In tough market, some job

seekers look abroad

Finding a position not easy, but many find overseas experience invaluable

In December 2008, Matthew Moughan graduated from Marquette University in

Milwaukee at the height of the recession and, not surprisingly, couldn’t land a job.

“I kept getting the same responses from most companies that they were not hiring at the
time,” he said.

So he expanded his search outside of the nation’s borders.

He landed an internship with Electronic Shipping Solutions in London through San

Francisco-based Intrax Internships Abroad and then got a full-time job offer from the
firm.

“One thing I would tell anyone who has the slightest thought of going abroad is to just
go for it,” he said. “Whether it is for work or to study, the overall experience that you will
gain is invaluable.”

Amy Raslevich, 38, and her husband, Jeff Kelly, 39, along with their two young children
moved in February from Pittsburgh to Maastricht, the Netherlands, because Kelly took a
foreign assignment offered by his employer.

The couple thought international experience would bode well for Kelly’s career, but
Raslevich, who left her job as a executive director of a nonprofit to make the move, isn’t
sure she will be able to find work. The laws allowing noncitizens to work are strict, she
said, and there aren’t a lot of jobs for foreigners because the unemployment rate is high
in the Netherlands.

“I don’t know what my resume is going to look like,” she said. “It’s kind of scary.”

With an anemic job market in the United States, many are looking beyond our shores to
find employment or advance their careers.
International experience is often seen as a plus for career enhancement. But finding
employment abroad is anything but easy, especially if you’re not moving with an existing
employer. Furthermore, becoming an expatriate can be a major adjustment.

Finding a job abroad

Despite the challenges, many job seekers are eyeing foreign lands as possible career
saviors or enhancers.

“Obviously, the recession is bringing out many people who can’t find a job and want to
look abroad,” said George Eves, founder of online expatriate guide Expat Info Desk.
But, he said, opportunities in foreign lands are not as abundant as they were just two
years ago.

Intrax Internships Abroad, the company that got Moughan his internship in London, has
seen a growing interest in work overseas, said Terry Cumes, managing director.

“They need different ways to differentiate themselves in this economy, and there are
also fewer opportunities in the United States,” he said about graduates. “We’re even
getting calls from MBAs now.”

One of the main ways workers end up as expats is when they are sent abroad by their
employers. While such assignments have dwindled during the recession, there are
signs things may be turning around a bit.

About 12 percent of multinational firms plan to cut back foreign assignments this year,
compared with 25 percent who said they would reduce such jobs last year, according to
a report published by Brookfield Global Relocation Services.

But companies are still tightening their expat budgets, said Tom Flannery, a partner at
consulting firm Mercer. “More focus on shorter-term assignments, or commuter
assignments where someone is located in a central location and then commutes to
different offices or plants,” he said.

Job seekers — especially younger workers — who think they can pack their bags and
just head to a foreign land for work might be in for a rude awakening.
The unemployment rate for young workers is more than 40 percent in Spain and 20
percent in France, said Cumes of Intrax Internships Abroad. The high rate of
joblessness is making an already difficult process of getting a work visa even harder for
expats today, he said. To take a job from a local in Europe right now, he added, you’re
going to have to have some really impressive, unique skills.

Jobs teaching English, which at one time were plentiful, especially in former Soviet bloc
nations, are not readily available these days, said Eves of Expat Info Desk.

While many countries have been hit by the recession, Asia is a bright spot, Mercer’s
Flannery said. Industries such as high tech, finance and the automotive industry
continue to see growth there, he added.

Asia is where Michael Julian decided to focus his attention after his job search in the
United States hit a dead end.

After graduating from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, he interviewed with

financial institutions and even Teach for America, but no job materialized.

Parissa Khayami
After scoring an internship in Asia, Michael Julian landed a job as a business
development consultant for Oracle in Singapore.

“A close friend and personal mentor of mine suggested I look at opportunities in Asia, as
there has been so much buzz around this economy being the next big market,” he said.
“Only two weeks after I began focusing on Asia, I found myself saying goodbye to
friends and family, and on a plane due east to Singapore.”

He was able to land an internship at an IT consulting firm called Ridge Asia, and after
three months landed a job as a business development consultant for Oracle in
Singapore.

“Back home, it would have been nearly impossible to secure a job with a Fortune 50
company such as Oracle, with the down economy,” Julian said.
Adjusting to a new life
Once you land a job, the hard part may just be starting.

For many expats, adjusting to their new home can be a culture shock, especially for the
employee’s family.

Cartus, a relocation company, found 88 percent of firms it surveyed reported some level
of foreign assignment failures in the past three years. At the top of the list was that the
family was unable to adapt to the new country, followed by the employee unable to
adapt. Termination was the third-most common form of failure.

Moughan adapted well to London because he had done a work-study program in the
city while in college, but work life was a different story.

“One of the harder things to get adjusted to was the office-culture setting,” he said.
“Despite the fact that England is an English-speaking country, it is an entirely different
culture and a different language to an extent.”

To survive as an expat “you have to be very determined,” said Eves, whose company
offers an expat manual on its site, including a section dedicated to Americans moving
abroad. “Just dropping in and fitting in from Day One is going to be difficult.”

Another issue to consider is the possibility you could lose your foreign job.

“In this case, the employee will be unemployed in another country,” said Margery
Marshall, president of Vandover, a firm specializing in the mobility of talent pools.

The country may have restrictions on foreigners staying who are unemployed, and that
means you’ll have to move quickly to find another job abroad or get one back in the
states.

That’s why she advised that workers maintain their networks, including online social
networks such as LinkedIn.

Despite some drawbacks, Marshall said the expat experience has one big advantage.
“Global experience is becoming more important and more valuable in the workplace,
and can give employees an advantage when it comes to long-term career
development,” she said.

India is a country known for its human capital. It is also a country which a large youth
population which surely becomes an asset fro any nation. However about a decade back,
this population was considered a hurdle and it was difficult to find a deserving job for an
individual with problems like poverty and unemployment. India today, has proved with its
powerful human capital that it can surely emerge as a global power. With globalization,
liberalization and privatization Indian economy and its people were greatly benefited. With
outsourcing and offshoring, tremendous job opportunities are being made available to the
youth of India. India has been hailed as a triumph of unity in diversity all over the world.

Engineers, doctors, executives, marketers, HR personnel are all being churned out with
improving education in India. Indians were also known for their intelligence and now they
have got an opportunity to prove it. Since India is so diverse in all respects of culture,
religion and geography, making a career in India appeared to be a hurdle. But with
increasing developments in communication and transport facilities this too has not remained
a problem anymore. Even if there are numerous languages being spoken in India, English is
coming up in the country in a big way. Most urban cities have English speaking population.

A few years back, a job search in India would involve going through a huge pile of
newspapers and jotting down the list of companies one is interested in. However, thanks to
the computer and the internet, India job search was never so easy. Innumerous job search
websites and consultancies help an individual to find a desired job with a click of a mouse.
Moreover it has become easy for the companies too to post their requirement of a vacancy
on these websites. In short, these job search websites have been a great link between the
job seeker and the employer. With sites now available in certain other languages apart from
English, the non speaking English crowd too is benefited.

Another drastic change that Indian job scenario has noticed post globalization, liberalization
and privatization is that job salaries have gone up along with all kinds of perks, incentives
and other facilities. This has enhanced the purchasing power of the country and led to the
creation of more business. Indian economy is now growing at a faster stage with a GDP of
over 9%pa. The value of the rupee is appreciating as against the dollar of America. These
signs surely tell a good tale about India.

The business friendly policy of the government has made India an attractive business
destination for big multinationals from foreign countries. Moreover the availability of low
salary employment force as compared to the salary of employees in developed nations has
also made India the favorite destination for outsourcing. This has also gone a long way in
creating great jobs for the Indian people.

Growing as a Partner
Saturday, October 23, 2010
The past few months have been an exciting period of my consulting career! In an
environment where recruitment consultants are treated as 'vendors', trying to grow
oneself into becoming a partner is much easier said than done...

Post the 'global' downturn, there is a lot more hiring activity. The game has changed,
mandates have become tougher, expectations are different in the new scenario from
both employers and prospective employees..leading to cautious (and often, delayed)
decision making., and as a consequence, longer working capital cycles for the
recruitment professionals like me!! But one good byproduct has emerged..companies
are recognising good quality service, and are willing to experiment.

While we do have our share of exclusive retained searches with International

companies setting up offices in India, (both directly and courtesy our global partners,)
the sudden glut of positions from an array of past, existing & new clients came by our
way, we at Options -find we can do more justice by partnering with a few handful
clients who believe in our capabilities/competencies a little more :)!

We have embarked on focussing our best attention with a small bunch of clients-who
with a token monthly retainer fee ( an advance that is adjusted in the settlement of the
fees as soon as a selected hire joins)-has the undivided attention from Team Options.
We work very closely with the hiring managers(complementing the staffing team in
their efforts)-with a motto of improving the quality of every hire.

It has been an exciting journey-but it is amazing to discover a few realities:

-It ain't just about the money at all!!

Given the fact that a client has advanced money- one naturally assumes that they
would be more pro-active as they had 'more skin in the game'! Well, for a while the
pace of hiring is just as before: the process is just as viscous, and not too different
turnaround times!

We noticed that it was initially difficult to get the 'internal recruiters' to be more
transparent. For one who is not used to giving feedback (other than perhaps saying
'duplicate', 'tech reject', or at times 'on hold'!), we soon realised it wasn't a deliberate
ploy. Most often, they themselves are in the dark- at times disconnected from the
business demands, and most times stretched too much -to go beyond talking shop.

Most often there are blind spots that emerge as the system takes over. A thorough
audit often unearths the process flow.

The retainer fee helped us dedicate time to delve more-and address the bottlenecks,
and put a well oiled system to remove the inertia.

-Complement not merely supplement

We realise that every organisation-has a comprehensive source of knowledge- among

the various employees itself. Often this knowledge isn't captured as most
professionals are working 'pigeon holed' with their own focus and priorities. Once the
internal recruiter accepted ''us" as not competition, and were willing to share their
challenges, our accountability too has significantly increased. Using the increasing
tools in social media -has been enabling us to reach out to a larger but homogeneous
community -and stay engaged with them- to improve the reach on behalf of our
clients.

No longer are we content with some 'keyword' driven searches-we are now forced to
look at 'how the candidate could add value' beyond the immediate task at hand. We
have had instances where we had to figure how solutions on how to reduce the cycle
time at every level.

-Not merely CV pushers but providers of insights

Often we external recruiters have the benefit of working with different industries,
comparing the best practices across them-and understanding the complexities of hiring
for companies at different life cycles of growth-and challenges unique to them. The
ability to be able to transplant, and apply some of the proven methods-often do the
trick.

We have found that being part of the initial phone screens when the hiring manager
interacted with aspirants, the 'hidden' rather 'inarticulate specs' often emerged-helping
us to address these aberrations in the subsequent levels of interviews, fine tuning each
iteration. Conducting skype interviews and administering online technical screening
tests to improve the benchmarks -have also become an extension of our services !!

-Old habits die hard

Among the initial hiccups was the metrics! Most companies are used to 'interviewing'
upwards of 10 candidates for a role-as a part of screening-and had almost internalised
the screening schedule across levels and even set expectations thereof!

It is amazing how with revisiting the 'traditional job description', and using the
increasingly available tools -one can actually not only reach out to a target community
of desired profiles, but also screen them by doing some online methods, one can
significantly increase the strike rate of hires/ interviews. And thereby freeing the
management time of techie folks to do the jobs they are most suited to!!

-First principles work!

We have found that whenever we have been able to articulate the outcome and the
actions required-we have been more successful! eg. addressing basic issues like
developing questions that test the knowledge & skills, assembling a specific interview
team, reviewing the interviewing competencies, and even the art of reference
checking!

Well, recruitment is not rocket science. I am sure all of us have been exposed to the
the nuances of hiring -having done it -at some point of time and for varying periods of
time. Raising the bar is a challenge. It helps to take stock-review-and sharpen our
skills.

We are learning. The gains are much more than we expected. The pipeline is getting
better....

PS: Here is a treasure... I just came across a masterpiece of an article, a blog post -a
Primer for hiring by Ben Horowitz-giving us a detailed prescription on the science. I
personally feel one cannot have put it any better; it is a must read !