Companies in UK and Netherlands

Hiya,
I am thinking of moving to the Netherlands sometime in the near future, hopefully before Brexit to make things a bit easier.
I don't have skills are any 'career' job experience, mainly worked retail and bar work, and honestly, chances are looking slimmer and slimmer for work as most will need qualifications and seem to be IT degrees etc.

I have retail and bar experience. So, i was thinking of perhaps any companies that were in both countries, and potentially transferring prior to Brexit, so i have a job to go to.
But its proving difficult looking for companies by country.

Does anyone know of any? So far i know of Aldi and Ikea. Or if there is a website where you can view companies and select companies by country, i.e, UK and Netherlands.

Any help would be hugely appreciated as I have a Dutch boyfriend, and obviously if it goes well at some point would like the option to live together. and please don't suggest marriage, LOL

Hi and welcome to the Forum.

Without going into great detail, probably marriage is your best hope (although you don't have to be married to regarded as in a permanent relationship).  I'll explain briefly why.

The kinds of job you're looking at are all customer-facing, you need to speak Dutch.  The Dutch are big on qualifications or relevant experience, you haven't told us of any, so I'm assuming GCSE's and your experience is retail and bar work; none of which in the current COVID climate are going to be a big help.

Perhaps move in with your boyfriend in the Netherlands before the Brexit negotiations are concluded, then try and get some bar work to get started.  In the meantime, learn Dutch, it really is important.

Hope this helps.

Cynic
Expat Team

Thank you for the advice, i guess i am an unskilled worker. I have an A level in English and the 5 GCSEs. I'm 28, so i feel like its too late and too much of a burden on someone else to retrain.
I'm 100% working on the learning the language anyway, but i'm just kind of trying to gauge what sort of unskilled work is easy to get. It doesn't seem like a place where teaching English is something that's available, as its largely an English speaking country.
It wouldn't be fora few months at least, but as i'm currently unemployed cos of covid, just wondered if there was any jobs i should prioritise on working towards whilst in England, to help with the transition. I'm in London, so we have a lot of companies which are multinational.

Hi again.

Then you're looking at warehouse-type work, that's where most of the people who can't speak Dutch end up working; it's shift work, but it gets minimum wage, so you'll survive on it.  we did have a guy on here who worked for a sports clothing company in Scandinavia who used that link to speak to HR of their Dutch warehouse; he never came back to let us know how he got on.  The problem today is there are a lot of asylum seekers who are also looking for this work and the Dutch Government will almost certainly be incentivising business to employ these guys first. 

The fact that you can speak English doesn't qualify you to teach it, plus all Dutch kids learn it at school for free.  That said, there are language schools in Holland; this link will take you to the website for one, give them a call, you have nothing to lose.

Multinationals do operate in the Netherlands and the office language can be English, but they tend to employ graduates; from what you've told us so far, I certainly wouldn't set off with that as my goal.

Come back to us if you have any further specific questions.

Hope this has helped.

Cynic
Expat Team