Being convincing to an employer in Brazil

Hi Priscilla. I'm an American expat with Brasilian family on my mother's side. I've visited Brasil since I was a child, and have lived here since 2007. I love Brasil, which is why I moved here when I was 40-something. I live in Araguari, a small city in Minas.

As a middle-aged IT/Logistics exec, I'd tell anyone my age to stay home. Unless you are independently wealthy and don't mind the 50% pay cut, there's no point in coming to Brasil. If you are young, then the opportunity and adventure is cool. For a foreigner coming to Brasil, the life is magical. I've lived around the world, and adore Brasil.

But as a seasoned professional, it's not so charming. Brasil is going to be my retirement home. I've done everything in America and elsewhere.

When I came here to Brasil I quickly saw that I would not want to "find a job" but instead create one. Being an entrepreneur in Brasil, as a foreigner, is a nightmare as I discovered.

But for me, getting a "good job" in Brasil meant taking a massive salary cut and living in a city I would hate. I lived in The Woodlands, Texas, one of the top 5 cities in America. Moving to Sao Paulo would be hell. Rio, BH, etc. Same thing.

Networking? Yes, huge for a young person because it can cut through the bullshit. Being an older guy getting interviewed by a kid in a cheap suit, who has not a small portion of my experience, is comical. And this kid's boss is more worried about me being a career competitor rather than an organizational asset.

It's just rather pointless. So again, if you are a kid going off into the world, living in Leblon or Floripa would be awesome and fun. Otherwise, if you're older, you better get positioned with a multi-national and have a great salary down here. And lock your doors.

Just not worth it.

Hello,

I agree with usjohnmcc.  I am also a middle-aged American professional and I´ve been living in Brazil for 10 years with my Brazilian wife in Porto Alegre. To add to his points:

You will receive 1/2 the pay here for your work, or less.  On the other hand, a good IT salary in the US would put you in the 60-75% wealth bracket, where here you would be in the 4% bracket. That translates into a bit of luxury and purchasing power, but not much, and it affords a nice life where you would run with a select crowd here in-country. Your money wouldn't buy you very much abroad, and only a few high-quality imported goods.

The working environment in Brazil doesn´t comprehend meritocracy and focuses instead on a zero-sum competition for salary and benefits. As an American, it's disappointing to see the best educated and most ambitious people flee Brazil without a single thought that they might build something better here and contribute to others this way. The resistance they face seems insurmountable to them. The local beurocracy and lack of vision has also worn me down and made me re-focus my own ambitions, so I don´t blame them.  I'm staying in Brazil, but I've left my profession as an architect, and it seems usjohnmcc is leaving for China soon. So, Kids, understand that Brazil will be a character building experience for you. Even if you feel you have a lot to contribute, have an elite education or invaluable experience, it´s likely that this will translate into little value for you here as an employee.

As an entrepreneur here you face a lot of resistance, and having employees can invite a world of pain. I work alone, have appreciative clients and a comfortable life, and you can too if you adapt yourself to the environment. I'd rather be in an office with colleagues working together on building something, but that's rare. Business here often takes the approach of get-in, get-out quick and make a profit.

There are foreigners working here from every nation, not a lot, but people of all kinds -- so, despite the challenges I've listed, I wish you luck in joining us!

Totally agree with both. It is very difficult to adjust to the low pay and high costs. I was fortunate as to having my US company having an office in Rio, but found when going to that office was a different culture and no drive. They seemed "beaten down" by the regulations and "it is the Brazilian way" mentality.
As said working alone on line can help, but have to transfer funds to take it in Brazil.
I known students getting Engineering diplomas and having to work for pennies to teach or manufacturing.

I did not answer the original question in my first post, so here is some advice.

Brazilians and Portuguese in general value 3rd party certification, essentially for someone else to vouch for your ability and integrity. This can come in the form of a diploma, advanced training, or just a family member or friend recommending you.

A personal recommendation carries 10X the value of other sources because it creates a network of favors/reliability/interdependence which people here like to build for themselves. They feel an extensive network of connections is true power and helps them fight against the chaos and disorder that make them generally distrustful of doing business with strangers. (Unfortunately, this is how the government operates, and why many unqualified civil servants with fat salaries are busy with achieving very little beyond holding onto their jobs which their family or their friends secured for them.)

Brazilians don´t like to search online for painters, plumbers or anyone else because they think it's insane or just desperate to invite the general public into your affairs or your home. Even though they are nice, friendly people, they feel it's entirely your own fault if you get ripped off by someone. There is a consumer affairs complaint department here which does function pretty well, and people are quick to sue each other, but they still expect they might get back-stabbed in any business deal. Which is why the personal recommendations carry so much weight. 

Any extra education, advanced training, etc., has to be demonstrated with some kind of certification.  Just saying you worked on such-and-such a project in your professional career might be impressive, but for some reason, even a simple certification for a six-hour course you took at a no-name little school carries a lot of weight with employers.  People here feel the need to pad their CVs with all kinds of such courses, many of which are far too easy and don't actually teach you much, but which prove that you are ambitious and keeping current in your field.  If you don't, you will likely be put at the bottom of the hiring list.

Also, these padded CVs give the person in charge of hiring "plausible deniability". If the new employee turns out to be inept or unethical, they can at least point to the employee's CV in self-defense. If the person in charge of hiring actually hires someone for nefarious reasons (because they are friends, family, or setting up an embezzling scheme or plan to elicit sexual favors from the employee) then a CV decorated with ambitious-looking certifications often gets them off the hook when their schemes go wrong.

I don't like exposing the Machiavellian aspects of this, but these must be said if you plan on working here. There is an entire category of work in soliciting and paying bribes, falsifying documents and false reporting. If you read the news, you know that recently 300 people were murdered by the negligence of Vale, a major international company, because its employees and contractors falsified reports. You might be offered such a job, but I recommend you refuse it.  I refuse to participate in such things and I know many, many Brazilians who do as well. We're here to make things better, not worse. If you don't care about this or your morality is flexible, then stay in your own country where at least prison is relatively safe and comfortable.

In Brazil's defense, foreign criminals also come here to prey on it and escape conviction. I've seen it: Europeans and North Americans with impressive careers that come to Brazil, only to walk away from dirty deals with suitcases full of other people's money. If you find yourself working in such an operation, get out as soon as possible. My father was offered a dream job in Puerto Rico years ago by another foreigner only to find out he was the fall-guy in an industrial-scale scam. I can't say what would have happened to him if he hadn't gone to the FBI.

All very true. 
I am a consultant with many, many years of experience.  My fee varies between 800 and 1,500 Dollars/day.  I was invited to join a project in Brazil, by a Brazilian consulting firm, for the unusual pay, according to them, of 800 Reals/day.  I declined.  I will continue working for international consulting firms, even if it takes me all over the world, who compensate me what I am used to receive.
After bringing the entire family here back in 2007, it was the "flexible morality" mentioned by Skip that made me change my mind and move the family back to the US.  I just didn't want my children to grow being "flexible" in that aspect.
I truly believe that bureaucracy in Brazil is maintained to allow public servants and politicians to make money.  It is the reason foreign companies trying to do something in Brazil, after nearly going out of their minds with the entanglement, decide to pay  whatever to whomever, just so things will move forward.
Then again, it's not Brazil alone, it's all of Latin America.

I've only ever applied for positions as an English teacher with schools here in São Paulo state and one bike shop here in Bertioga.

The first school I had prearranged my position with before leaving the US.  The second one in São Paulo had me take a written test and talk with the director in English for about 30 minutes. Both interviews resulted in me being hired with zero negotiation on my salary. I was told what I'd be making and the hours and days I was expected to work.

That brings up my first item to mention: Even at the bike shop the only "negotiation" on my part was convincing the interviewer I had the required skill set and could do the job properly. My Brazilian wife tells me that's because almost any and every salary at almost any and every type of business/establishment is set by agreement with the government and fixed in stone.

This lack of flexibility on the parts of those interviewing me the four other English schools I've interviewed at in 3 different cities have not hired me as I would not budge on not being available on Saturday because that is the only day I had to speak with my children in the US. That was the only day they could make available together so we could all talk together and I could talk to them individually too.

The guy at the bike shop asked me how I could prove to him that I could do the work required in the shop and I suggested that I return the next morning around 10-11 dressed in appropriate clothes for building a bike from the parts in a shipping box. He agreed. Thankfully the wheels were already assembled, otherwise I would have had to entertain him by swearing my way through installing the hubs and spokes in bare rims. He did ask if I knew how to weave rims (although he said "montar") to which I replied that I didn't enjoy doing so and the last time has been 2009, but I could. My wife told me I shouldn't have said that I didn't like it.

I turned down the job at the bike shop after showing him I could do everything he asked. My salary would have been R$1100 a month for 8AM-8PM Mon-Sat. That's R$300 more than my rent alone, not counting any utilities. That doesn't work when my wife says it's Brazilian culture/jeito that if the wife works/earns a salary, that money is hers to do with as she pleases whether my income covers the rent, utilities, and quite often food or not and our worst arguments have been about how she gets offended if I ask her to pay one of the bills or look at her bank balance and transactions to try and understand how (as she tells it) she has a salary of R$1100 a month and revolving accounts totaling R$400-R$500 to pay off completely and yet her one bank balance is negative R$700-R$800 every month and never goes down. Topping this off, her balance has only improved beyond negative R$600 twice, when I deposited enough to bring her balance to a positive R$5.

Oh, almost forgot. OK. I admit I completely forgot until I started reading more replies.

I've been a freelance journalist since several years before arriving in Brazil in 2012. Thankfully I had paid my dues and taken enough knocks that by the time I decided to come here that I had the income to do so and then support myself once I got here. The only thing the Consulate in LA asked of me when I applied for the visa was a letter from my then fiance affirming that I would be living at her house during my "stay" in Brazil because I am self-employed and don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank and I was not supposed/allowed to do any work while here (The plan had been for us to tie the knot within my visa's initial 3 months prior to the single extension allowed if the getting married and beginning the follow-on steps of making me a resident took more than 3 months to get to the point I didn't have to worry about the visa expiring. ). That relationship ended six days after my visa extension expired on Xmas Day 2012.

My wife and I have been discussing some sort of food cart on or near the beach during "a temporada" and maybe set up a table or booth somewhere maybe in a neighborhood during the rest of the year. Our (My step) daughter and son-in-law are now talking about doing something with my pizza recipes (toppings, sauces, crusts) whether it's making them in our kitchens and either setting up a booth or something like a combination mini-convenience store and a food counter with my wife and our daughter making things they're great at and our son-in-law helping me make pizzas and some sweets/desserts I've come up with since moving here.

Dear
Thank you for the email.

I did not go through such processes. I came to Sao Paulo when the company i work for opened  a branch in Sao Paulo which i have to move here just to supervise some thecnical section.
I am sorry that I  am not that much help.

Regards

I completely agree with everything usajohnmcc, SkipStepOne, and Mr Pinto say.  I've been here in Brazil for 10 years and, for many different reasons, foreigners will find it hard to survive in a US, UK, or EU middle class way unless (1) they are working for a foreign company, (2) start their own business (and are very hard working and have a bit of luck), or (3) arrive in Brazil with adequate wealth or pension payments. I'm in Category (2) and am still struggling after 10 years.  In short, Brazil is not at all easy.

I agree 100% with all written above. I honestly think if you are just starting in your career or just out of University, accepting a job in Brazil might not be a bad choice ( if you have the Right Visa or a company willing to sponsor you) . But if you have years of experience, its not worth the low salary compared to what you are accustomed to receive at home for the same position.

I remember i went for an interview in Rio for a similar position i had in the US. The salary paid to a worker with 10 years experience was lower than what was paid to Summer Interns in the same industry in the United States. I politely said No thank you.

Going the Entrepreneur route in Brazil is great, and with many opportunities but its not for everyone.  Its 100 times tougher than the US, but if you make it, you will reap alot of rewards.

***

Dear fellow expat members,

I am glad we discuss this topic, and thanks Priscilla for bringing it up! I was struggling for quite some time with my negative perceptions and frustrations related to living in Brazil, as a middle-aged, highly educated with international development job experience working for the UN, OSCE and INGO`s in many different countries in the world. So, I am coming, let`s say, from the public sphere, and above all, I am a woman. Believe me, gender makes a huge difference in this country, and if there is one thing which makes me furious about Brazil, is how women are treated in many aspects of their lives.

But let`s start with the beginning. I lived one year in Brazil in 2017, the year of my first contact with Brazil. I am here because I got married to a fantastic Brazilian guy. This made things easier, in order to get my permanent visa, although at the Federal Police, after running for months to arrange the papers, we were told to bring another one, which has not been written on the website. When I commented this to the officer in charge, her reply was: "I can request whatever paper I want."  So, watch out future residents, the Brazilian administration will do whatever they want to you, because there are contradictions between their regulations, they don`t know the law, or, it is left at the discretionary power of the person to decide on certain matters. Forget about transparency and accountability, this is not important in Brazil. I was lucky I could get the requested paper from my Embassy, otherwise I would have had to travel back to my home country.

Another deception with this country happened when I decided to validate my degrees. It was a huge mistake, and I advise anybody who wants to do this to make searches, and look for those "friends, networks, relatives" who will help you.
I entered with my request to USP, the University of Sao Paolo. After obtaining all the papers back home, translating documents etc, I submitted my papers. I paid around $500 for the University, as a validation fee. After three months, I received an e-mail saying that I need to translate my thesis, otherwise they will not continue the validation process. When one validates diplomas, it is about validating the process of getting the degree, and not granting again the degree, which I received 12 years before. Anyway, I took out my request, and of course, no money back.

In the meantime I realized that I will never work for the Brazilian state, not only because I can not(without validated diplomas it is not possible), but because I don`t want. For all the reasons mentioned by everybody here in this discussion.

I left Brazil for one year, working abroad, and I returned to the north of Brazil. I live in Manaus and trying to do something useful and with purpose here. In two places, I have been asked who is my husband, where he works and what is his position!!! In another place, I have been told that I have to show "who I am."  Generally speaking, it is more and more clear for me, that the opportunities I thought I have , are actually shrinking. It is about who you are, whom you know, it is a completely closed and protected world where one needs a lot of time to find opportunities.

The gender-relations are adding to this environment, and probably here in the North are worse. Businesses, deals, decisions, all of them are run by men, women are not part of this world. A foreign man has huge problems finding a job, a foreign woman will hardly succeed. I try to set up my own consultancy, as this is the only option for me to do something in my area of expertise, but according to my assessment, I will have to work internationally.

I agree with everything has been shared previously, I would not come to Brazil to work or to live without having some financial investments which will pay for your life here in Brazil.

The resistance they face seems insurmountable to them.

Yes.  Bang for your buck.  If I’m a talented and ambitious Brazilian, would I want to see my good work drowned out in a sea of incompetence, pettiness, and chaos?  Talented people like to have an impact.  They like to leave things behind that they’re proud of.  That’s just not what many Brazilian companies value.  And again, I am in a good situation right now, but I have worked in some crappy places here.

A brain drain is a very hard thing to deal with.  You lose good people, then so so people come to power, and mismanage things and drive more good people away.  And the crazy thing is, in today’s world, with the internet and cheap air travel, it’s actually really easy to link talented people together and monetize. So the brain drain can happen without people ever leaving the country. 

Talented people here (and there are a lot of them) owe it to themselves and their country to walk away from crappy companies and crappy bosses, and show the world what they can do.  They do not in any way owe these companies their time or effort.

When the French began to explore the Cambodian jungle in the 19th century, they stumbled upon a ruin.  It showed superior artistry, and as they started clearing the jungle they realized they had found something enormous and magnificent - Angkor Wat, a city-palace, the center of a once-mighty Khmer civilization, almost completely forgotten.

The moral of the story?  Don’t build castles in the jungle.

Hey Priscilla,
Are you looking for an online job? Please get in contact with me if so and if you have a bachelor's degree.
Thank you.
Rachel

This is an old post and it is from Expat's administrator for discussion.

Ahahahahahah.  Strangely, I read this post a few years ago.  "Don't build castles in the jungle" was something I always used to say to my wife, thinking I came up with it to describe the Brazilian economy's general contempt for competence and expertise.  Turns out you came up with it, I read about it, and forgot it wasn't my line.  But then again, taking credit for other people's work ... maybe I've gone a little native, eh?

But in all seriousness, the stories about the difficulty of even treading water in the Brazilian job market are completely true.  I have two Master's from top ranking American universities, and experience in a high-demand field.  Okay, for fear of revealing myself, one of them was from MIT.  If you are thinking of starting a life here, my advice would be, unless you plan on being a beach bum and giving up any hope of professional success, just don't.  Not that there's anything wrong with being a beach bum - I do plan to retire here and become one.

So the first thing you will find frustrating is bureaucracy.  I would advise anyone only to move here if they are married to a citizen, and get their papers processed abroad - this is because consulates abroad tend to have more conscientious people than the local bureaucracy.  Guard those papers with your life.  Bureaucracy is used as a form of "soft oppression", a way for Brazil to declare that it is a free, modern society while at the same time using low-level harassment to disincentivize people from rising above their station.  Certain people will be more than happy to inflict the same pleasantries on a foreigner. 

Then, you will notice interviews.  If you are in any way qualified, they will be something akin to a Maoist struggle session.  You'll probably be interviewed by some idea-resistant paraprofessional in a cheap suit with 35 certifications who never bothered to learn Excel.  As you answer each question, they will mumble "perfeito", ticking off boxes, until you say something that they don't know, and is therefore "incorrect".  Then they will furiously write down your "mistake".  You might as well leave at this point.  You've given them their "excuse", and you are now labeled as "incompetent".  Even if you went to MIT.  In fact, by talking to them you've given them points.  Now he can brag, "we're so good, we've rejected someone from MIT!"

You may think that standards are higher in offices of international companies, such as Banks, Big Tech, or the Big Four.  In fact, they will be lower than either other offices or even local companies.  One complaint among international companies is that in their Brazilian offices are cost centers. The lunatics run the asylum.  Usually it's a group of people who went to school together and now want to suck up as much money and reputation as they can while protecting their cash cow from outsiders.  What's wrong with this?  Don't we do the same thing in the US with Harvard and Yale?  Yes, but consider the following.  In international university rankings, Harvard tends never to fall below the top 5.  Brazil's best university, USP, ranks below 350 and it falls every year.

Once you are inside a company, it is only a matter of time before you are fired.  Nobody wanted you there in the first place, your only role is to clean up a few dumpster fires that other employees left behind, and once you have done this you've outstayed your welcome.  Now, you're just competition.  You will be sitting in an open office listening to a bunch of underpaid kids joke around all day, but you will be the one who will be brought by your Excel-ignorant boss in to discuss "serious concerns" after you made your deadlines.  Your wage will not go up (if you're a high-end, experienced professional capable of earning a six-figure income you will clear $30k-60k USD a year in Brazil), and you will be fired.  I recall one boss who worked in a hybrid American-Brazilian company who decided to fire all his American employees.  The reason?  Although they were the only people keeping the company afloat, they were not "magical" - exact words.  The company went bankrupt a year later.  Then, it's back to interviewing. 

You may consider local entrepreneurship as an option.  But here, contracts are so difficult to enforce and taxation is so complicated that people will just play games with you.  For example, one time I had finished an agreement with a small company, the deliverables were agreed-upon, I had finished the prototype, they sent me the contract, I signed it ... and a few days later they decided not to sign it.  The only reason they were entertaining me was to humiliate and fire my friend/contact in that company - and to score giggles for fooling a gringo.  It was experiences like this that drove me to outsourcing.  It was both easier and more profitable to get clients thousands of miles away than it was to get them 10 minutes from home.

What about teaching?  Surely it cannot be that difficult to get a part-time class to talk to business people, right?  I recall an experience when my friend set me up with an interview at a well-ranked business school.  The head of the department came in, I began talking about classes I could teach on Big Data, and five minutes in, he screamed,  "A gente não tem nada que ver com tecnologia!!!!!"  "We have nothing to do with technology!!!"  Then he stormed out of the room.  Strangely, 4 years later this same business school invited me to speak, but my boss decided it would not be "appropriate", and spoke there himself.  Or another example would be the Nobel Prize runner-up who wanted to do a research collaboration at USP.  Unfortunately, at the last minute one of the secretaries found an "anomaly" in the paperwork and had the project cancelled.  Or several Brazilian friends who returned from living abroad.  They arranged a teaching position, and when they arrived, after they had bought an apartment and re-settled, they were smilingly told that there was a "mistake", and no job was available.

The Brazilian economy has been stagnating since the commodity boom of the 2000's because those who control it hate competence, conscientiousness, and success.  This is especially true with competent people outside a handful of tight-knit social cliques.  You may drift into one of the less influential cliques yourself, and you will see qualified natives having the same difficulty.  To be competent in Brazil is to have your work ignored, stolen, and punished, to have non-stop wage stagnation and career instability, to be threatened, to be gossiped about, and to watch sleazy, rule-bending paraprofessionals laugh their way to the bank, or more often, bankruptcy.

Yes, there are exceptions, but they are exceptions.  Don't ever let the country's effusive charm, the abilities of your friends, or the occasional "we need foreign talent!" campaigns delude you.  Brazil's rank among other major economies has been falling because of a massive brain drain, especially now with the rise of remote work.  And, at a certain point during a brain drain, talentless people take over and use all their resources to lock out anything that looks even remotely like competition.  It is only the government's protectionist policies which prevent the market from dealing with with these companies in a natural way. 

You may get lucky.  And if you do, good for you.  Just remember that in the rest of the world, if you have any talent or ability, you will probably be much, much luckier.  I am telling these stories because I went through the "Brazil experience", and found it exciting but not professionally beneficial.  Unless you crave adventure mixed with instability, fear, and harrassment, Brazil should be avoided.

Ouch!

After having quite a successful career in the USA (IT for 30 years) I came to Brazil (love) having  28 years of pretty intensive preparation. I had hopes to continue working but found it much easier to retire and just do other things.

Architect?     hmmmm.   What kind of Architect? 

Got your license here through the CREA?   

PM, I would be interested to see what kind of work you've done.

Thx