a general translating job is out of the question.
How does one get started? Is returning to the English-speaking world and looking for a translating job over there really the only option? Do they have similar laws on the Mainland? I wanted to stay in Taiwan a bit longer but it looks like that’s not in the cards. I know it sounds stupid but I’m crazy about this language, I’ll take any job as long as it lets me speak a bit every day. Going back to teaching would be tough - if I were going to teach I’d probably try out Japan, hopefully find a Chinese-speaking tutor and learn a bit of Japanese, and then maybe come back here for grad school in a year.
Sorry for the whining, but this has been a tough week for me. First the horrible interview making me feel like I would never get past an interview in Chinese (I can barely handle one in English!), then finding out I somehow got the job (yay!), then finding out I would have to keep taking classes (disappointing, but okay…), then finally getting my hopes completely dashed against the rocks. ( :fume: )
Well, from what I understand, as long as I can find a Chinese company willing to sponsor me I should be able to get a work visa in China. It seems that depending on the mood of whatever official is processing your application I might require a “Foreign Expert Certificate,” but all that seems to demand is 2 years of work experience, not 2 years of experience related to the job you’re going to be doing. So it looks like that’s the best option for me, the one that lets me keep moving forward immediately without having to hang around spinning my wheels anywhere. I’ve never been a very patient person.
I’m still going to keep looking for jobs in Taiwan, maybe a private company would be more willing to lie to/bribe the gov’t for me, but based on this thread I feel like this could be an insurmountable difficulty. I’ll also ‘modify’ my own resume in the future now that I know about this regulation. I can claim that I did some writing/editing for my jobs back home and for the cram school I worked for at least.
I graduated this past 2010 from California and am trying to find a job here. Will I still need 2 years experience after I get my Ju Liu Zhen in order to get a job in Taiwan? Or is there nothing I can do to get a job here…
I’ve got a similar question. I graduated in 2010 after completing a very loooooooong step in my academic career. During that time, and in the year since I’ve graduated, I’ve acquired a solid four years of professional editing experience – news (not the school newspaper), academic, and transcript editing. BUT…only one of those four years of work has been post-graduation. Is this going to be a problem? I’ve got an interview lined up already for when I get to Taiwan, and what’s more, I have a unique skill set related to editing that’s perfect for my possible employer. Any thoughts?
I graduated this past 2010 from California and am trying to find a job here. Will I still need 2 years experience [color=#FF0000]after I get my Ju Liu Zhen[/color] in order to get a job in Taiwan? Or is there nothing I can do to get a job here…[/quote]
How are you planning on getting an ARC in the first place?
It should not be difficult. I am in the process as we speak (waiting for FBI to send back background check). Both my parents are citizens of Taiwan. I have a Taiwan passport but no ID. I am wondering if I still need the 2 years exp with the ARC
Definitely the wrong thread. You, my friend, are a citizen of Taiwan. Get an ID when you reinstate your residency and you’re set to find any job in Taiwan…and I do mean ANY.
BTW, are you a dude or a dudette? If not the latter, then I’m afraid you might have to perform the 1 year military service unless you wanna do a 4-month run to HK until you turn 36.
Question: Businesses are still saying this, but can anyone confirm if this is actually still a legal requirement? I ask this after not finding a reference to length of work experience in the related laws and after seeing this thread:
[quote]Lastly, on a matter of concern to your chamber for many years, we have also made plans to relax the requirement for foreign-national employees to have two years of work experience, so as to give businesses greater choice and flexibility in personnel recruitment.
But I still see people repeating this requirement here, so I’m wondering if anyone has had any direct response from the government in the past 2 years, or if anyone has actually been rejected for this reason. As we all know, just because a Taiwanese business thinks something is the law doesn’t make it so.
Perhaps this is where the confusion is coming from:
[quote]Should the number of employed Foreign Workers as referred to in Subparagraph 10 of Paragraph 1 of Article 46 of The Act reach ten (10) or more, the Employer shall set up disciplinarian(s) in accordance with the following Paragraphs:
1.Where the number of employed Foreign Workers is ten (10) or more but below fifty (50), there shall be at least one (1) disciplinarian.
2.Where the number of employed Foreign Workers is fifty (50) or more but below one hundred (100), there shall be at least two (2) disciplinarians.
3.Where the number of employed Foreign Workers is one hundred (100) or more,there shall be an additional disciplinarian per every additional one hundred (100) employed Foreign Workers.
The disciplinarian(s) of the Previous Paragraph shall possess one of the following qualifications:
1.Obtaining the Certificate of Employment Service Professional Personnel;
2.Conducting Foreign Workers’ disciplinary more than two (2) years of experience;
3.Graduate(s) of university or college and having more than one (1) year of work experience.
The local competent authority may notify the employers who have violated the specifications of Paragraph 1 and 2 of this Article to improve within specified period.[/quote]
I am not a disciplinarian (thankfully!), and even there it says just a graduate with more than one year of generic work experience. I do not see anything else in the act, which was just revised last December, that would lead one to believe a certain amount of experience is still required.
I have an interview with an employer on Monday who has brought up the 2 years of experience as well. I have exactly 22 months of work experience, none directly related to the job I would perform, as I did not know Chinese when I lived in America. I’ll see what happens with that.
), passed their translation test, did the interview, thought I did horribly, then got called for the job a few years later, only to find out that they can’t give me a visa because I lack any related experience. Okay, I’m studying at a language center, I can continue even if the classes are easy, as long as I can get some experience at the same time 沒關係 right? No…because then the office here tells me that I can’t apply for a work permit until I’ve already studied an entire year. Which isn’t going to be the case until September, and this organization is almost certainly not going to wait for me. I tell this to my contact at the job, she checks into it and says it’s true.