Most guides to the Greek work visa describe it as a visa application. That framing is why so many applicants from Bangladesh waste a season on it.
The Greek employment route has a step that happens before you can lodge anything at a consulate: your employer has to obtain an employment approval from the Decentralised Administration in Greece. Until that approval exists, there is no visa application to make. An agent who is collecting your documents and your money without being able to tell you the status of that approval is selling you a queue position that does not exist.
This is the companion piece to our Albania work visa guide and Serbia work visa articles for Bangladeshi applicants. The Balkan routes are broadly employer-driven in the same way. Greece differs in the order things happen, and the order is the whole story.
The sequence, in the order it actually runs
1. The employer secures the employment approval. This is decided by the Decentralised Administration — the regional Greek authority — not by the consulate and not by you. The employer initiates it, the employer supplies the justification for the role, and the employer waits for it.
2. The national visa (Type D) is issued on that approval. Only once the approval exists do you file at the Greek mission handling your application. This is an in-person process; it cannot be completed online, and you will give fingerprints and a photograph at a visa centre. You may also be asked to complete a medical examination.
3. The residence permit is applied for after arrival. The Type D visa gets you into Greece legally. The residence permit for work purposes is what carries the ongoing right to live and work there, and you apply for it while the national visa is still valid. Miss that window and you are out of status in a country you have just paid to reach.
Worth knowing for the longer term: the permit is extended rather than restarted, so you are not required to leave Greece and begin again each cycle.
Why the order matters so much from Bangladesh
Because the expensive part of your preparation is useless without step 1.
Attestation, translation, medical checks and travel to a visa centre all cost money and weeks. Applicants routinely complete all of it on the strength of a "job offer" whose employment approval was never filed, and discover the gap only when there is nothing to lodge.
So the first question to any recruiter is not about fees or timelines. It is: has the employer applied for the employment approval, and what is its status? A real employer can answer that. A broker selling a place in an imaginary queue cannot, and will change the subject to urgency.
The attestation chain, and when to start it
Bangladeshi documents are not usable by a foreign mission in the form they are issued in. Educational certificates, experience letters and police clearance generally pass through the issuing authority, then the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then the relevant foreign mission. Anything not in English or Greek will usually need certified translation, and a translation is only as good as the certification behind it.
Each of those steps has its own queue. None are under the consulate's control, and none can be accelerated by whoever told you otherwise.
Start the chain while the employment approval is being decided. That is the one stretch of waiting you can spend productively — and applicants who miss an intake almost always miss it here rather than at the visa stage.
Confirm which mission handles Bangladesh
Do not assume the mission is the one in your capital, and do not take a recruiter's word for it. Confirm directly which Greek mission or appointed visa centre accepts applications from Bangladesh, whether an in-person appointment is required, and what their current document list is.
This has a definite answer and it costs nothing to get. Filing at the wrong place costs you the travel, the appointment, and often the season.
Timelines: what can and cannot be quoted
The employment approval stage has no timeline anybody can promise you, because it is a separate administrative decision taken in Greece before your file exists at a consulate.
Once the visa is lodged, the consular decision is commonly quoted at around 15 to 30 days. Treat that as a planning figure and confirm it at the mission you will actually file at — published windows change, and they do not include the approval stage that precedes them.
Plan backwards from the start date on your contract, not forwards from today.
The pitches to refuse
- An employer who cannot be named. No registered legal name means no verifiable employer.
- No answer on the employment approval. The one question that matters. Not being able to answer it is the answer.
- Payment before a written, signed offer. The offer comes first. Always.
- A guaranteed approval, or a guaranteed processing time. Neither exists, for any visa, anywhere.
- An expiring "quota" that requires a decision this week. Genuine employment offers are not time-pressured sales.
What to do next
If you have a Greek offer, ask for the employer's registered legal name and the status of the employment approval, in writing, before anything else. If both come back cleanly, start your attestation chain immediately — that is the long pole, and it is the one part of the timeline you control.
You can see the current Greek employment visa requirements and start a file on our Greece visa page.