Searching for jobs abroad no experience produces a great many results and very few routes. Three exist, and they share one feature that explains everything else: each replaces experience with a test. Nobody is going to take you on trust across a border.
That is better news than it sounds. A test is something you can sit in a few months. Experience you do not have is not something you can acquire in a few months.
First, the thing this search term attracts
This has to come before the routes, because this exact phrase is the most heavily targeted search in the whole field. It selects for people with no work history to verify and the strongest reason to leave, which is precisely the audience a placement fraud wants.
One rule protects you and it has no exceptions. In every legitimate route, the employer pays the sponsorship costs. If someone asks you to pay for a job offer, a sponsorship certificate, a guaranteed placement or a “processing fee” for a vacancy, that is not an unusual pricing model. That is the shape of the fraud.
Two specific claims to treat as disqualifying, because both describe things that do not exist:
- “No experience, no language, high salary, visa included.” Every route below requires a test. An offer with no test in it is not one of these routes.
- “We can get you a Korean E-9 visa.” No private agent can. Selection runs government to government through your own country’s designated agency, which is explained below.
Our guide to what visa sponsorship is goes through the rest of the warning signs.
Route one: Korea’s Employment Permit System
The E-9 non-professional employment visa is the largest route in the world open to people with no career history. Korea decided to bring in 80,000 E-9 workers in 2026.
How it actually works surprises people: you do not apply to a Korean employer. The Employment Permit System is run government to government. Korea signs agreements with a defined list of sending countries, and candidates enter through their own country’s designated agency. Consequences:
- Your nationality decides whether the route exists for you. No agreement, no E-9.
- The Korean language test is the gate. Results feed the roster that employers select from, so this is where the competition happens.
- No agent can sell you a place. Anyone charging a placement fee for an E-9 is selling something they do not control.
And it goes somewhere, which is the part that matters. After four or more years on an E-9 you can apply for the E-7-4 skilled worker visa, which has a 2026 quota at an all-time high of 33,000 and a threshold typically around 60 points. One caution worth knowing before you accept a job rather than after: employer recommendation is worth 50 of those points. More in work visas for skilled workers in Japan and Korea’s F visa options.
Route two: Japan’s Specified Skilled Worker system
Japan asks for no degree, no qualification recognition and no prior career. It asks you to pass two examinations, and you can sit both in your own country:
- A skills test for one of the 16 operational fields. Tests are held in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Pakistan, with more countries for some sectors.
- Japanese at JFT-Basic or JLPT N4. JFT-Basic runs six times a year and Specified Skilled Worker applicants need A2 or higher.
Unlike Korea, nobody allocates you a place: you qualify on your own initiative and are then hired by a registered organisation. And several fields sit at SSW (ii), which renews indefinitely and permits family, so this is a route with somewhere to go.
One current exception to check before choosing a field: SSW (i) food service is suspended. New applications were paused on 13 April 2026 and the test is not being held, because the number of SSW (i) food service residents is expected to exceed the ceiling of 50,000 set for FY2024 to FY2028. Food and beverage manufacturing and accommodation are unaffected. Full field list in our Specified Skilled Worker guide.
Route three: European seasonal work
The only route here with no test at all, and the trade-off is exact: it asks nothing of you and gives you correspondingly little. Permits are short, tied to one employer and one sector, and most lead nowhere by themselves. They are also cheap, and the employer usually pays: Lithuania charges EUR 34 for a seasonal permit of up to six months.
Used deliberately it is still worth something. A season gives you a legal work history, a local reference, and time on the ground to get a vocational qualification recognised, which is the step that actually moves people up. Used passively it gives you one season and a flight home. See 11 European countries with seasonal work visas and working holiday visas.
What to do, honestly
- Pick your test and start it. Korean for the E-9, Japanese at A2 for the SSW. Both are months of work and both are the entire gate.
- Check whether your country has an EPS agreement with Korea. That single fact opens or closes the largest route here.
- For Japan, check the field is open before you study for its test. Food service currently is not.
- If you need income sooner, take a season, and use the months in-country to start a recognition process rather than to wait.
- Pay nobody for a job. No exceptions, no circumstances, no explanations that make it fine.
If you have a qualification but no degree, that is a different and much easier question: see work visas that need no degree. Browse entry-level shortage roles with visa sponsorship on our board.
Last checked September 2026. Korean quotas are set annually, Japan has suspended one field and has three more in preparation, and seasonal schemes open and close by season. Confirm before committing money or study time.
