Employment recommendations

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cankles

Reacher

Joined: Nov 02, 2007
Posts: 227

Status: Offline

Posted: Feb 26, 2008 - 08:45 PM
Post subject: Employment recommendations

Hi there,
In the next couple of months I'm looking to move to Shanghai with my girlfriend. She has a great job lined up but technically I'm jobless at this stage.

I have more than 6 years experience in building online media properties in the business, consumer, and small business space. I've also experience in building mobile and social media apps. I've worked on some big, global sites across english-speaking countries (worked with remote teams). Previously, I've also worked as a Journalist and Editor as well.

I've mixed feelings about finding a job. Would it be best to freelance work either as a producer or writer from US, AU, UK or find a job locally in Shanghai?

I want to immerse myself in as much of Shanghai as possible (including learning the language--of which I know very little). I worry working with teams remotely might be counter-productive to this.

Any hints or tips would be greatly appreciated.

mswp

LoopKicker

Joined: Mar 06, 2005
Posts: 808

Status: Offline

Posted: Feb 27, 2008 - 12:10 AM

If you are going to start at the beginning and make any meaningful progress in language acquisition, that will need to be your full time job for six months or so. Even after that you won't be competent to do business in Chinese. With English as a mother tongue, it takes a couple of years to learn another romance language o a useful level, but five years to get Chinese. Depending on your income potential, it probably isn't cost effective to learn Chinese.

I would suggest a couple of private lessons every week, so that you can talk to taxi drivers and your ayi, and work remotely if you want to have an income.