Mister Bilingue

Site's statement

Jobboard Finder’s opinion

Summary: Just two years ago, Ludovic Martin decided to enter the exciting world of entrepreneurship as the head of a new specialist French job board: Mister Bilingue. His own experience in the workforce made him realize how difficult it is the find bilingual positions in France, so he set out to change that. Today, the website has 805 Twitter followers, 1 997 on Linkedin and 7635 on Facebook. Despite a slight drop over the past 6 months, MisterBilingue attracts 19 780 visits a month and offers vacancies that require candidates to be fluent in more than one language (most of the job offers actually require three!).

Design: The colour scheme is mostly white and red. Photos of candidates and their languages are the main images on the website and the search engine (language and location) really emphasizes the language as the number one asset. Some figures promote the job board’s success (it’s a shame the numbers are wrong). The main languages and some top companies are also featured on the homepage, as well as eight articles reporting on Mister Bilingue. They have a candidate and company of the month and the blog just above the footer. Once in the job listing, the languages (with tiny flags next to them) appear under the company name, location and type of contract). The publication date and logo are also visible. Many filters (the language, the job role, the studies, the experience, the region, the type of contract, the type of hours, the salary and the sector) help cull the job offers but no numbers indicate the job offers per category.

The job board objective: The objective is clear: help bilingual candidates utilize their language skills to find interesting positions in France.

Recruiter observations: The company can be foreign, but there is only a handful of countries to choose from (France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Portugal and the UK). The cost is different depending on the type of contract (an internship, a short-term contract, a long-term contract) but it is easy to find the price and to create an account.

Jobseeker observations: To create an account, you can use Linkedin, Facebook or an e-mail address. Your CV needs to be in a PDF format. Based on the information in your CV, the website rates your compatibility with the job offer. The job offers can therefore appear in order of the compatibility. With just the click of a button, you can apply to job offers. The candidate dashboard has several panels, but at least three of them are practically the same thing.

The job offers: The homepage indicates that 1 236 job offers have been posted since the website was created. There are currently about four pages of 30 something job offers. Surprisingly, only 3 appear if you filter for English jobs, 5 for Chinese jobs, 21 for German offers, 6 for Dutch jobs and 7 for Italian jobs. There are, of course, far more offers than that so it's best to scroll through them without the filter. Most job offers require at least two foreign languages. 

Reactivity: They answer very quickly on Twitter and by e-mail.

Special features: The candidate of the month; the company of the month; CV writing advice (from other websites); the blog; job-candidate compatibility; candidate videos.

Verdict: Most of the job offers are in or around Paris and the salary is often surprisingly low (but of course, the website has no control over that). If Mister Bilingue manages to attract more companies looking for bilingual candidates, it could definitely be a useful tool. Until then, a lot of jobseekers won’t be able to use it at all. It’s just new, give it time.

Written by Ali Neill

As the job board tester and blog editor for the Jobboard Finder, Ali works on job boards from all around the world and keeps a close eye on the recruitment trends thanks to a number of sources, including the website's social media pages.