It has come to our attention that there are scammers using a fake Euro London WhatsApp Business Account to target users with fake job offers. Euro London do not currently use a business account for WhatsApp messages If you have received a WhatsApp message from Euro London and are unsure of the source, please contact the relevant Euro London office with the details and we can confirm whether it is genuine or not. To report scammers, please use the WhatsApp guidance here https://faq.whatsapp.com/2133933800112087/?cms_platform=web

Wir sind darauf aufmerksam geworden, dass es Betr&uuml;ger gibt, die ein gef&auml;lschtes Euro London WhatsApp Business-Konto benutzen, um Benutzer mit gef&auml;lschten Stellenangeboten anzusprechen. Euro London nutzt derzeit kein Gesch&auml;ftskonto f&uuml;r WhatsApp-Nachrichten.
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Wenn Sie eine WhatsApp-Nachricht von Euro London erhalten haben und sich &uuml;ber die Quelle nicht sicher sind, wenden Sie sich bitte mit den Details an das zust&auml;ndige B&uuml;ro von Euro London. Wir k&ouml;nnen dann best&auml;tigen, ob die Nachricht echt ist oder nicht.
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Um Betr&uuml;ger zu melden, nutzen Sie bitte die WhatsApp-Anleitung hier: <a href="https://faq.whatsapp.com/2133933800112087/?cms_platform=web">https://faq.whatsapp.com/2133933800112087/?cms_platform=web</a>

WhatsApp Job Scam - Please Be Alert

There are a wide range of barriers to employment which affect jobseekers. These barriers affect socioeconomic and ethnic groups differently, but we have identified five common barriers which are faced by almost all jobseekers in the UK but especially those who may not speak English as a first language. This blog has been created to help jobseekers overcome these barriers, improve their chances of submitting successful job applications and to help streamline what can sometimes be an arduous task.
<ul>
<li>Relevant Experience</li>
</ul>
Describing previous experience can be challenging especially if you have limited work experience and you are translating your CV into English. However, it&rsquo;s good to remember that previous experience doesn&rsquo;t only come from past employment but also hobbies, extra-curricular activities and general life experience. Learning how to articulate all of your experiences concisely and apply
<ul>
<li>Documentation</li>
</ul>
There is a lot of documentation involved with starting a new job especially if you have just moved to another country for work. Keeping your documentation organised and accessible can save you a lot of time and stress. One common issue candidates face is proof of address. Generally, some forms of proof of address cannot be digital copies, e.g., bank statements which often need to be printed out from a bank and stamped in order to be valid. P60s are probably the easiest form of proof of address to obtain as these can now be accepted in digital format and anyone who works in the UK can access one.
<ul>
<li>References</li>
</ul>
Having a number of people who can write positive and reliable references for you can aid your job applications a great deal. These people should be familiar with your work ethic, skills and achievements. It&rsquo;s worth remembering that referees don&rsquo;t always have to be managers, especially if they are managers whom you didn&rsquo;t frequently interact with. They can also be teachers, supervisors or other colleagues who you feel like know you well. Asking them in advance can also help you save time with your applications.
<ul>
<li>Employment Gaps</li>
</ul>
Having gaps between periods of employment is common and not necessarily a bad thing! The reasons for having gaps between periods of employment are varied; some may take a break to return to education, start a family or care for other relatives. Its important, however, that any gaps between periods of employment are stated and justified on your CV and application. Its also a good idea to explain which skills you developed or gained during these periods of your life.
<ul>
<li>Language &amp; Communication</li>
</ul>
Language and communication barriers can be significant for those who do not speak English as a foreign language. However, it&rsquo;s important to remember that even native English speakers can struggle to communicate clearly especially when in a pressured situation such as a job interview. Many people will prepare their answers for interview questions and those who have learned English as a foreign language should do the same. Learning set phrases and memorising examples of times when you showed employability skills can help you to communicate concisely in front of prospective employers.

Overcoming Common Barriers to Employment

Since moving from Brazil to London and learning how to speak English, I started realising that sometimes I could not fully express myself. At first, I thought my vocabulary was lacking&hellip; and that was the case most of the time in my first year, at least! But then researching and asking around I realised some words just do not translate. You can explain the meaning with other words but that deep feeling of the word just does not come across.
Don&rsquo;t get me wrong, this is not a privilege of Portuguese speakers only. Back in Brazil, we adopted many English words, either for fun, marketing or simply because it would take a while to say it in Portuguese. Such as &ldquo;brainstorm&rdquo; or saying something is &ldquo;top&rdquo; to mean something good.
So here are my 5 words I wish I could translate to English:
<ol>
<li>Saudade:</li>
</ol>
It&rsquo;s a mixture of longing for a person, place or pretty much anything in the world and nostalgia for someone or something that is no longer near or with you, whether its absence is temporary or permanent. This prominent word is used by Portuguese speakers A LOT.
Tem quase um ano que eu n&atilde;o vou ao Brasil e estou morrendo de&nbsp;saudades.
Rough translation: I haven&rsquo;t been to Brazil in almost a year and I&rsquo;m dying of&nbsp;that longing feeling.
<ul>
<li>Cafun&eacute;:</li>
</ul>
The act of running your fingers through someone&rsquo;s hair &mdash; yes, there&rsquo;s a word for that. However, this one may only resonate with Brazilian Portuguese speakers.
Eu queria que voc&ecirc; me fizesse um&nbsp;cafun&eacute;.
Rough translation: I wanted you to run your&nbsp;fingers through my hair.
<ul>
<li>Cheiroso(a):</li>
</ul>
It is a word we use to call someone or something that smells good. Sounds simple enough&hellip; you could say someone &ldquo;smells good&rdquo;, sure! But it just misses the feeling of having that specific adjective to be an antonym of &ldquo;Smelly&rdquo;. It is more intimate than that, so careful when saying it to a person you are not dating!
Oi minha cheirosa.
Rough translation: Hi my &lsquo;good-smelly&rsquo;.
<ul>
<li>Lindeza:</li>
</ul>
Prettiness, used as a noun to describe someone or something, and even at times as a term of endearment. When speaking English, we would never call someone &ldquo;prettiness&rdquo; &mdash; a &ldquo;beauty&rdquo; perhaps, but never the former. The two words just simply don&rsquo;t carry the same weight in both languages.
Que&nbsp;lindeza!
Rough translation: What&nbsp;prettiness!
<ul>
<li>Words ending in&nbsp;-inho&hellip; / words ending in&nbsp;-&atilde;o&hellip;</li>
</ul>
If you add&nbsp;-inho&nbsp;to the end of almost any word in Portuguese, it&rsquo;s essentially the English equivalent of adding &ldquo;little&rdquo; before it. It makes the word &ldquo;cute&rdquo;, and it can take the harshness away of certain words.
Me da um&nbsp;beijinho!
Rough translation: Give me a&nbsp;little kiss!
Now reverse that&hellip; If you add&nbsp;-&atilde;o&nbsp;to the end of almost any word in Portuguese, it&rsquo;s the English equivalent of attaching &ldquo;big&rdquo; before it.
Meu&nbsp;amorz&atilde;o!
Rough translation: My&nbsp;big love! Or my &ldquo;big boo&rdquo;.
While there may be literal translations of some of these words in English, the way that they&rsquo;re used in Portuguese gives them their own unique meanings &mdash; which is why we&rsquo;ve included them here.

My 5 most beautiful but untranslatable Portuguese words

Blue Monday, Happy Tuesday, Hump Wednesday, Thursdays are the new Fridays, TGI Friday &ndash; is the mood labelling of days really appropriate in this age of wellbeing and mindfulness?
 
Throughout January there are constant reminders about post-Christmas blues, with the UK weather providing an appropriate backdrop of freezing weather, teeming rain and dark days. Easy to see why advertisers seize on the general malaise to push sun drenched beaches, exercise programmes, lifestyle changes &ndash; and yes, we as Recruiters are just a bad and will promote January as the necessary time to review your career. New year, new you!
 
However, are we talking ourselves into this? Why should January trigger a whole wave of miserable retrospection when perhaps we should be congratulating ourselves on what we have achieved, and how we can build on that throughout the year. It doesn&rsquo;t have to be a mega life change, it could be the fact you managed to put the bins out on time (which surely in anyone&rsquo;s book should be loudly celebrated), addressed that typo on your CV or completed a crossword. These may be considered little wins but they still deliver that shot of dopamine to give you a boost.
 
Let&rsquo;s relegate Blue Monday to the bin (before we put the rubbish out) and instead look forward to a year of possibility!

Just another Manic Monday?

Languages are fickle, aren&rsquo;t they? Complex, often breaking their own rules, fervently attached to our concepts of self and others around us. For most they are a daily dose of the human experience, though considering how far back our human (and near-human) ancestors roamed the planet and communicated, a relatively recent concept. In the sense of the way languages are now categorised and standardised, labelled and measured as if they aren&rsquo;t just a bunch of sounds that in more recent centuries have been represented by symbols on parchment, paper, and screen.
Try to picture a conversation with the first humans to leave the cradle of humanity and venture towards the frozen lands of Western Eurasia. Or explaining the concept of an office job. Try to picture telling a story to an ancient Assyrian farmer about your issues with the English subtitles for a popular Korean Netflix series.
Even if the individual words existed to explain these abstract concepts, the meaning behind them would surely be absent. Despite vast differences in our lives and those of our ancient ancestors, there would be some familiarity. Understanding through body language, food, rhythm, and music could potentially be achieved.
After all, you don&rsquo;t need to understand the lyrics to enjoy the song, right?
Music is another intrinsic part of the human experience, and technology making the world a smaller place allows cultures, styles, and musical genres to mix. This is the reason you can find bands making Country-Western music in Nigeria, Ska-Dub bands in Ukraine, Heavy Metal groups in Mongolia, and a thriving rap scene (encompassing all sub-genres within the umbrella) in Iceland.
On a personal level this last example is the most curious of all because an island on the far northern periphery of the Western cultural conscious is the opposite of the social conditions that birthed the musical movement.
The hip-hop scene originated in and around the 1970s in populated urban areas of the US, applying spoken-word poetry to popular instrumentals, and frequently political voice for marginalised African American communities. Time went on, unique regional styles emerged, and today the scene is more commonly associated with party music rather than speech against oppression.
But the poetic origin of rap is crucial to understanding how an island famous for puffins, glaciers, and geysers became a hub for the scene, despite having a total population smaller than that of Sheffield. Iceland is a world away from the difficult life of US&rsquo; cities.
According to the OECD Iceland has a poverty rate of 4.9%, the lowest out of all 38 member countries, compared to a median of 11.1%. According to the Global Peace Index 2022, and for every previous year for the past 14 years, Iceland has the prestigious title of the &lsquo;safest place to live in the world&rsquo;.
The everyday problems that Icelanders experience are vastly distinct from those of the scene originators, but rhythm and music have no language. In interviews, young Icelandic musicians credit the long polar nights as the main source of inspiration in researching and producing their unique sound.
Equally as crucial is Iceland&rsquo;s linguistic legacy and poetic past, for in the times before literacy (which arrived on the island with Christianisation but wouldn&rsquo;t have been relevant to the general population until much later). Alliteration, rhyme, and wordplay were the best ways to tell, retell, and remember legends and stories over multiple generations. The development of a language to suit these ends before it was ever written down leaves a lyrical form of speech. Medieval activities like&nbsp;flyting, a back-and-forth art of delivering insults in poetic verse between two contestants with an audience, is essentially what we would now call a rap battle. Even when you can&rsquo;t understand the lyrics of these songs, the artful styles of language manipulation are evident by just listening.
A few years ago, this scene was mainly underground. Forgotten Lores was a group founded in 2000, and really helped launch the hip-hop scene in the Icelandic language, performing over &lsquo;old school&rsquo; beats and gaining an international following thanks to the island becoming a popular destination for Music Festivals. Groups like Reykjav&iacute;kurd&aelig;tur (Daughters of Reykjavik) began with a gritty sound with (I&rsquo;m told &ndash; although also evident in their older music videos) anti-patriarchal content. However, the traction that they have gained meant that this year, 2022, they were almost chosen to be Iceland&rsquo;s entrants for the Eurovision Song Contest.
&lsquo;New wave&rsquo; rappers GKR, Emmsj&eacute; Gauti, and the duo&nbsp;<a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?sa=X&amp;biw=1251&amp;bih=538&amp;sxsrf=ALiCzsZiB3l1GtI6wCH1YFrpzabHZX64aw:1664978686082&amp;q=%C3%9Alfur+%C3%9Alfur&amp;stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAOPgE-LVT9c3NEyLTzMyrsxLU-LSz9U3KDQ1N84u1FLKTrbSzy0tzkzWL0pNzi9KycxLj0_OKS0uSS2ySiwqySwuWcTKe3hWTlppkQKE2sHKuIudiYMBACZoJVpZAAAA&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiWxJH5oMn6AhXvQkEAHazvClAQmxMoAHoECB0QAg">&Uacute;lfur &Uacute;lfur</a>&nbsp;(Wolf Wolf) carry the legacy of early Icelandic skaldic poetry (as the culture began to develop unique qualities and separate from that of mainland Scandinavia), by incorporating imagery and content that reflects the lifestyle of Iceland. Pylsur (lamb hotdogs), volcanic landscapes, sheep, tractor-pulling contests, geothermal pools, colourful flat blocks, and the unique sideways trot of Icelandic horses.
When you think about it, Iceland is linguistically the most likely place in the world to have a rap scene; it has been bubbling away under the surface like the fagradasfjall volcano.

Iceland’s Linguistic Legacy and Poetic Past

When you engage a Recruiter, you have a choice of how. Do you want them to a) definitely, b) maybe or c) possibly find you the candidate you ultimately hire?
When you retain a recruiter (option a) you give them the confidence to do their best work and the drive to exceed your expectations. You rely on them, believe in them and commit to them (and them to you).
When you work exclusively with a recruiter (b), you give them a chance to compete with your internal teams and methods and to do strong work. You&rsquo;ve chosen them alone to help but kept options open.
When you instruct multiple agencies (c), you give them poor odds in a race and won&rsquo;t have the time to give them all a level playing field. You ask them to work fast and in hope rather than with conviction.
Guess which one everyone involved seems happy with?
I was shocked the first time a client opted to retain me. It was 2005, I was new to recruitment and was told by colleagues that it never happened. None of them had retained clients. We didn&rsquo;t do it like that. Clients didn&rsquo;t do it like that.
At this meeting, after a swift glance at terms, this new client read the terms quietly (felt a bit awkward, quite a lengthy document back then) raised his eyebrows and signed up for the retained option on the spot.
Expecting him to be mistaken, I asked if he&rsquo;d understood that he&rsquo;d be relying 100% on me for his next multilingual hires and that he&rsquo;d be paying a portion of the fee that day. The reply was &ldquo;Why would I want to work with more than one recruiter? You&rsquo;re here because I don&rsquo;t have time. I don&rsquo;t want to be called by five or six people. You specialise in languages and know what I want&rdquo;. He nailed it. Multiple hires followed. He wanted someone to get the job done with minimum fuss.
Many retained clients later, I&rsquo;m certain that if the shoe was on the other foot, I&rsquo;d always retain a recruiter to get my job filled. I&rsquo;d make sure they understood what I needed and where I could be flexible. I&rsquo;d trust that if there was a short stint or a career pivot on the CV that they&rsquo;d checked it out. They&rsquo;d know the lines of communication were always open. I&rsquo;d help them market my job brilliantly. We&rsquo;d both take responsibility to deliver.
When you&rsquo;re hiring and know you need support, what would stop you committing?
If you&rsquo;re a recruiter, what stops you asking for a genuine partnership?
Talk to me if you like definitely more than maybe; always happy to talk about the advantages of retaining your Recruiter.
<a href="mailto:b.brogden@eurolondon.com?blog" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-type="mailto" data-id="mailto:b.brogden@eurolondon.com?blog">Ben Brogden</a>&nbsp;is an Associate Director at Euro London and a veteran of many retained searches (and plenty of contingency too)

How To Definitely Get Your Jobs Filled

Children learn languages much faster and easier than adults do. All tips and tricks for ensuring your child grows up speaking more than one language agrees that the earlier they start learning a second language, the better. Euro London Appointments is made up of consultants who grew up bilingual, learnt second languages later, or learnt multiple languages are various stages of their life. All agree however, that these language skills have been an incredible asset in life.
I was born in Germany but moved to the UK when I was 3 years old. I already had a head start with my English as my parents are both bilingual and spoke English and German around me. My Scottish Granny noted that I spoke &ldquo;Ginglish&rdquo;, with half my sentence in German and half in English. As I grew up, I grew out of the mixed language sentences and learnt to divide the two, but it wasn&rsquo;t without issues.
My spelling and grammar were poor in both languages, and while I was able to speak both languages fluently it took a lot of effort to learn the difference grammatical systems. Reading and writing in German was much harder for me than in English. This came from my Mother Tongue having progressed to a second language and English became my predominant daily language. To try and counteract that, my parents changed a few things in our daily lives and here are some of the tips that worked for us!
<ul>
<li>All films and TV shows were in German. Living in England I wasn&rsquo;t exposed to a wide variety of German vocabulary and this was super important to making sure I had a broader understanding.</li>
<li>Reading together in German and talking about it. I would ask why some words had capital letters in the middle of the sentence even though they weren&rsquo;t &ldquo;Proper Nouns&rdquo;. All of a sudden it wasn&rsquo;t just names, places and the start of a sentence that had a capital letter.</li>
<li>Writing letters to friends and family in German. While it felt like homework, it was so useful to actually get used to writing and paying attention to grammar.</li>
<li>Trips to Germany to immerse myself without my parents around. I was 8 years old when I first went on the plane on my own. Yes it was guided but I felt very grown up! My Aunt picked me up from the airport and I stayed with her for 2 weeks. While my German relatives all spoke pretty good English, it stopped me turning to my parents to translate. I joined my cousins at school and got to experience a typical school day for them and use my German to an age-appropriate level.</li>
<li>Consistency. If you don&rsquo;t use the language, you lose it. You can&rsquo;t expect a child to be able to speak fluently if you only use that language when visiting that country. It requires effort from parents and child.</li>
</ul>
There is no magic formula for raising a bilingual child, but these are some of the things that worked for me. Growing up eating German and English food, celebrating a mix of English holidays and traditions as well as German, and being constantly surrounded by both languages means that I grew up very aware and proud of being bilingual.

Blog & actus

WhatsApp Job Scam - Please Be Alert

Overcoming Common Barriers to Employment

My 5 most beautiful but untranslatable Portuguese words

Just another Manic Monday?

Iceland’s Linguistic Legacy and Poetic Past

How To Definitely Get Your Jobs Filled

Growing Up Bilingual

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