Tools for hiring foreign employees
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You’re looking to hire a foreign employee. There are solutions available to help you identify new candidates, assess their skills, or provide training before hiring.
Who can help you hire?
The Employment Network can assist you in hiring a foreign national seeking employment and help facilitate their integration into your company.
France Travail can assist you with:
- Searching for candidates
- Creating a company profile to improve your visibility
- Making your job offers more attractive and promoting them
- Securing recruitment through in-company placements
- Adapting or developing the professional and language skills of your future employee (before recruitment) through the Préparation Opérationnelle à l’Emploi Individuelle (POEI)
You can call 3995 or contact a France Travail agency within the list.
Local missions help recruit young people under the age of 26 (under 30 for those with disabilities).
Cap Emploi are specialized employment agencies whose role is to advise and support individuals with a recognized disability—or those in the process of having their disability recognized—in finding and securing employment.
Opco are responsible for supporting professional training. Their missions include funding apprenticeships, helping industry sectors develop professional certifications, and assisting SMEs in identifying their training needs.
The CCI provides comprehensive information on public economic support measures. It covers all business needs, including creation, takeover or sale of a business, innovation, international development, employment, training, sustainable development, and establishment.
The CMA supports you in all your projects, from creating a business to developing it, helping hire new talent, and managing business succession projects.
The 89 departmental or interdepartmental Chambers of Agriculture support farmers through research and development, training, advice, project management, and defend their interests at the territorial level.
Local branches of employer organizations can:
- Guide you to the appropriate schemes (HR, employment, training, regulations)
- Provide initial legal or HR advice
- Ensure secure hiring (legal framework, right to stay/work)
- Offer networking groups and share best practices
- Assist in employee integration, including for foreign workers (housing, cultural adaptation, language training)
- Represent businesses to local authorities
GEIQ are associations led and managed by member companies, mobilized to promote the integration of people far from the labor market through work-study programs.
Agir provides two services based on existing general or specialized frameworks:
- Comprehensive and individualized support for beneficiaries of international protection
- Coordination of local actors—institutional, socio-economic, and associative—within the local integration ecosystem
« Les entreprises s’engagent » brings together and supports all companies wishing to commit to an inclusive society and a sustainable world. It organizes events throughout the year to help you recruit new talent in innovative ways.
Access useful contacts in your department
Recruitment support services
Recruitment support services are available. Some of these are particularly well-suited to identifying or supplementing skills.
1. Identify new talent by opening the doors to your company through professional immersion
Through the professional immersion program, or “Workplace Immersion Period” (PMSMP), you can host a foreign job seeker at your company to give them the opportunity to learn about your company and its various roles in a real-world setting alongside your employees.
It is through a PMSMP that you will be able to host a foreign job seeker within your company. You will be able to introduce them to the various roles performed there by putting them in direct contact with your employees and showing them the different workstations.
This France Travail program allows you to identify the skills and soft skills of candidates who could join your teams, and to help them develop these further.
How do I do that?
List your company on the Immersion facile website to make it visible to potential candidates.
2. Before hiring, train the new candidate to meet your needs through an Individual Job Readiness Program (IJRP)
When hiring someone on a permanent contract, a fixed-term contract of at least 6 months, or a seasonal contract of at least 4 months, you can train a foreign job seeker to bridge the gap between their current professional and/or language skills and those required for the position you are offering.
The POEI program allows you to hire, following a training program designed in collaboration with you, a candidate who is immediately ready to perform their job duties. The POEI program covers all or part of the costs you incur for training conducted within your company (on-the-job training) and/or by an external training organization (including French language training). For more information, visit the France Travail website.
How do I do this?
You can either submit your request online through your business account or contact France Travail Pro by phone at 3995.
3. If you wish to hire multiple employees for the same position, you can assess candidates’ skills using the Simulation-Based Recruitment Method (SBRM)
MRS is an innovative method that takes a different approach to recruitment by focusing not on the usual prerequisites (experience, degree), but specifically on candidates’ actual abilities to perform the job. With this method, you can assess candidates’ skills through role-playing exercises tailored to your job openings.
How do I do that?
Call France Travail Pro at 3995.
4. Know your candidate’s skills and qualifications
It is entirely possible to hire someone with degrees earned abroad. There are several ways to do this.
A comparability certificate can help an employer better understand and assess a candidate’s academic background and level of education. This certificate describes the academic level of the foreign degree by comparing it to a corresponding level of education in France. This certificate is not a degree equivalence but can be a useful tool in the process of recognizing the experience and skills acquired by the candidate abroad.
The recognition application process is conducted by the candidate exclusively online. Fees amount to €20 upon submission of the application and €100 during the review process (refugees, asylum seekers, and beneficiaries of subsidiary or temporary protection are exempt from these fees).
The applicant must provide:
- A legible, valid form of identification (front and back) (ID card, passport, residence permit, resident card, proof of asylum application, etc.)
- The final diploma in its original language (or a certificate of completion)
- Proof of the official duration of studies in the original language issued by the institution
- A French translation of the diploma and the proof of duration, performed by a certified translator or by the official authorities of the country of origin.
For more information, visit the “Recognition of Diplomas” page on the France-Education-International website.
The European Qualifications Passport for Refugees (EQPR) is an official document that certifies the highest level of education and professional skills acquired by refugees, asylum seekers, and temporarily protected persons who do not have supporting documentation prior to their arrival in France.
The EQPR application process consists of two steps:
- An online application
- An in-person interview.
Candidates with experience directly related to the professional certification they are seeking can have their skills recognized through a degree. They must therefore begin by identifying the degree they wish to obtain.
France VAE emphasizes that time and motivation are key factors for success. Candidates can register online.
To find out how a candidate can demonstrate their proficiency in French, please visit the page “Resources for onboarding and training foreign employees".
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