By Ruben McCarthy and Aspasia Falki
In recent years, over 120 different nationalities have chosen Aarhus as an international destination to complete their studies in higher education.
In a city of 355,000 inhabitants, at least 13% of them are students with a significant percentage coming from abroad. So, it could be said that the competition for a part-time student job vacancy can be vast. But how difficult is it actually to find a student job in a city with so many students – both
Danish and international?
Lucie Daniela Vysoká is an international student from the Czech Republic and she has been studying marketing management at Business Academy Aarhus for over one and a half years.
“I came here through an agency called Scandinavian Study and they basically gave me all the information about studying in Denmark before I applied”, said Vysoká.
Vysoká is currently working at Bánh Mì Bandits in Aarhus Street Food.
“It’s helping a lot; at the beginning it was quite hard to find some job or something like that because we moved here after the summer. So it wasn’t that easy to find after summer rush”, said Vysoká.
Jonas Schwartz has been the manager of Bánh Mì Bandits for the past 7 years.
Over 85 per cent of the people he hires would be international, so English is the main language spoken in the workplace.
“I think many Danish guests like that this is an international environment, you will hear a lot of different languages down here, where Danish is a minority actually. I think it gives the guests some kind of feeling of being abroad or on holiday – so that is what students or international students bring to the place”, said Schwartz.
Jesper Svendberg, Teaterkatten’s manager, is also eager to hire foreign students to work at his bar.
Not being familiar with the Danish language is not a dissuasive factor for him when it comes to hiring student workers.
“No need to speak Danish. It’s not important and most of the students coming, it’s useless for them to learn Danish so I don’t care as long as they speak English”, said Svendberg.
But many students come to Denmark for a short period of time, for one-semester or maybe less than a year. This can be challenging when it comes to finding a part-time or even a full-time job.
“I think bars and restaurants are difficult just to have people for five months, Danish or foreigners because we have used a certain amount of time and money to teach them how to work”, said Svendberg.
Business owners are thinking of the crucial time and money spent in order to train the students, so they prefer to invest in those planning to stay in the city for longer periods.
“One semester is not enough for us. We have to see at least one year ahead. There would be too many costs for us to hire and train and spend money on someone who is just here for one semester. So we always hire for at least six months – that’s the minimum”, said Schwartz.
Nevertheless, Aarhus’s hospitality industry has embraced international students in their attempt at finding a job, with many business managers being quite flexible with non-native speakers.