Hiring foreign employees residing in France

There are two possible scenarios.

The first is a foreign employee already living in France, and the second is a foreign employee living in his or her country of origin, whom you wish to bring to work for your company in France.

Obviously, this does not include cases where the foreign employee lives in the European Union or the European Economic Area, or in Andorra, Cyprus, Switzerland or Monaco.

The first thing to do, quite simply, is to check whether your residence permit authorizes you to work in France.

How do you do it? We’ll ask the prefecture.

This query will be carried out electronically, submitting the residence document to the prefect, who will specify whether or not the foreigner has a residence permit authorizing him or her to work as a salaried employee.

It is important to know that this formality must be carried out at least two working days before hiring.

As the Prefect has two days to reply, if he fails to do so, his silence is deemed to be a formality fulfilled.

If you are in a situation where the foreign employee has a residence permit that does not authorize salaried employment in certain cases, you may need to apply for a change of residence permit.

Then, in some cases, there is an additional formality to be completed, since not every residence document provides an exemption from the work permit requirement.

You will therefore need to apply for a work permit.

You can apply for a work permit online via the dedicated website.

Please note that, since the legislator has provided for an additional condition, sometimes the employment situation can be used as an argument against you.

In other words, the legislator has included this additional condition to avoid using foreign labor before recruiting French employees.

So what is it in concrete terms?

If the job on offer is not one of the short-staffed occupations, you will have to publish a vacancy on Pôle Emploi for a period of three weeks, and no-one will have applied for it.

After that, you’ll simply have to go through the usual hiring formalities and, if necessary, have your foreign employee undergo a medical examination with the OFII.

This is also the case when it’s his first job in France.