PAMINTO

Hello.

I came across this website. and would love to ask your advice. I currently live in Toronto (recently moved from Vancouver) in my long term goal of getting myself to Barbados permantley. I have been visiting Barbados for the last six years and every year the desire to live there gets stronger and stronger. My friends think it is a pipe dream but I would like to give it my best try to turn it into a reality.

I have a read quite few of the threads and at first glance it seems quite difficult to get a job in Barbados, but as I am not one to quit nor to give up on an idea, I have given myself one year to exhaust every avenue I can find.

I do not have any experience in the police, accounting or finance worlds.

BUT...... I do have a university degree and have have both operations and corporate experience in the restaurant and hospitality industry. I am currently the Executive Assistant and Project Coordinator for a group of executives. Would this type of skill set be desired in Barbados ?

Belinda1974

Hi Pamela (saw your name in the email address of your other posting),

I can totally imagine how your feelings about moving to Barbados are, and I think many of us in here are in the same boat. But my personal opinion is, give it a try, forget what others are telling you, it is your life, and you have to live it! If you don´t try it now, you will probably regret it later in your life, when you are older and not able to do it anymore!

I will move to Barbados with my daughter and husband - hopefully at the end of the year, if the work permit thing will work out like it seems at the moment. It looks good, but there could occur traps at any time, so you can never be 100% sure unless you have your work permit in hands. But like you, we are not giving up and we are very optimistic that everthing will work out, sooner or later. Many things take more time than in Europe - or in Canada I think, so if you give yourself a year, it should work out for you!
My simple advice is just to do extensive research on the yellow pages first, and send your CV and application to the better hotels and restaurants on the island. I am quite sure that with your education you should get a job there. In some cases it just depends on who you know there, so maybe you should do like we do after your application phase: go there for 3 months (the max. time you can stay on a tourist visa) and try to figure out all regarding job opportunities personally. But normally, after sending the applications, you will see how the feedbacks are. In my case, feedbacks were way better than I expected, so I continued our plan to move there. If you won´t get feedbacks, don´t worry too much, because it is a bad habit there not to answer emails........So if you can, go there for 3 months and see what you can do, and I am quite sure you will do it. There are so many hotels built at the moment, and they all need experienced employees, and honestly to say, there aren´t many on the island. I am studying tourism management besides my job, will graduate next June, so my future plans are to get into the tourism industry there too.

I will be in Barbados between Sept. and Dec., so if you come over there within this time too, it would be nice to meet up.

I wish you good luck with your applications!!!!