Beating Expat Career Barriers - Ten Top Tips

Photo: Laura Leavell 

To round the expat career series up I would first like to thank the participants who have shared their career stories over the past few weeks. I end the series with a summary of the top ten tips from their stories.

If you are moving or living abroad but want to ensure that your career remains intact in some form or another, here are ten pointers to consider:

1. Think creatively and outside the box. You may need to rethink your career path but with creative thinking you can end up going in a surprising and fun, albeit new, direction. 
2. Assess your current skill set and ask yourself how you can use those skills in your host country, or how you can adapt them to fill a local need. Jo Parfitt's "A Career in Your Suitcase" is a great resource to help with this exercise.
3. Sieze opportunities that come your way - listen to people around you and use your network to identify gaps. Sarah Johnson's career story is a great example of listening to people you meet in the most unlikely of situations.
4. Use the experience you gain as an expat as a basis for your overseas career. Both Nicola McCall and Louise Wiles demonstrate how you can make this happen.
5. Think about retraining or brushing up your skills. There are many long distance learning programs out there to help you.
6. Be realistic about your career options when you move overseas as the barriers can be numerous: recognition of pre-existing qualifications, local language, work permits, local culture, job market, legal requirements. Start your research before you leave home.
7. Make your career portable so that you can take it with you should you relocate.
8. Don't underestimate the support you will need to keep your career on track overseas - check with your partner's employer of they will support any retraining or if there are any local schemes to help you.
9. Build up a network that can point you in the right direction, brainstorm with you and offer you feedback and tips.
10. Stay positive!

The ins and Outs of Expat Careers: Nicola McCall and A Tale of Adaptation

Nicola McCall calls the Netherlands
home for now
Photo: A van Mulligen (c)

British born Nicola McCall currently calls the Netherlands her home. Nicola’s life as an expat has been the consequence of her partner’s career – his employer has relocated the McCall family a number of times over the years.

Like Louise Wiles featured two weeks ago, Nicola is an expat coach. Whilst living abroad, her career and the development of her own career has been inspired and created by her own personal, expat journey. It has been a story of adapting.

Before Nicola moved overseas for the first time she worked in an international retailer’s headquarters as a Senior Human Resources (HR) specialist. She was responsible for employee relations, internal communications and employee engagement. With her move abroad, she formed a plan for her future career and actively pursued it. She explains,

“I intended to return to HR on our repatriation to the UK (which was planned for Summer 2006) so I did a UK University Post Graduate Certificate in Personal and Business Coaching, as this was a skill set being sought by HR functions at that time.”

But as we know, things don’t always work out the way we plan. Nicola found herself having to adapt when the family ended up staying abroad. She says,

“During the training I saw the potential to work with expatriate spouses in similar circumstances to my own and inspired by Jo Parfitt’s Career in Your Suitcase website and books, I decided to start my own expatriate coaching business in March 2006.”

There was a serious financial cost attached to this career shift.

“Retraining and accommodation costs whilst studying were in the region of £4,000. I had some career support allowance from my partner’s employers but the majority of the finance for my career change was personal,” explains Nicola.

She also needed other types of support to effectuate her desired career change,

“I could not have done the training in the UK nor home study without my partner’s support to care for our son. I also had support from my course colleagues, expats for practice and a mentor coach to help me complete my studies.”

However, the fact that Nicola is still living overseas five years later with a successful career of her own is testament to the fact that the personal investment was a worthy one. Her hard work and determination have paid off in the long run.

To all potential expat coaches out there, Nicola has some sound advice,

“There are many coaches coaching internationally so make sure you undertake training that gives you a qualification and accreditation that is internationally recognised. Join a professional association to support your continuing professional development.  Look carefully at what your niche is and don’t be surprised that you may actually attract those outside your niche in the first year!”

She encourages anyone who has an idea for their own business to give it a go. Nicola says,

“If you think you can – you can!”

To make a success of your overseas career, Nicola pinpoints an essential trait to help you keep going in the face of adversity,

“You need persistence. It is common to ask “why am I bothering?” particularly when you are facing the uncertainty of a new location, you are juggling family commitments, learning a new language, studying – in short creating a new life in a new location! But persistence will keep you on track.”

She also stresses the importance of a sound network and contact with peers.

“Asking for help and reciprocating when you can is one of the easiest ways to connect with others in a similar field – I believe it is part and parcel of networking,” she tells.

And finally, in Nicola’s opinion, a successful overseas career needs a dash of something extra,

“You need a sense of humour – it’s essential anywhere, anytime!"

Nicola's Recommended Links
Inspiring Expat Women sites and books:
www.expatwomen.com - information site covering expat women’s lives abroad
www.expatexpert.com  Robin Pascoe (see also her books)
www.joparfitt.com & www.career-in-your-suitcase.com  Jo Parfitt's resources for expat careers

Expat Entrepreneur: How to create and maintain your own portable career anywhere in the world - by Jo Parfitt 

containing a useful chapter on careers as an expat woman

Becoming a Coach/ Expat Coaching

www.expatcoachassociation.com

www.coachfederation.org/research-education/icf-credentials

www.associationforcoaching.com/home/index.htm

Useful article from 2003 the Pathways and Pitfalls of Coaching - 

www.associationforcoaching.com/pub/Path0312.pdf

Career information

http://www.johnleescareers.com/   -  you can register on the home page for access to career tools 

Networking

www.twitter.com

Nicola McCall

Nicola McCall MCIPD is a UK University Post Graduate qualified Coach, specializing in coaching expatriates to find fulfillment during their work and life abroad.  Visit www.livelifenowcoaching.com for more information.

The Ins and Outs of Expat Careers: From Human Resources to Writing

This is the first post in the series about expat careers. To kick off the series I thought I would share my expat career experience with you.......

I moved from the UK to the Netherlands in 2000 and at the time I was a Human Resources (HR) professional. I had studied for a Post Graduate Diploma in HR Management and intended to continue practicing HR when I moved abroad.

Within two months I had a new job with a large international company in a HR role. But to start earning again I’d made many compromises. The position was lower than my UK role was, the salary less. It was a temporary role and working through an employment agency.

Despite the number of international companies based in the Randstad in the Netherlands I found that the job market for my niche was relatively small because my Dutch was nowhere near good enough to work in a Dutch company – and that reduced my options considerably.

Feeling insignificant in a big
office block
Photo: Ryan Smart

After years of working on a specific contract in the same company, having been given a permanent, direct contract with the company the project came to an end and I was moved within the organisation to another team. It went downhill from there.  I felt like a number not a valued team member, a face in the crowd. I started reviewing my career options. I needed creativity in my daily work life. I wanted to write for a living but didn’t really see how.

I considered how I could combine HR and writing and then I discovered Jo Parfitt and attended one of her courses. It was the springboard that took my career on a new direction. During the course, Jo made a general statement to the group which stuck with me,

“You can make a career of writing and you can earn well with it. But you need to be passionate about what you are doing.”

I knew I wasn’t passionate about HR anymore. It hadn’t fulfilled any of the hopes I’d had, especially for much of my time in the Netherlands. But I was passionate about writing.

When I went on maternity leave it was the opportunity to take stock and make the change. I never went back to my HR role nor the international company. I set up The Writing Well instead.

The main barrier was financial but my departure from my former HR position left me financially secure for a number of months so I had a safety net – plus the income provided by my husband’s role gave us enough security to support the inevitable drought times.

Setting up a business in the Netherlands turned out to be straight forward, particularly given the nature of my company. I visited my local Kamer van Koophandel (Chamber of Commerce) to register The Writing Well and then registered the company with the Dutch tax office. That was the administration taken care of.

I undertook a web design course with NTI so I was able to design and build my own website for the launch of The Writing Well. And then I began networking and producing articles for various expat websites and publications – for free.


It built up my name and portfolio and then paid work started to steadily flow in.

A while after I started writing, I started a distance learning course at the London School of Journalism to boost my professional skills and keep my personal development going.

For expats wanting to make a move into the world of writing, my advice is this:  choose a niche, know your market and grow your networks.

Working virtually is vital if writing is your chosen
expat career.  Photo: Maripepa

Grow a platform for yourself (or as Anastasia Ashman and Tara Agacayak call it – a global niche). Writing is a great expat career because it is portable. Your clients can live across the other side of the world and it makes no difference so long as you can work virtually in an effective manner. I would also add that you should make the most of distance learning courses.

You do need the support of those around you. My husband enables me to take the time to disappear into my home office and work because he takes on the household and looking after the children. He has motivated and supported me from day one and even before – and takes an active role in decisions I make, and activities I undertake relating to my business. Jo Parfitt has also been a great support over the years – somebody who remembers her network at every possible chance and points clients in the right direction.

To succeed in a career overseas I think you need to be able to effectively network, both virtually and face to face. You need to be passionate about what you are doing and it certainly helps to be creative – to think outside the box. Finally - believe in yourself.

• Useful links for an overseas career in writing:

www.joparfitt.com
London School of Journalism

• Here are just some of the websites that welcome articles which enable you to build a portfolio - 

www.expatica.com

www.expatarrivals.com

www.iamexpat.com

www.expatwomen.com

www.expatexchange.com

And for inspiration to build a creative career doing what you love, no matter where you are visit Tara Agacayak's site - Turquoise Poppy.


Next week Louise Wiles shares her expat career story.

First Day at School Traditions

My four year old has just started to make his own way in the world - well, he's just started at primary school in any case.

It's not only his initiation into the Dutch education system, but mine too. The first difference between the Dutch and the British education systems is the fact that he is already starting. In the UK, he would still be in pre-school until the school year he turned five. Children in the Netherlands can start at primary school when they are four if they (or rather their parents) wish but it is not compulsory until five.

However, as my son has been in a peuterspeelzaal (preschool or nursery) since October 2009, this is a natural step for him to move with his friends to a new school.

Photo: Tim & Annette

What was strange to me as I waved my son off in his new classroom was the absence of school uniforms. In Britain it is common to wear a school uniform. Dutch children wear their own choice of clothes. So there's no photo of my son on his first day at school in his crisp, clean uniform (which looks like it's been dragged daily through a hedge by the end of the first term). Instead there is a photo of him wearing the clothes he wears every day and a rucksack on his back. Not quite the same picture for this British mum.

An American friend told me that she missed putting her daughter on the big, yellow school bus when she started school. This picture is as traditional and memorable in the US as putting a school uniform on for the first time in the UK. Both pictures very much linked to the first day at school.

Of course, it is not about whether school uniforms are right (there are lots of positives to not having a school uniform: costs and stressing to get it all washed on time spring to mind) or whether children should be bussed to school (in fact in the Netherlands, most parents can walk or cycle their kids to school so buses are redundant) - it's about the feeling of missing out on a classic, traditional memory which we associate with that first day in school.

What first day of school traditions or memories are associated with your home country?

Ten Things You Don't Know about The Netherlands and the Dutch Until You Move Here (Part 4)

Custom assistance in training online. Academic help always available. Contact at any time.

The typical Dutch stereotype consists of cheese eating, clog wearing tall people talking a dialect of German with a backdrop of windmills sailing round on the flatlands. However, there is much more to this small country and the people who live in it than the rest of the world thinks. Here's the fourth part of a series on things you don't necessarily know about the Dutch and their country until you move here.

7. The Education System is Complicated
In the UK, you go to school at the age of 5, when it becomes compulsory and you generally plod along through the education system until you are eighteen (it used to be sixteen when I was a lass). You choose a few specialist subjects as you go along and you do a few exams. Then you either go get a job or go into further education.

Photo: Cienpies Design

In the Netherlands, it already starts off a bit strange. If you want, you may send your four year old to school. But you don't have to. When your child turns five, they absolutely, positively must go to school. So, as a parent, you're already faced with a question at the age of four.

But wait, it gets complicated I promise. Before junior has even left primary school, he or she is tested (Cito toets) and, based on the results and a talk between parents and teacher, is then streamed into different levels of education. Yes, at the age of eleven already. It is selective and ability based - much different to most European systems.

And then the Dutch education system throws acronyms at parents and doesn't stop until the kids go out and work (and then there are a whole set of new ones):

• VMBO (Voorbereidend Middelbaar Beroepsonderwijs)
• HAVO (Hoger Algemeen Voortgezet Onderwijs)
• VWO (Voorbereidend wetenschappelijk onderwijs)

I have been practicing for years to remember what VMBO, HAVO and VWO stand for (and actually mean) but with no success. Luckily I have another seven years to get to grips with it.

8. Dutch Customer Service Hasn't Been Invented 
I've said it before and I'll say it again.... many companies here may as well just shut down their customer service departments as they antagonise more than they help. Oh, I'm sure there are exceptions but in ten years not one company comes straight to mind for their outstanding contribution to Dutch customer service.

Photo: Len-k-a

The Undutchables book explains this as a historical, culture issue - everyone working in customer service roles don't see themselves as a representative of the company they work for (hence the common sentence uttered from CSRs "It's not my fault - it's the company") but as an individual equal to the customer. Everything is taken quite personally. Or they just don't care - whether or not you get a solution or are happy as you leave the store, the person serving you gets paid at the end of the week or month.

And Dutch people tend to accept customer service for what it is - and that's it.

I'll give you an example: I have a mobile phone. It's a pre-paid account with Telfort which I've had for close to ten years here. Recently money started evaporating from my phone. It literally disappeared over night continuously over the space of a month. So obviously I contacted Telfort. The end result was that Telfort could not help me. Or should that be, Telfort would not help me. They indicated they could not see where that money has gone (50 euro in total) and that the solution was to change my number... yes, the number I have had for nearly ten years and use for The Writing Well. Needless to say I am following up (through OPTA) and changing provider, taking my number with me.

I have plenty more examples but I won't bore you with them - if you live here, you have your own stories......  Who knew it was so bad?

Dutch Education System

If you are sending your children to a Dutch school at some point in the future you may already be slightly baffled by the abbreviations you see littered in publications and on websites: VMBO, HAVO and HBO to name a few. Here's what it all means.

General

Pre-schooling (known as peuterspeelzaal) takes children from age 2 1/2 up to age 4.

• Education is compulsory from the age of 5, but many children begin in a basisschool at age 4.
• Public (state) schools are non-demoninational.
• Private schools are generally faith or ideology based and up to two-thirds of Dutch children attend a private school.
• Public and private schools are state funded, as long as they adhere to certain conditions.
• Home schooling is generally not allowed, unless there are extenuating circumstances such as special needs or ideologies which cannot be catered for in mainstream education.

Secondary Schooling

• Compulsory subjects in Dutch secondary schools are Dutch, English, maths, geography, history, sciences, physical education and arts and education at this level is streamed and split into three main study courses:

VMBO (Voorbereidend Middelbaar Beroepsonderwijs): a four-year course, which comprises vocational training and the core subjects at one of four levels.

HAVO (Hoger Algemeen Voortgezet Onderwijs): a five year study with three years of a standard set of subjects then a choice of tone set of subjects from four profiles to study in the final two years (known as Tweede Fase):
Culture & Society
Economy & Society
Nature & Health
Nature & Technology

VWO (Voorbereidend wetenschappelijk onderwijs): this prepares children for a higher education in the fields of science for the arts and lasts for six-years. It is offered in some schools as a bi-lingual course with 50% taught in English or German, which may be something of interest for expats or those bringing up bi-lingual children.

Higher Education

There are two principle types of higher education, both of which result in a Bachelor’s degree:

HBO (Hoger beroepsonderwijs): higher vocational education courses or professional training such as teacher training or performing arts. Students must have HAVO (or level 4 MBO) to attend this type of course, as well as the correct subject profile.

WO (Wetenschappelijk onderwijs): an academic or university education in arts or sciences. Students must have a VWO diploma or have completed one year HBO to enrol in a WO bachelor course.

Foreign students must demonstrate English language proficiency, take an entrance exam and have an equivalent qualification.