Are you an expat looking for a job, or just got in love with a Romanian and would like to relocate to Romania

This article will help you understand better the Romanian job market. It will also give you some tips and tricks including some innovative ideas:

• Jobs in various Romanian economy sectors
• Jobs in IT
• Jobs in telecom
• Jobs in healthcare
• Jobs in retail
• Jobs in banks
• Jobs in call centers
• Salaries in Romania
• Work permit
• Cost of living
• Where to search?
• Study Romanian
• Romanian work culture
• Avoid beginner's mistakes
• Career change? Do something else interesting?
• Your particular case

Romanian job market

Before talking about how to find a job, let's look briefly at the Romanian economy sectors that are offering many jobs (hopefully one for you as well).
The good news is that the unemployment rate in Romania is quite low: only 4.80% (as of August 2016).
According to a study(Catalyst Solutions) the top 10 most wanted employers in Romania in 2017 are: Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, Continental, Google, OMV Petrom, Vodafone, Amazon, Grup Renault România and Coca-Cola HBC România.

Several sectors of Romanian economy are performing better than average, and therefore are offering more job opportunities:

Romanian Services Jobs

• Romanian IT sector
  


IT is a booming industry in Romania, there are very many big international companies present in the country such as: Adobe (send your CV to [email protected]), Microsoft, Endava (with offices in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca and Iași), Amazon Romania (with offices in Iași), Ixia, Ubisoft, Intel,Oracle. At the moment of writing this article there were hundreds of job openings available.

Bucharest is an important IT hub. An increasing number of companies are relocating their R&D departments to the Romanian capital.

Romania offers tax deductions / breaks for persons working in IT.
Salaries are usually ranging between 3.000 RON and 10.000 RON (1$= approx 4RON, 1€= approx 4.5RON).
There is a high demand on the IT Romanian job market.

Most of the times knowledge of Romanian is important, but one could find a job even without speaking Romanian.

• Romanian telecom sector


There are four main mobile and land phone operators on the Romanian market. The first three are Orange Romania, Vodafone Romania and Telekom Romania(owned by T-mobile).
The biggest internet and TV cable provider is RCS & RDS. In 2015 the company opened/started mobile phone division becoming the fourth biggest player on the market. They multiple types of jobs besides the obvious ones (engineering, IT, telecom) such as drivers, climbers,etc.

Romania boasts one of the most vibrant and competitive telecom markets with competition bringing down prices: For a cable TV subscription for hundreds of channels (including HD) one can pay as little as 7€/8$/month. For a mobile phone subscription of hundreds of national and international minutes plus unlimited mobile internet (3G and 4G) one would pay as little as 5€/6$/month.

Similarly to the IT sector, the telecom offers quite a few jobs where knowledge of the Romanian language is not required. However, speaking even some Romanian would give you an important advantage in the recruitment process.

• Romanian healthcare sector


There are very many private clinics in Bucharest and in the big Romanian cities such as:Regina Maria, Medlife, Medicover.
Also, the pharmaceutical companies e.g. Roche (send your cv at romania dot jobs at roche dot com), Pfizer, GSK, are searching for sales representatives.

For this type of job a good command of Romanian is important (of course on top of the skills required by the job).

• Romanian retail commercial activities

There are very many supermarkets and hypermarkets as well as department stores in the big Romanian cities. To name only a few: Carrefour, Metro, Auchan, Kaufland, Practiker, Brico, Dedeman, Baumax.

Knowledge of Romanian is required for this types of jobs.

• Romanian banking sector

There are many banks and financial institutions on the Romanian market. Most of the jobs are being advertised via the general recruiting agencies. As you will see below there are two main ones. Here are the links for all the jobs in banking, advertised on ejobs.
Here is the list ordered by market share:

1. BCR-Erste Bank, jobs@BCR-Erste, careers@BCR-erste
2. BRD - Groupe Group Société Générale, jobs@BRD Romania
3. Banca Transilvania, jobs@Banca Transilvania
4. Raiffeisen Bank, jobs@Raiffeisen Romania
5. Unicredit Romania, jobs@unicredit
6. CEC Bank, jobs@CEC
7. ING Romania, jobs@ING
8. Alpha Bank Romania, jobs@Alpha Bank Romania
9. Bancpost, jobs@Bancpost
10. Garantibank Romania, jobs@Garantibank

You will need to speak Romanian for this types of jobs.

• Call centers in Romania for other countries

This is a thriving sector in Romania. Many call centers (e.g. Amazon) are searching for employees speaking foreign languages.
It is likely that Romanian language is not required (or you could get a job with just a good grasp of Romanian). As a native speaker of another language you would have an advantage here. The most demanded are speakers of English, French, German, Spanish, Italian...

CGS seems to have many job openings in this sector. You can check the job openings here.
Luatel is another customer care company located in Bucharest. It offers its services in 19 languages (English, Slovak, Turkish, Dutch, Danish, etc.). Just check out their website on how to apply.

How much can you earn in Romania?

We have analyzed in detail the minimum, average and average per sector salaries in Romania. Here are the results.

Do you need a work permit to work in Romania?

If you are a national of an EU/EEA member state the procedure is easier and simpler. On the official page of the Romanian Internal Affairs Ministry you can find a detailed description of all the steps of the procedure.Unfortunately it is only available in Romanian, feel free to drop us a comment at the bottom of this page and we'll translate the text which is relevant for you.

If you do not have the nationality of an EU/EEA country, if you are American, Canadian, Indian, Colombian, etc. you will need to apply for a work permit, and the procedure is more complicated. Your potential Romanian employer must prove that it cannot find a Romanian or EU/EEA national that is willing to take that job, and your future Romanian employer will have to apply for a prior authorization from the Romanian authorities before you are allowed to apply for the work permit.
For more details you can consult the site of the Romanian authorities on this subject.

What is the cost of living in Bucharest or other Romanian cities? Is my salary/wage enough for living in Romania?

To assess the attractiveness of a job in Bucharest one must take into account the cost of living in a Romanian city. We have started an article on this topic, where we detail the rental prices, the food price and the utilities costs.

Jobs in Bucharest compared with jobs in other Romanian cities

Undoubtedly Bucharest is the place to be. It offers more jobs and higher salaries. It is true that the cost of living is higher than in other Romanian cities.
Other Romanian cities that offer jobs are the traditional big Romanian cities: Cluj, Brașov, Timișoara, Constanța, Iaș.

Where to start searching for a job in Romania?

There are two main recruitment agencies on the Romanian market:

1. ejobs.ro
2. bestjobs.ro

Besides those two, you can also try:

3. olx.ro - You can filter by any Romanian city and type of job.
4. eures It is very likely that the jobs advertised on Eures do not require Romanian language. Please choose Romania on the left side of the Eures job search.
5. Linkedin - Don’t forget about the good old linkedin that is also advertising jobs. It could happen that some of your linked contacts can recommend you for a job in Romania.
6. Other resources

We tried to search for you other possible employers that usually have job openings.
British Council jobs
Accenture Romania (including jobs in other languages)
Amazon Romania - located in Iasi
Lugera
Aptjob

Customer Support in foreign languages: English, Italian...
Adecco
Kellog's (order processing in English, Italian...)
Honeywell
Ernst & Young

What else can I do to get a job in Romania?

You might want to target directly the companies/organizations that are active in the sectors that interest you. You could check for job openings directly on their websites. Even if they do not have job openings available you could also spontaneously send your CV.
For example the British Council has some job openings for English teachers (at least at the time of writing this article).

Multinational companies present in Romania. Start by targeting the multinationals with headquarters in your home country. E.g. if you are British or American try to target companies such as Oracle Romania, Microsoft Romania. If you are French you might want to try banks such as Société Générale (they are in Romania under the name BRD).

Network, network and network again

You can always network more. There is never too much networking.
Make sure that all your friends, acquaintances, colleagues... know that you are searching for a job in Romania and that they will let you know as soon as they hear about an opening.

If you are already in Romania and you can't find a job, then try to go to events on the topics that interest you (e.g. architecture, another event on architecture, design, audit, accounting and taxation. These are just a few examples, if you need some advice for a particular sector, just post a comment at the bottom of this page and we'll come back to you.

If I do not speak Romanian, can I still find a job in Romania as an English, French, Spanish... speaker?

The good news is that there are jobs that do not require Romanian. The bad news is that there are only a few of these.

You will have to check all jobs to find out the ones which are not requiring Romanian. If the job opportunity is written in English you have a good chance that it may not require Romanian, but it can also be that actually they do require Romanian, they just wrote the job description in English to filter out the applicants that speak only Romanian. If it is not clearly stated that they require Romanian, just apply.

Study Romanian! Why not?

Learning Romanian can only help you. You do not have anything to lose, on the contrary you will be able to understand your partner, children, parents in law, local media, make more friends. So start learning asap, and try not to stop at hello, my name is John, and learn much more than this.

As a foreigner you have a major advantage over Romanians: you are a native speaker of a different language (e.g. native speaker of English, French... or with a very good command of an international language). With a reasonable level of Romanian you'll be able to apply for jobs where Romanian is required. Many employers would be happy with a good English speaker who also has a good command of Romanian.

Just try out our many free Romanian lessons.

What is the working atmosphere in Romania? What to expect? Will you be happy working in Romania?

We certainly hope you will have a pleasant time in Romania. This will depend on your colleagues, career goals, integration of your family (if they are coming along), other aspects such as time spent commuting to work,etc.

But are Romanians friendly at work?
Nobody can answer this open ended question. You could try to infer from the interview whether your future colleagues would be friendly or not. But this is very complicated and you have a high margin of error, at the end of the day you will pass judgement on somebody after talking to that person for just a few minutes during an interview.
The best is to have an inside source that could inform you of the work atmosphere (is the boss very demanding, or are the colleagues competitive...). If you do not have this luxury then try out this forum where employees (past and current) are talking about their employer. Sometimes it includes the experience of the candidates during the interviews and questions they've been asked. If you need to translate the text from Romanian to English just leave us a comment at the bottom of this page and we'll translate it.

Generally speaking Romanians are hardworking and committed to their job.
Rest assured knowing that Romanians are usually friendly to foreigners.

However the boss is the one and only commander in chief in Romania, even when he/she is wrong. Do not expect to have the same relation with your boss as you would have in UK or in the Netherlands.

Please take all the above with a pinch of salt. There are many exceptions, we are just trying to give you a flavor of what working in Romania could mean.

Still not having a job?

First of all do not despair! We have a few other ideas.
It might be that you are applying for jobs where there are much more applicants than vacancies (e.g. administrative assistant).

Make sure that:

• you have not been too superficial in your CV (e.g. I was a secretary for 4 years to a financial director). Make sure your previous responsibilities are well described
• avoid spelling mistakes;
• adapt your CV to each and every application. This is very important. Even though you might say that you have the necessary skills and experience, you have to emphasize more what they are looking for. Make sure that in the cover letter you mention the keywords that are listed in the job description. This does not mean lying or misleading your future employer, it only means that you help him/her understand easier and faster why they should hire you. This takes time. There are many resources on the internet as well, but do not spend days/weeks on reading all the literature on how to get hired.
• apply even for jobs where you match 60% of the job requirements. Companies rarely find the ideal candidate that has all the qualifications and experience required. In most cases they have to choose between candidates that offer a partial match to what they are searching for.
• lower your expectations. Apply even for lower paid jobs, or for more junior posts. You need to be aware that this could lower your self-esteem, but if you really cannot find anything else a job where no experience is required could put you in front as a lead candidate. Afterwards you can work your way up to the top.

Career change? Why not?

Are you ready for a new challenge? Would you like to learn something new and useful?
You need to be committed and persevere, and you'll make it.

It depends on your appetite and personality for learning something new, but sometimes it can be easier than you think. For example, if you like photography, and you know to do a bit of post-processing, you could become a web designer.
IT does not necessarily mean hardcore programming or knowing the internal structure of a hard drive. It could also mean learning HTML (a very easy language for web pages), project management (where your general problem solving and planning skills are more important).

As a foreigner, it would help to have a certification (e.g. Project Management). If you do not have yet a relevant diploma/certification you can follow a course and get one online. There are plenty of online courses that provide courses in English, thus no Romanian language required.

What if I cannot find a job in Romania? Which are the other options?

If applicable, you can try to work for a company in your home country, remotely, while living in Romania.
Other options could be to work online but as a freelancer. Just search a bit over the internet for freelancer jobs. You will be paid per project and per deliverable, which may not give you the comfort of a regular paycheck, but you will be your own boss.
You could write articles in English or enter data. If you happen to speak more than one language you could also try translating.

You could also try to start your own business. It does not have to be necessarily something big with millions invested, it can be as simple as a blog, or a website on something that you are passionate about.

Sample jobs for foreigners in Romania

All this article is about jobs in Romania and so far you haven't seen even one job opening. This is normal, because job openings come and go. We kept a few and saved them here

Help & Feedback

Should you need any help just let us know and we'll try to find the companies which are active in your area of expertise in Romania.

If you were the lucky one to land a job in Romania, and would care to share your story (as much as you want and can share), I'm sure that others would love to hear it.
Just drop a comment at the end of this article and if needed we'll update the content of the article with more resources for getting you a job in Romania.