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Tenerife Living - Job Opportunities

Tenerife Ltd? What are the career opportunites for school leavers in Tenerife?

We staged a ‘friends reunited’ at the magnificent Hotel Jardines de Nivaria to find out what’s on offer

Mike Broeckhart, 28, Web/Interface designer
Born in Antwerp to Belgian parents; grew up in Tenerife then educated for eight years in the UK. Moved back to the island after working in both Germany and the Czech Republic.

Jonathan Green, 28, trained as an aeronautic engineer.
Born and raised in Tenerife; attended university in England and later worked in Munich before moving back to Tenerife. Currently developing his own company, as well as producing/directing a feature film.

Surya Pereyra Kröll, 27, Receptionist
Born in Tenerife to an Argentinean father and a German mother; attended the British Wingate School, later studied for A levels in the UK. Travelled extensively around Europe and the USA.

What are the advantages, as well as disadvantages, of being brought up here?

Mike: I think my parents made the right decision sending my brother and me to an English school [in the UK]. It opened up a lot of doors.

Surya: Definitely, yes.

Mike: I much prefer the English education system.

Jonathan: Neither of you are English so, going to an English school, did your parents think that in the future you’d move back to England?

Surya: In my case, my mother is German and my father is Argentinean so they thought it would be good to have another language.

Jonathan: I speak Spanish but I make many mistakes in the writing. Sometimes I wish I’d gone maybe a year or two to a Spanish school, just to get it 100 per cent. And obviously I’ve been away from Spain so I’ve lost a lot.

Mike: The advantage I had was that during the first few years of my life I was going back to Belgium a lot. Being so young it was easy to assimilate other languages. I think it made it a lot easier for me to learn. But, growing up here in Tenerife has made it even easier.

How many languages do you speak?

Mike: Five or six. Dutch and Flemish are considered different languages but they’re very similar.

Surya: Well, my parents are two different nationalities so I already had Spanish and German. English I learnt through studying and then at school I studied French and Spanish also.

Mike: I found that I perfected my Spanish working for the last two or three years here in Tenerife. I hadn’t really had a use for the Spanish language but working for a tour operator I found that I had to write letters in correct Spanish, with the correct grammar.

Jonathan: I speak English better than I speak Spanish but I’m more comfortable speaking Spanish. I learnt English at school and from my parents who came here 30 years ago. So, when I was in England I ended up using really old-fashioned words and people would look at me oddly. I got quite uncomfortable speaking English. Also, I think my accent is very posh, even though I don’t consider myself posh. When I speak Spanish people know I haven’t lived here for a while because they can hear it in my accent, but at least I feel that I’m part of the culture here. I’m part of the people and the sense of humour and I’m much more relaxed using slang. If I use English slang it’s learnt, and because they’re words I wasn’t brought up with it sounds forced.

Mike: My native language is supposed to be Flemish but I think I speak English and Spanish a lot better. Out of those two I don’t know which I speak better. I think probably Spanish now at this stage. But the three of us speak Spanglish quite often. We use the most appropriate or funniest words of each language.

Surya: English was usually the language that we spoke at home – but I mean ‘our’ English, ‘home English’ (laughter), which is a mixture of German, English and Spanish. I tend to speak English and Spanish more or less the same.

What did you study and why? Did you take into account the career opportunities/limitations you’d have here?

Surya: I had the opportunity to study in an English school, and then went to England and did language A Levels because [at the time] I couldn’t do them here. Then I just worked. I didn’t go to university.

Mike: I did language A Levels too. I went to boarding school for five years in England and then I went to university and did a degree in Applied Psychology and Computing. I did it deliberately because it was a very general degree - I didn’t want anything too specific. I didn’t know – I still don’t know – what I want to do, so I thought I’d study something I was interested in.

Jonathan: I did A Levels in Spanish, Maths and Physics and then studied Engineering. I knew that Tenerife would always be home but Engineering was just something that sort of happened. I didn’t really have the intention of coming back to Tenerife, even though I knew this was home.

Surya: But having languages does give you the opportunity to work abroad.

Jonathan: Well, that’s the thing. You’ve got a language base from living in Tenerife and then you do a degree in Engineering or whatever and then you can use that to do all sorts of stuff.

Do you think the career opportunities are limited here?

Mike: I found that to get a job here it’s not necessary to study anything. As long as you speak a few languages you’ll be accepted for almost any job.

Jonathan. Well, most people here don’t bother with learning anything because they know they can get a job anywhere though those that have languages get a better one. The ambition here is quite low because there are no real opportunities.

Mike: That’s true. When I went to the UK I thought, why study tourism? I didn’t think there was anything new to learn. You grow up with it here. You see it all. I think the locals should study other things that will bring in other markets and new industries.

Jonathan: You’re not going to get an engineering company or any major company to invest here if there’s no level of education.

What is your opinion of the education system in Tenerife? How could it be improved?

Surya: I went to a private English school whilst my sister studied in a private German school, then to a normal local school. Now she’s at university. I think that if you’re a dedicated person you can do well at a local school.

Jonathan: It’s down to ambition. In Germany and England it’s cold and miserable. If you don’t have a nice house then your standard of living is quite low, so you have this ambition. Here you don’t need that much money. You can have a great day at the beach and not spend any money. Here you think, what’s the difference of earning this much or that much if I’m happy anyway?

Mike: That’s right.

Surya: Yes. Here you have the option of working in tourism, which means you can earn 1,000 euros a month. You can be a waiter earning 1,000 euros and with that have a car, a house. That gives people less drive to progress in their studies.

Jonathan: There’s unemployment here, but it’s not a problem. In England or Germany you think you’ve got to study to get a job, you don’t want to end up living in the streets. It’s all about fear. If you don’t study, it’ll be really bad. Whereas, if you don’t study here it’s probably the same as if you do study. Most of my friends left school at 14 and they didn’t see anything strange in that, whereas in England the attitude is, if you don’t go to university, you’re never going to get a job.

Mike: I think there’s a big difference between mainland Europe and here - the parental motivation and encouragement. I think the majority of parents here have never even had an education. In mainland Europe, the parents have had an education to a certain level, they’ve been to university and they’ll encourage their children to study. But here it’s not like that.

Is it difficult to have a career here in something not directly linked to tourism?

Jonathan: I think immigration will change things. There are a lot of people coming into Tenerife who know there are jobs here. People come from mainland Spain and Argentina who speak the language and are more qualified than the people here and they’re getting some of the jobs. There are the Canarians who left school at 14 with no languages and suddenly there’s some guy from another part of Spain who’s taken a job that they could’ve got. If that happens a lot people will say, hold on, we’ve got to do something about this.

Mike: And there’s also cheap labour coming in from Morocco.

Jonathan: Yes. Canarians used to be the cheap labour. Now you get all these people coming from Germany and England and mainland Spain who are setting up businesses and the Canarians are losing the cheap-end jobs and then not getting the high-end jobs because they haven’t studied. So, there may be a lot of problems but it hasn’t happened yet, so I don’t think people are that bothered. There are a lot more opportunities in Santa Cruz. I’ve never lived there but it seems that way.

Is the best option here to open your own business?

Jonathan: I think so. I think there are many opportunities. Maybe not so much now, but certainly before. There are a lot of foreigners coming in with different ideas.

Surya: Usually I think that’s what gives the impetus to local people. They see a business that does well and they think, what a good idea. But it’s important that they have their own initiative. They are too settled. Tourism is what there is, but they should take into account what the locals need a bit more.

Mike: Yes. There are other industries that should be concentrated on, like renewable energies. Ok, tourism evolved here because of the perfect climate we have and because it’s only four hours away from mainland Europe. But, the climate also means we can have an amazing agricultural industry, which isn’t being taken advantage of. The banana plantations are going downhill big time.

Surya: Tourism brings in more money that agriculture, so people will leave it and go into tourism. Also, the owner will say,’ well, if I sell my land for a hotel, I’ll get more money,’ which means that in the future all this area full of plantations will be hotels.

Mike: They brought in a moratorium, which I think is great, although I think there should be a total building stop now. I think the infrastructure that exists needs to be improved upon and we should try to develop the tourism we’re getting here, to make the quality better and then work on other aspects. Although, I do think the quality has improved.

Do you think you have an advantage over most people from here?

All: Yes, definitely.

Jonathan: Even if you’ve got no education. Just the fact that you’re bilingual means you can walk into a job.

Surya: Usually to work in reception you need languages but you usually also need a qualification in tourism. I don’t have one but I had experience and languages so in my case it wasn’t necessary.

Mike: I think that the best thing you can do as a local person is to get out, at least for a year. I think it does a lot of good. But I don’t think you should force people to be ambitious, it should grow naturally.

Jonathan: In so many places money is the sole commanding decider in anything you do. I think I’d be wary of pushing the island that way. To be quite honest, I wouldn’t change Tenerife for anything.

This article has been supplied by kind permission of Living Tenerife Magazine. Read more articles like this on Island Life, Golf and Property Tenerife.

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