Getting your visa application (to Hong Kong) as an expatriate person can be a tricky project. Firstly, no one person would like to fill out endless application forms (with their personal information).
When you are making your plan to travel to Hong Kong, be sure to apply for a visa well in advance of time. It depends on your nationality. You could be able to visit Hong Kong with no visa at all. But you will definitely need to apply for dependant visa, employment visa, student visa if you have plans to live, work, or study respectively in HK. Getting a visa for employment may not be easy, but it is not impossible.
When you get a job offer from one of the local companies (based in HK), you are potentially very much eligible to work there. At this point, you should start your Hong Kong work visa application.
In your work visa application, you will have to include a statement of your new employer (in HK) describing the open position you have applied for and be accepted. The Immigration Department is likely to rule in your favor when assessing your application, if you can meet the following criteria:
- You possess a graduate degree and the required work experience for the applied position.
- Your salary is comparable to local standards.
- When working in Hong Kong, you will contribute values to the local economy.
- The hiring company (i.e. your new employer) must prove that they could not found any local person to fulfill this particular job vacancy.
Hong Kong is an international city and at the same time it is the entrance to mainland China. What this means in terms of markets is HK has full access to the international markets including all the developed countries (such as United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, Canada, etc), and has access to big potential opportunities in China (which is a market of 1.4 billion potential customers).
Regarding Hong Kong public holidays, every year you will get at least 14 days of holidays or days off of work in which you still get paid (excluding all the normal off days on Saturdays and Sundays).
In terms of communication and the use of languages, the local Hong Kong people speak in Cantonese and write in traditional Chinese language. But because of most people’s education background, they are also equipped to speak and write in English. Also because HK is the entrance to mainland China, in recent years local people are much more inclined to speak in Mandarin (which is the main verbal language to communicate with people in China). So in a typical work/office environment, you’ll easily find people being able to communicate in all three languages.