Temat: Canadian coming to Poland.

Greetings everyone! I am a Canadian coming to Poland this fall - if everything goes well - to attend the Canadian Executive MBA program at the Warsaw School of Economics. My wife has been adamant that I find employment before I go. Can anyone give me direction as to some good opportunities out there, or possible contacts that I should speak to?

Some brief highlights of my career:
• Hitachi Canada Ltd. - Managed HR functions nationally (Calgary/Mississauga/Ottawa as well as previous locations - now closed - in Edmonton and Vancouver) for 5 distinct business divisions – Power and Industry; Consumer Electronics; Medical Services; Optical Security Products; and Finance and Administration.
• 16+ years of senior HR management experience within multinational companies (Hitachi, Sanofi) and E-Commerce sector (Chapters Online and Borderfree Ltd.).
• Company lead on two implementations of ADP Products - HR Resource Partner and the Premier Performance Pack ( People@work and Pay@work ).
• Reported directly to the President and CEO (Hitachi Canada Ltd., http://hitachi.ca) and Executive Group. In previous positions I have reported directly to the CFO (Borderfree Ltd.) and President (Chapters Online).
• Sarbanes-Oxley Experience (Internal Audit Committee member along with CFO, CEO EVP and VP).
• Extensive experience in all HR disciplines at both the strategic as well as "hands on" level.

I look forward to your comments and advice.

Regards,
Dan Gravel

Temat: Canadian coming to Poland.

Hi Dann

Not sure if my advice is still relevant as I left Poland 3 years ago. However before that I was working a little bit in HR.
With your experience and knowlege you should obviously go into simmilar directions. I would recomend, large, international companies that have many branches in Poland. There are plenty of them in Poland nowdays and they are always interested in Exec level. I am not sure what sort of activity you will be looking for as you said you going to attend MBA Program. Feel free to give me more info so maybe I can point some directions.

Temat: Canadian coming to Poland.

Hello Daniel,

why don't try at some Polish headquarters of companies such as Hitachi? or others form the branch?
perhaps they don't employ each and every Pole if they don't look for anyone, but you're Canadian, so it might be easier for you to get a job even without their offer;
in other words, you should send them your portfolio and ask even if they officially don't need anyone.
good luck!