The U.K., Europe & Beyond for Seasonal and Permanent Staff



Russian edition, 1999

Busyness-Kniga, 119 rubles

318 pages, paperback

Those seeking a paid refuge from Moscow for this summer should put the book away and return to it in the fall. According to the book, 99 percent of job hunters looking for jobs in the tourism industry have to look for work for at least half a year before finding employment. Although most jobs are relatively low-paid, require exceptional communication and managerial skills and can be dangerous at times, the number of job seekers always exceeds the number of vacancies available. This book offers some good advice on how to secure one (or even two) of the latter for you.

The book has a good structure and is easy to read. I’d suggest starting reading from the end, where it has a small purely Russian section. As this country has a vast territory and air transportation to everywhere is not very cheap, read how you can avoid paying a quarter of your income for a ticket to your workplace by hitchhiking. Then go on to the section on visas, with a detailed description of how to get the desired stamp in your foreign passport. A few passages are dedicated to the American Consulate in Moscow, as the United States is a popular destination for students seeking temporary work.

Here you’ll have to decide what types of job appeal to you most — camp counselor, tour guide, ski instructor, member of a cruise-liner staff. And a list of jobs you could never think of: hostess in an alpine chalet, VIP and CIP (Commercially Important Person) escort, disk jockey in a resort club, etc. Now skip the rest and go to Chapter two and read about the country or the region where you have always dreamed of working. Expect to find almost any country on the globe except for Russia and the other former Soviet republics. There is, though, a Trans-Siberian tour mentioned in the Asian section.

Let’s assume you’ve chosen where to work for the summer and what you want to do. Now go back to the Chapter 1 and follow the tips on getting trained properly for the job, preparing for an interview and packing your stuff.

The book has lots of small success and failure stories of individuals working in the tourism industry. Read the passages in italics carefully if you prefer learning by somebody else’s mistakes.

There are also a number of amusing anecdotes. One tour guide in Greece, for example, who had a group of tourists on a cheap tour, said all that her clients wanted to know was where they could buy Coke. And here’s a suggestion for those with little background: A croupier in a cruise liner’s casino said 80 percent of all that staff had never had work experience and that it is actually very easy to find a job there.

Although we live in a computer age, the author still thinks the fastest communication is available by telephone and fax. The bulk of e-mail you receive every day deserves special treatment, but doesn’t get it in this book. Maybe the author left it for later.