[quote=“nightingale”]
You must be quite fluent in Chinese to be able to use 104 to apply for jobs.
Are there any other job searching website provide English layout?
I know that tealit provide jobs outside of teaching, but only a few.[/quote]
Yeah, I’ve been on 104 before. I had a resume on there for a couple of weeks but since I couldn’t understand the messages that were being sent, no one hired me. Bastards!
As silly as that sounds, I would say that is some of the best advice given if you are looking to work for an overseas company… hang around any of the international hotel bars and just chat with people.
Though over simplifying, many of the guys travelling over here frequently often would pay through the nose to have eyes on the ground that they can talk through problems with and simply follow-up till closure. Being another westerner also helps heaps with the instant trust level.
Fortunately never had to teach during my time in TW, currently working/contracting for a US firm, oversee everything from initial concept & design to production flow, scheduling, quality issues, you name it.
Guess i was lucky in as much as my background is engineering, but while in Taiwan worked in companies as diverse as Venture Capital, Software house, Laser games and now in car video/entertainment.
[quote=“rocky raccoon”][quote=“nightingale”]
You must be quite fluent in Chinese to be able to use 104 to apply for jobs.
Are there any other job searching website provide English layout?
I know that tealit provide jobs outside of teaching, but only a few.[/quote]
Yeah, I’ve been on 104 before. I had a resume on there for a couple of weeks but since I couldn’t understand the messages that were being sent, no one hired me. Bastards![/quote]
My 104 experience was getting some Chinese help to setup a resume and then use their job matching tool. Check on the matces from time to time and apply for the ones that interested me. At the time I couldn’t read a word of Chinese and searched results where job descriptions were in English (usually targeting Taiwanese with high English ability) and sent off CV’s to those until one day I got a response, an interview and then landed an awesome job. Good luck.
[quote=“snowy”][quote=“rocky raccoon”][quote=“nightingale”]
You must be quite fluent in Chinese to be able to use 104 to apply for jobs.
Are there any other job searching website provide English layout?
I know that tealit provide jobs outside of teaching, but only a few.[/quote]
Yeah, I’ve been on 104 before. I had a resume on there for a couple of weeks but since I couldn’t understand the messages that were being sent, no one hired me. Bastards![/quote]
My 104 experience was getting some Chinese help to setup a resume and then use their job matching tool. Check on the matces from time to time and apply for the ones that interested me. At the time I couldn’t read a word of Chinese and searched results where job descriptions were in English (usually targeting Taiwanese with high English ability) and sent off CV’s to those until one day I got a response, an interview and then landed an awesome job. Good luck.[/quote]This reminds me of a dear friend, who in his eagerness to get a job here, since his experience was with shipping and exports, sent a resume to every ad that had the character for “sea” in it. They ended up in the weirdest of places, and no, no offers in his field.
So, definetively, this is one instance where help is desireable.
I used to work for a big MNC and came to Taiwan on a business trip with the former regional marketing director, visiting a new reseller here. The director knew that I might be retrenched in several months and also heard that the company here in Taiwan was looking for someone with my experience (telco engineering).
So we had a chat and decided to keep in touch; when my retrenchement was “confirmed” I contacted them and we worked out a contract via email. The rest is history, as they say.
Obviously there was a bit of luck involved but also relationship and experience, which seemed to count more than my credentials/diploma (I worked 7 years for the MNC plus 3.5 years apprenticeship at another company back home).
I think that the comments by Connel and Rascal are excellent.
Both show the value of contacts and relationships, experience and offering a needed service to the client(s).
A good idea of how you can offer some value is required. Maybe you can see and create a need for what you can offer.
It comes back to seeing or creating a need and fulfilling it.
For the letter of recommendation just make it up yourself, I know some people (Ahem) who have done the same at the start of their careers in Taiwan.
The advice from a poster above I have also heard from my friend, he said hanging out at Carnegie’s was the best way to meet people and get hired for a decent wage. Now he did have some experience already of course. The industry base of Taiwan is quite narrow for foreigners.
Tourism is almost non-existent. Services much the same. Little or no chance really at many professional industries unless you were fully qualified and could pass license requirements in Chinese. It leaves you with manufacturing support, trading and software related jobs if you want to take a salaried position other than teaching.
Good things to get into if you get a chance - bike industry, solar power.
I work in the bio industry mostly, I didn’t have any work experience when I got here but I did have a ms.sc. degree. But it wouldn’t have been absolutely neccessary, it helps to get higher position and foot in the door of course.
Some of the posters here probably fail to mention they got their jobs during more buoyant times in Taiwan and the fact they have some type of engineering/electronics background in finding a job would give them a huge advantage in this lopsided economy. More than 7 years ago it was easy to get a job in Taiwan in financial services and IT sales, because the economy was booming and they didn’t have the qualified staff. Now I’d say it’s more difficult (but not impossible), these days it just seems technical writing positions come up when they think foreigners. You’ve got to show then that you can do marketing or other customer facing jobs and then they will give you the chance. Fair enough really considering the cheap, highly educated and hardworking locals. Marketing is a good area to get into but it’s really only the IT field will pay well and even then they haven’t paid aswell now as in the past. Word of warning, there are very large IT conglomerates with marketing/tech writing depts staffed by foreign supervisors, those guys have fairly good packages but they collaborate with their HR depts to offer derisory sums to people looking to get a foot in the door.
I get paid ‘relatively’ well because I have good contacts and experience and took time off to learn Chinese (Chinese is not abs. neccessary though) after many years and that’s really what it takes in Taiwan, working your way up. It’s worth thinking about if you want to develop a career in Taiwan as for most industries salaries are and will continue to be lower than the west, if you can get hired by foreign concern fine but those opps are few and far between.
Chinese ability, a strong interest in the business in which I was going into, plus- yes, being introduced by the boss’ best friend’s husband- got me my current and soon to be former job at a quasi government agency.
I got offered my next job (If i get the permit) by doing a little bit of translation work for them a few years ago and proving my self to be reliable and committed to getting the job done on schedule, in addition to again, being really into that particular industry and being able to talk about it at length. This time I didn’t need nepotism or something to assist me, since I got that original case here on forumosafieds or whatever it was called back then.
In both cases the key word was ENTHUSIASM, I was really desperate to get out of teaching English while still being able to stay here, and I really sold myself well to the bosses.
I started out teaching for Hess, straight out of college. I’d been doing contract programming work for maybe 6-7 years already, but of course that doesn’t count.
In my spare time I wrote some class scheduling software, partly just to keep my hand in and partly because I could never remember what I was supposed to be teaching. Eventually I showed it to the school and it so happened that head office was looking for a programmer. They were able to swing a work permit despite my lack of post-graduation experience.
I also got involved in a variety of small foreigner startups in Taichung and Taipei, from party promotion to speed dating to magazines to house rental brokering … typical teacher-with-a-side-job stuff. It’s a good way to start meeting people.
Now it’s five years later, and I have enough contacts and (limited) reputation that I can live entirely on contract programming work. I wouldn’t be able to get a work permit for it, but marriage fixes that.
There are indeed a number of opportunities outside of teaching.
For instance in headhunting: a number of executive search companies are always in need of people with excellent English skills to write profiles, do global research, identify and source candidates. If you have some marketing -especially experience in direct marketing- you could land yourself a job with a fairly decent salary, while working a 9 to 6 job.
So who exactly is hiring?
HG
Generally speaking, you could try for a search on 104 or 1111.
You could try a combination of these search terms:
executive search
researcher
consultant
recruit
recruiter
HR
management consulting/consultant
and you might get lucky.
[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]So who exactly is hiring?
HG[/quote]
No one. I’ve had a total of three (3!) “Sorry, no longer interested, we’ve had a hiring freeze” phone calls now. Damn tech companies.
Back to 104 I go… 
I ended up staying at this position I’ve found, and it is in trading (sales more specifically). It is related to the cycling industry, which is of course huge in Taiwan.
I’ve been at it for over a year and it’s alright. Definitely getting me a lot more valuable experience than teaching would (although still doing that on the side).
Working at a Taiwanese company is quite interesting. Fortunately I’m not at one of the business where they expect you to work over 50hrs a week with no over-time pay. In fact, they actually give me time off to doing teaching (which actually pays better). Getting used to the working culture was not too difficult; a boss is a boss. Learning the necessary Chinese trade lingo took awhile.
For anyone looking, just keep up with 104 or 1111. If you can’t read any Chinese it will be 100 times more difficult, as you can get someone to help you set it up, but reading the replies from company’s is another thing.
Full circle, what a great post!
I wonder if I could put a question out to those who’ve been hired… what kind of work permit did your company apply for and, if you have any idea, how they went about getting it. I have a job offer but the company doesn’t want/know how/care to apply for a work permit, a real headache at the moment.
Your experience would be much appreciated! Thanks,
Lee
[quote=“Lee Kohl”]Full circle, what a great post!
I wonder if I could put a question out to those who’ve been hired… what kind of work permit did your company apply for and, if you have any idea, how they went about getting it. I have a job offer but the company doesn’t want/know how/care to apply for a work permit, a real headache at the moment.
Your experience would be much appreciated! Thanks,
Lee[/quote]
My MNC never got me one, just sent me to HK every 30 days. Nowadays I’d get 6 months on a UK passport but not back then
My MNC never got me one, just sent me to HK every 30 days. Nowadays I’d get 6 months on a UK passport but not back then[/quote]
But you would need one for Taiwan as your wife is from Taiwan so you could apply for the Marriage ARC thingy…
I got hired by foreign companies who didnt require me to have an ARC here as most of the work was offshore.
I just had to hire myself first worry about other issue later on.
Edgar Allen might need to work for me soon though. :roflmao:
Hello All
I am new here. My name is Mike. I am 26 years old and currently live in San Francisco California. I am going on vacation to Taipei in March for 2 weeks and very excited about it. I studied and researched a lot concerning Taiwan and know some friends that were born and raised there.
If I enjoy Taiwan as much as I think I will I would love to make a move there. I am wondering how hard or easy it is to find a NON teaching job in Taiwan. I say non teaching because unfortunately I do not have the required 4 year degree. However, I have a wonderful job here in USA for AT&T’s corporate offices in a Senior role.
Also, do I have to have an employer that can apply for Resident/work visa for me or can I do that on my own? If I do that on my own are there many instances of people being denied to work and live there? I am very sorry if this has been covered a million times but I am new here and not sure how to navigate the forum so well.
Any help and/or suggestions would be great. I look forward to meeting all of you and networking a bit!
[quote=“freethinker83”]Hello All
I am new here. My name is Mike. I am 26 years old and currently live in San Francisco California. I am going on vacation to Taipei in March for 2 weeks and very excited about it. I studied and researched a lot concerning Taiwan and know some friends that were born and raised there.
If I enjoy Taiwan as much as I think I will I would love to make a move there. I am wondering how hard or easy it is to find a NON teaching job in Taiwan. I say non teaching because unfortunately I do not have the required 4 year degree. However, I have a wonderful job here in USA for AT&T’s corporate offices in a Senior role.
Also, do I have to have an employer that can apply for Resident/work visa for me or can I do that on my own? If I do that on my own are there many instances of people being denied to work and live there? I am very sorry if this has been covered a million times but I am new here and not sure how to navigate the forum so well.
Any help and/or suggestions would be great. I look forward to meeting all of you and networking a bit![/quote]
Would you like 900 usd a month for 50-60 hours per week of work? Would you like to give up your holidays? Sick time? Vacation time?
Would you like 900 usd a month for 50-60 hours per week of work? Would you like to give up your holidays? Sick time? Vacation time?[/quote]
Hmm not sure haha…sounds like a lot of work and not much money. I know cost of living is different there but here I bring much more a month home than that for less work. I am sure you were probably trying to make a point 
I would imagine that places like Google and Apple which have offices in Taiwan pay much more than that and offer benefits package (I might be wrong)