Career By Choice's Expat Professional & Business Success Tips

A Broad Abroad: Expat Writer & Expert Robin Pascoe Shares Her Wisdom on Life & Work Overseas

Over 15 years ago I started my journey of helping professionals and entrepreneurs in the areas of professional and business development. I've worked with people from over twenty countries on six continents in every industry imaginable - from cheese making, ship building and rotomolding of plastics to education, medicine and information technology. 

What I have found over the course of my journey is that those who have experienced and overcome great challenges in growing their career or business not only acquire wisdom invaluable to themselves and others, but they also have great stories to tell. Those with the capacity to share their wisdom through telling engaging stories are the kind of people you want in your life - or at least on your advisory board!

Robin Pascoe is one of those people. She tells stories of her own and others' adventures overseas that not only educate but inspire expat women to make the right choices for themselves in their personal and professional lives while living abroad.

After fifteen years living abroad as a former diplomatic spouse and raising two third culture kids with postings throughout Asia - Bangkok, Taipei, Beijing and Seoul - Robin Pascoe returned to Canada and started a writing and publishing business, Expatriate Press. Her book business has enabled her to travel for the past decade from her home base in Vancouver to speak to expatriate communities and HR professionals around the world on the challenges associated with global living. She was the first to articulate many trends including the lack of family-friendly relocation policies; the challenges of work-expat life balance in a digital world; even ‘helicopter parenting’ and why it is enhanced abroad.

 

Reporting for major international publications and websites, and writing and publishing  books for expat families, Robin also created one of the earliest websites for expatriate families, ExpatExpert.com in 1998. Luckily, for several generations of expats, she documented much of her own experience and wisdom, relying as well on research from experts and other families’ experiences so that others may soar over obstacles she often struggled to overcome the hard way.

 

Her books Raising Global Nomads, A Moveable Marriage and Homeward Bound are all expat classics that should be on every expat woman's bookshelf.  Her newest release A Broad Abroad is no exception.

The Social Media Revolution

Social media is not a fad - it's here to stay. It's changing the way we communicate, connect, access and share information. It's affecting the way we look for jobs, build our networks, manage our careers and run and market our businesses.  Hence it's an important area for both the expat professional and entrepreneur to learn more about and explore how it can help them reach their goals. 

I've been using social media for several years now and have experienced the professional and business benefits first hand. I've also helped my clients leverage social media to build their personal brand online and connect with job opportunities or new business. I hope through this blog and through engaging with you on other social networks I'll be able to help you to explore social media - and most importantly help you to take ACTION so that you can benefit as I and other expats have.

Some of you may be seasoned social media users. If you are, I invite you to share how on how social media has affected how you manage your career or business by leaving a comment on this post. 

Some of you may have heard of social media, but are not quite sure what it is and how it all works. I've included this video to help explain how social media can help businesses:  

I've already written about how social networks are becoming professional and business networks, how we can learn from the Digital Natives, how an expat found a job through Facebook and interviewed top Facebook experts (and current or former expats) like Jesse Stay and Mari Smith. But I'll be sharing more about how social media can help expat professionals as well.

In future blog posts I'll be exploring specific social media tools in more detail. But for now, if you'd like to learn from links and tips that I am posting on some other social networks or social media, I invite you to connect with me on Twitter, connect with my on Facebook, or become a Fan of my Facebook Page.

YOUR EXPAT SUCCESS TIP: Commit some time to learning how professionals and businesses alike are using social media and social networks to build their brands online and find opportunities and new business worldwide. Welcome to the revolution!

Paguro's New Shell: More Resources for Expat Professionals and Entrepreneurs

Back in March of 2008 I wrote a blog post about Paguro, a free online resource for expatriates developed by Patrizia Figoli Turchetti. Being an expatriate in Nigeria, England, Norway, France, Mexico and the US, Patrizia has experienced the difficulties that expats face and hence understands what resources would be most useful to help them during periods of transition.

I am happy to report that Paguro has just relaunched with a new interface and design. Patrizia has resdesigned the site to better showcase many of its new and interactive features.

I wanted to share a few words from Patrizia herself about the new features:

The new Paguro's advantage is that the content is more accessible to the users both as readers and contributors.  On the homepage you will see two new tool bars. The grey toolbar covers all things expat such as information at city level, about a life on the move, and resources for working abroad, while the turquoise toolbar has the potential to be all about you!

This turquoise tool bar gives you access to the interactive core of Paguro, the place where you can "bee" part of the Paguro BuZz, the Paguro community, where you can connect with other expatriates around the world through the forums, find expat networks and share your own information through your dedicated web space: my paguro.

You can find like-minded people by creating an area of interest within one of the Paguro BuZz forums, or join the ones already created by fellow expats, such as one about art or travel in South America.

Paguro BuZz is a wonderful world where people living all over the globe can reach out to each other to help fellow expats ease their transitions from one location to another. Keeping in touch with people on a daily basis is a great tonic when your life has just been turned upside down by moving to a new city.  Finding someone to share your thoughts and concerns with is important, and Paguro BuZz can help you do that!

"My Paguro" is the greatest asset that has been added to the new shell. You can add news, photos, events, articles and you can even have your own message board. For each of these items you can decide at any time to select who has access, just yourself or a few friends or the entire world!

And this is just the beginning, with you we are planning to get even better equipped over time.

Patrizia asked if I would create a column on the new Paguro, so you will also find a section entitled "Megan's Expat Career Corner". In this area of the site I will be posting from time to time on my areas of expertise: personal branding, expat careers, portable careers and businesses, and networking on- and offline for career and business success abroad.

Patrizia has some great ideas for this site, and I look forward to this site growing into even a more valueable resource than it has already proven to be to expatriates worldwide.

Keep us posted Patrizia!

Trailing Spouse Network: Resource for Expat Professionals and Expat Entrepreneurs

It's been an incredibly busy week. I"ve been on travel a lot for work and I am catching up on many fronts, gearing up for my two week holiday to the north of Italy - Lombardy and the Northern Lakes Region. I can't wait! Family is in town and it's been so good to see them. It's a wonderful reminder that although skype video chats are a great way to stay connected, it's important to be proactive about creating opportunities to spend time in person with those we care about most when you are an expatriate.

So on the subject of families and catching up....I recently caught up with Jeff Porter, the Ausmerican and founder of the Trailing Spouse Network (TSN).

Jeff and I first met via a podcast he ran on issues related to trailing spouses back in 2007.  Shortly following that podcast we connected via skype and had discussed the shifting of tides in the career arena for expat spouses and things that could be done to support them.  Jeff was the first male trailing spouse I had the pleasure of meeting, so it was great to hear about some of the trailing spouse issues from a male perspective.  Being an expat career and personal branding coach (and an accompanying spouse myself), I often work with trailing spouses so we had a lot of things to talk about.

It's been a little while since that chat - but the professional support needs of trailing spouses is still a primary concern for both of us.

I'd like to share a little about the work that Jeff has been doing with the TSN for those readers that consider themselves a trailing spouse (or accompanying spouse) - or have a spouse who is struggling to build a professional life abroad.

CulturalGPS: Helping Expats Navigate the World of Culture

Many who know me well know that I am an avid lover of all things Apple.  My iPhone is no exception. I love all of the amazing applications that allow me to stay connected, organized and informed - and even indulge in some silly fun!

One of these really cool applications I want to tell my fellow expat professionals and entrepreneurs who own iPhones about is CultureGPS. CultureGPS is a tool to help you to analyze behavior differences in intercultural encounters and to predict to a certain degree, which interactions evolve when people from different nationalities meet and work together.

The information provided in CultureGPS is based on the 5-D model developed by Professor Geert Hofstede, who, according to the Wall Street Journal ranking in 2008, is one of the top 20 most influential business thinkers.

It's a very handy tool that you can use when in various cross cultural settings and need to get a quick snapshot of how everyone's cultural identity could affect working together.

But in order to really benefit from using the tool, you need a decent understanding of what these different dimensions mean and how they translate into behaviour.

So I've asked a colleague of mine with whom I am working with to coach international MBA students at a top university here in Italy to answer a few questions.  Besides being a great guy and a lover of pasta, Jerry Vastano is certified by itim international, global experts on national and organizational culture, whose work is based on Hofstede's research.