Career By Choice's Expat Professional & Business Success Tips

Expat Networking: Holidays are a Great Time to Nurture and Grow your Network

December and January are usually some of the slowest months of the year for companies hiring across the globe. In some countries, very little business is done at all in December. As a result it is often said that you can't make much progress in a job search during the holiday season. 

Given that more jobs (and business opportunities) are secured through networking than any other method, I'd have to disagree.

The holidays provide numerous opportunities to nurture and grow your network. So whether you are an expat in the midst of a job search, or a career-saavy expatriate who understands that managing your career means taking regular action towards building and strengthening your network, here are a few networking suggestions for the holiday season: 

• Nurture current relationships: Relationships need attention if they are to survive and thrive. Living or working abroad can make nurturing relationships with people (particularly family and old friends and acquaintences) difficult when you don't have an opportunity to see them in person because they live in another country. So take advantage of the season to reconnect. Send holiday cards (or environmentally friendly e-cards for those who want to avoid bottlenecks with postal services), being sure include a brief update if you haven't communicated for some time. Extend an invitation to connect via an online network like Facebook so its easier to stay in touch and keep up with what's going on in each other's lives. 

• Pick up the "virtual phone": Many expats depend on online networks and email to stay in touch with their network because they literally cannot physically network with people in various locations around the globe. Although international phone cards are fairly common, making calls internationally can also be expensive. Online networking is certainly a powerful way to connect with people, but taking action to move relationships offline is still important. So take advantage of free voice-over IP solutions like Skype to stay in touch with a "virtual phone" - or even have video calls if both parties have a webcam - for little to no cost.

Ongoing Career Management is No Longer Optional for the Expat in Today's New World of Work

Recently I was honored to be asked by fellow career and resume specialists Miriam Salpeter and Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter to join a community of career bloggers called "Career Collective".  Their brainchild came from their desire to build a strong collective of career expert voices and a sustainable community of career expert bloggers. So once a month I'll be writing about a topic selected by the Career Collective here on my blog.

This month's topic is related to taking a "cookie-cutter" approach to the job search.  (For those of you not familiar with that expression, it essentially means taking a standard, traditional, one-size-fits-all approach to the job search.)

There are numerous trends that one has to consider when thinking about how to approach the job search in today's job market. Here are a few of note:

• Recent studies have indicated that the average stay of an upper-level manager or executive at a company is 2.3 years. 

• One recent survey indicated that 45% of recruiters and hiring managers use the information they find online in their hiring decisions.

• According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the top in-demand jobs for 2010 in the U.S. did not even exist in 2004.

Of course, the relevancy of these statistics can vary across industries and across cultures.  But no one can argue with the fact that the times, they are changing.

What does this mean?

• Long-term job security is a thing of the past - expecting that you will only have to conduct a job search a handful of times over your career is going to leave you ill-prepared to thrive in the new world of work.

• Whether you like it or not, your online presence will affect how recruiters & hiring managers think about you as a potential candidate for a job. What shows up in the search results when someone googles your name will affect the strength of your application for any job to you might apply.

• Market needs are constantly changing - believing that a series of job titles on your resume or CV is going to be enough to communicate how you can help a company solve it problems will leave you ill-equipped to compete in today's market. Being clear about your personal brand and being able to powerfully communicate how your qualities, skills and accomplishments are relevant to a particular company's needs is no longer optional if you want to be taken seriously by employers. 

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!