Hello fellow Anglo / Britalians

Please help me make the hardest decision of my life to date.
I am planning to leave old blighty to venture and make a go of it in...Milan. Born & bred in London and am so bored of it! Love everything Italianbut
I'm truly scared about being unemployed. I'm doing it on my own you see. I've researched the milan based language school that also offer an unpaid internship programme in an office. However I am not degree educated nor do I have a technical background. Always worked as a PA for large professional, private sector outfits.
I've connected to recruiters based in Milan via LinkedIn and asked for advice and complete transparency but to no avail..
P.s: i have no desire in being an au pair/ TEFL teacher either..just doesn't interest me whatsoever.
Please please please can anyone give me their advice/suggestions/opinion on my level of expectation to find employment where I can use my one and only advantage of having mother tongue English! ?
Thanking all you Anglosaxons who have been brave and talented of making it work in il bel paese.
A presto xxx

To be brutally honest if your only asset is mother tongue English don't move unless you have savings to last you a couple of years.

Milan is expensive so just for your day to day bills (rent utilities etc) you are looking at a fair amount.

Having said the above my suggestion is go through UK companies with branches in Milan and send your CV directly to them or try Italian fashion companies

Who will employ you ? To do what ? Why would an employer in Milan give a job to a Monoglot Anglophone when there are many multilingual locals with skills, experience and connections ?
How will you function in a Italian working environment without a knowledge of the language ?

Harsh, but this is the reality. And Italy is more about who you know than what you can do.

Ciao, change your mindset to positive. How hard are you prepared to work and for what money? Look at the ski resorts for starters, and google 'ski resort jobs in Italy'- You may be pleasantly surprised at the number of opportunities to at least get a foot in the door.
Buona fortuna,
'o nonno

Unfortunately I must agree with what has been said by the others. Think of it this way: English is (can be) a very useful supplementary skill, but how are you going to communicate with your fellow workers? - which in all honesty is what you'll need to do far more in any position. Are you expecting the default language in the company to be English?

Dear everyone
Thanks so much for the brutal honesty! Haha! Amusing and scary
I do have very good savings and not sure if I did mention that I am enrolling in to an Italian language school for 3 months amd living on site at their campus in order to gain fluency.

I have already emailed my cv out to large fashion houses and have even tried to get a transfer to the milan office thru my company here but there is zero headcount.
I just wanted to know how dire the employment level was for a city like Milan where it is so different to many other less affluent Italian cities? I have an intermediate grasp of Italian so am not completely a novice and am very good at French so that does Def help with grammar and structure of sentences..
Wondered if there was anyone out thete similar to me, who has tried to land a job thru an agency in Milan and the success rate? I really wish someone from a recruitment agency would have the courtesy and balls to email me back. It's not as if I'm asking for their bank details!?

Obviously the language will help a lot (though possibly in the sense that buying a lottery ticket helps a lot towards winning the lottery )

Just one observation. In my experience if an Italian company doesn't think that it can help you (or vice versa) it is very normal to simply not reply. It's not really courtesy or discourtesy, just a different cultural approach. One of many little things you'll simply have to accept if you take the plunge.

Serrano, thx that really has helped me understand why he never replied!
How did everyone else nail employment? Anyone use an agency?

  My old boss never ever replied to any CVs but, he was too damn mean to pay for the stamps. In this age of email he still probably wouldn't reply.  

I'm afraid I can't answer there; I'm in the opposite situation, having come to Italy to retire (early). I did have in mind maybe some part-time stuff to keep me active and help a little with the bills, but no fixed plans.

After about 3 years people started chasing me to help them with language teaching and translations (almost all direct work, a very small amount through language schools, and nothing via agencies). I now find myself more often trying to avoid than to get work. So, nothing there that would help you, sorry.

But I must say that the three most important things for you will be language, language and language. When you've been here for a while you just accept that Italians are for the most part incapable of communicating except in Italian (and French in real emergencies). This makes really good English a valuable skill - but at the same time makes really good Italian just as important (for internal company communication).

You mention living onsite at an Italian language school (I presume in Italy) for 3 months. I would say to go for it and see what happens, everyone's experience is unique and who knows what will happen during that time. You'll also be far better placed on the ground here, and be able to demonstrate a degree of drive and committment.

Hello again, yes I will be based in Milan at the language school and hope to network while I'm there with recruitment agencies and other students who mainly attend the school to commence their degrees at local Milan universities. The importance of learning Italian at a good level is paramount and don't intend to waste my time or money. Luckily a friend of the family has offered to let me stay for free in the outskirts of Milan as she has had bad problems with renting to Italians in the past and they did not pay her rent and ultimately she lost more money paying for solicitors to have them evicted! She prefers to keep empty and stay when she has to! Which is amazing luck for me.
I just need to nail a job and the lingo.
I'm so used to finding all my work via agencies which is the norm in London but feared it's not the route for job seekers in Italy. But by what %. I see a ton of jobs on their websites but wondered of they are fake ads...just want some clarity and advice from someone in recruitment. ....
Thx again everyone really appreciate time and effort to reply to me.

You will often find that recruitment companies and employers will file the vast majority of applications and letters in that round thing that sits by the desk. This is the same in most countries, if you are applying from outside the country they often just do not want to know. You will get a better response if you are already living there, but remember that being unemployed in a country that doesn't have the benefit safety net that the UK has can be extremely disheartening. Not sure of the employment situation there, but it is bound to be worse than the UK, which has pretty much the best employment rate in the EU.

I often wonder if the moaners and groaners in the UK actually realise just how lucky they are. With all its failings the NHS, DWP, and LA social services etc. take a lot of beating. Here in Italy you are pretty much on your own in lots of ways. And as you well know mikelincs pretty much the same in Spain.
bye bye dicette l'inglese

Sadly many of those things we should be proud of are currently taking a lot of beating in the UK.