How I got my job: Anaïs Croissant

Age: 22

Home: First-ring suburb of Paris

Job: Intern, rating service, M6 (French network TV channel)

Salary: 700 euros/month (after taxes) [approx. $980]

Education: (French equivalent of) bachelor's in business, master's in business management (in progress for May 2010)

Background: I have been a French exchange student in Minnesota. I have had a few other jobs, but not many, especially compared with Americans. I worked for the French stock market regulators one summer. In France most people don't have a job until they are 18. We don't have much work experience when we arrive in the workplace.

Dream job? I'd like to work for a major company like Warner Bros. or Fox. I'd like to buy or sell TV shows or movies.

What do you do? Every day we receive the ratings of the six main channels in France, and I type them up so all the different departments can use them. I also compare the ratings and programming schedules of different channels so they can actually try to forecast what is going to work best.

Favorite part of your job? Talking all day long about TV, and finally understanding all the mechanisms behind what you see on TV and how it works.

Hardest part? We work a lot, and there are always a lot of figures to be run. Every day we are evaluating ratings, so you have to be very fast.

If I won the lottery ... I would buy a big flat-screen TV (I would need a bigger apartment first). That's my dream, to have the whole home-cinema thing. And I would love to travel more.

Biggest differences between work in France and the United States? Everything is different because you don't work with the same philosophy we do. In France, it's all about your diploma. Even if someone is able to do the job [with training], he won't get the job if he doesn't have the diploma. From what I know of the U.S., you're really into what the ability of the person is. Of course the diploma is important, but ... if you are willing to work a lot and you want to do something, you may succeed more in the U.S. than in France. In France the law says "I have to work 35 hours, [so] I'm not going to work more."