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Elizabeth Garone
Hayley Spraggett s first clues that working overseas would require a lot of
attention to cultural differences and finessing her presentation came well
before she ever got a job abroad.
For starters, her UK-friendly two-page curriculum vitae (CV) didn t cut it down
under. Instead, recruiters advised the British native to include every job she
had ever held.
In Australia, they want to see everything that you ve ever done and don t care
if it s five pages long, stretching back 15 years, wrote Spraggett, a change
management consultant, in an email to Career Coach.
She also realised the interview process in Australia might be painfully slow ―
five or six rounds of meetings are not uncommon.
Deciding to make an overseas career move is exciting but also fraught with
opportunity for mistakes. Everything from cultural differences to the length of
a CV or resume can quickly cause an international move to go awry. It doesn t
have to be quite so painful. The right kinds of planning and advance research
can help make the transition a smoother one.
Do as the locals do
First, know the nuance of work locally before you apply for a job, and then
focus in on it.
Find out not only the legal requirements of the destination country but the
local employment culture, wrote Barbara West, a partner at Culture Works, a
Melbourne-based intercultural consulting firm.
For example, in the US, international experience is highly valued. If applying
there, by all means play it up, wrote West. But, on the flipside, in some
countries, such as Australia, non-local experience can be viewed as suspect.
Try to get somebody local to put in a good word for you, she wrote.
Take a trip
Once UK residents Michael Dennison and Lowri Llwyd decided Dubai in the United
Arab Emirates was their top choice for an international relocation, the couple,
both corporate lawyers, planned a visit so they would be on the ground to
interview if need be, wrote Dennison in an email. This generally went down
very well with the firms we were talking to as it showed real commitment.
During their visit, Llwyd had a handful of interviews, set up in advance by the
couple s recruiters. We also had hundreds of coffees with loads of contacts,
she wrote in an email. We exhausted our network through Facebook, LinkedIn,
etcetera.
Visiting first is the best way to get a feel for the place, according to
Natalie Murray, a technical recruiter with Irish software developer DemonWare.
Spend some time on the ground in the new location before making a decision,
Murray, who is based in Vancouver, Canada, wrote. One big mistake is to leave
home and expect your new host country to be exactly as your home country is.
That kind of thinking can lead to serious homesickness, wrote Llwyd, who said
there was one thing she would change about her move abroad: she would have
prepared herself for it to take six months to feel settled-in. She also warned
against returning home for a visit within that time frame.
We came home far too early and suffered homesickness quite acutely on the
flight back to Dubai, she wrote.
Work and play
Another aspect of the new life that took a little getting used to were the
social patterns, wrote Dennison.
In the UK we tended to socialise with work colleagues during the week and
non-work friends on the weekend; in Dubai the groups are much more intertwined,
he wrote. Weekends are a focal point and are always busy socially .
Meanwhile, he wrote, on weekdays people tend to work hard until the weekend.
Social media proved to be a lifesaver: It was a great way to meet people when
the couple first arrived, he wrote. In their case, it was friends of friends
who lived in Dubai. We went on quite a few blind friend dates as it were,
Dennison wrote.
Know the source
Advertisements for agencies offering overseas positions are everywhere but
that doesn t guarantee legitimacy. I would be cautious about paying any
organisation that claims to process applications and paperwork, wrote Dorothy
Dalton, a Brussels-based career transition coach. There are numerous dubious
operators around, especially dealing with lower level positions.
On one Australian job board, which appeared reputable on the surface, Spraggett
kept reaching dead ends. [I] found that the jobs were often gone and the ads
were really just a hook to get you to register with the agency, she wrote.
Quite often the recruiters were inexperienced and struggled to understand their
clients roles and/or understand and interpret how my skills might be
appropriate.
Spraggett made the decision to focus on a few recruiters who she felt
understood what she was looking for, vetting each of them by phone before
submitting an application or registering with their agency.
By investing a bit more time interviewing' them about the positions they had,
the organisations they work with, the reporting structure, the program/project
objectives, it helped to identify [which ones] really understood their clients
needs, wrote Spraggett. It also enabled me to gauge their general interest in
me and my experience.
Know your destination
As with any career move, do your research, wrote Culture Work s West. And
that means doing more than picking up a few guidebooks and perusing websites.
Find people who lived there before or, better yet, live there currently.
Talk to everyone you can possibly find about life in the new place, wrote
Llwyd. Friends of friends, old colleagues, friends of your second cousin's
boyfriend, etcetera. Get as many perspectives as you can.