Working Overseas: Do you Fit the Part?
You may be quite certain that you would like to work abroad. The question is: will any employer be prepared to send you abroad on an assignment or offer you an overseas contract? This section is designed to help you decide.
First, forget the idea that the only qualities needed for an overseas posting are youth and willingness to learn. While this may be sufficient for a holiday job or work experience, today's employers are more discriminating. They want candidates with relevant qualifications and experience, some of it gained abroad. Your nationality is not and advantage these days. American or British companies, for instance, no longer feel obliged to put their own nationals in charge of their foreign operations if there are local staff who can do the work just a completely - and possibly more cheaply. Where vacancies occur for expatriates they are often to cover a temporary skills' shortage.
To put it in a nutshell, recruiters are looking for competence and value for money. If they can find someone who can do the job as well as you for half or a quarter of the salary, they will do so. The main reason, for example, that the demand for British craftsmen in the Middle East declined is that 'local' labour costs less to employ.
However, the law of the jungle can also work to your advantage in the international labour market. In recent years, for instance, British managers have been more popular with multinational employers than people from other countries - partly because British salaries are often lower compared with those in North America and on the European Continent.
For any job abroad - apart from work experience schemes for young peoplw and casual work - employers require:
- good qualifications
- professional experience
- the right personal qualities
- language and communication skills
