Would You Like To Work Overseas? How To Get A Global Assignment

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We are citizens of a rich and diverse international community. There are 195 countries spanning six continents, yet, in 2022, only 37% of Americans have a valid passport, and 38% have never had a passport. Furthermore, while numbers are difficult to approximate, out of a nation of 258 million adults, the U.S. State Department estimates only 10 million non-military Americans live and work overseas – or 3.8%.

So, if you're one of those people who dream about an international job, you're special. Truly. Being immersed in a different country and culture can be a rewarding experience. If you have the desire and drive, you can be one of the few Americans whose professional background includes stints around the world. Since very few people go this route, you may think it would be easy, but getting that ticket overseas can be tricky. Each of our world's 195 countries has its laws governing work visas. Here are some factors to consider in order to smooth your path to an international work assignment.

1.     Dual citizenship. You may qualify for – and can leverage – dual citizenship to attain your professional goals. Instead of going through the laborious process of getting an employer-specific work visa, you can relocate to your second nation and make that your home base. Once you are in the job market, you are the same as the other nationals. Take a look at your ancestry and see if one of your parents or grandparents came from a country that’s eager to expand its citizenship to descendants. And if your second citizenship is in the European Union, you can work in any member country (your attorney can advise you on this).

2.     Languages. There are two language tracks. You can find jobs overseas teaching English to foreigners in international schools or the American children of expatriates (many of whom work for the U.S. government. If your priority is to get overseas and your secondary goal is the actual job, teaching English is a tried-and-true path. The second track is to master more than one language. For example, let's say you know Spanish. That can open doors in Spain and a lot of South America. Companies, governments, and NGOs love people who know more than one language.

3.     Work for the U.S. government. According to federaljobs.net, "there are 45,301 federal employees stationed overseas in over 11 countries, 7 states, and in 2 the U.S. Territories." Once again, dual citizenship and/or language skills will accelerate your chances of scoring a choice assignment for Uncle Sam. As you can imagine, the process of getting a government job "over there" is akin to getting your arm caught in a threshing machine. Do your research to break through the red, white, and blue tape. Federaljobs.net is a good place to start.

4.     Become a U.S. soldier. Another U.S. government job is to be a soldier. Every branch of the U.S. armed forces has members around the world.  In 2021, there were approximately 170,000 active American troops stationed overseas. Some are on ships that are constantly on the move. There is synergy between the U.S. military and regular U.S. government jobs as well. "Approximately 25 percent of, or one of every four, current Federal employees is a veteran." You see where this is going. If you work overseas for the U.S. military and want to stay there after your military career is over, the U.S. government has opportunities for you to do that. For example, you can work for a government contractor or join a foreign service. Members of the U.S. military train in diplomacy, and many veterans move on to be diplomats.

5.     Join the Peace Corps. If you're an idealist whose idea of a plum international assignment is doing "good works, you may consider The Peace Corps. President John F. Kennedy started the Peace Corps in 1961. "The Peace Corps is a service opportunity for motivated changemakers to immerse themselves in a community abroad, working side by side with local leaders to tackle the most pressing challenges of our generation." You may have less control of where you go and what you do, but the Peace Corps is a remarkable way to see and impact the world.

6.     Work for a global conglomerate. If you work for a global company, chances are it employs Americans abroad to further its business interests. While every company selects and relocates employees overseas in different ways, chances are the lucky few are the "best and brightest." It is not cheap to move workers overseas or repatriate them when and if the time comes. If a company makes that kind of investment, it mitigates the risks by employing its top performers with specialized skills (once again, languages and dual citizenship can help you). Workers headed overseas go through additional layers of scrutiny during background checks – by the company and the government of the foreign country that issues employer-specific work visas. If you want to work in the EU, for example, you need to have a squeaky clean professional and personal background. Talk with your manager about your goal to work overseas to get the ball rolling.

7.     Work for a cruise line. Don't laugh. You want to go overseas, right? Cruise ships literally go over the seas. Port hopping and accommodating the needs of the ship's passengers is a different experience than immersing yourself in a foreign country and working side by side with the locals. However, you will travel the world. Just like "land-based jobs," cruise ship employees require special work visas called C1, D, or C1/D combo visas. Like any company with overseas operations, cruise lines are adept at guiding applicants through the visa process when hired.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Is It Okay To Multi-Task During Online Meetings?

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The shift to virtual meetings transformed the professional landscape. We are accustomed to Zoom and virtual environments, whether video conferencing or shared workspace online. Remote and hybrid work roles are on the rise. Even as professionals return to the office, virtual meetings remain. You may participate in as many Zoom meetings in the conference room as you did in your bedroom (i.e., home office).

Your Inbox is tipping over, and your Outbox is lonely. Is it okay to multi-task during online meetings? Everyone has muted the mic and turned the camera off for reasons that may not be entirely professional. No universally accepted decorum exists for virtual calls. If there were, who would enforce it? If your company has written policies covering behavior on Zoom, or similar platforms, follow them to the letter. If not, it's the Wild West.  

Read the room and assess your position. Not all Zoom meetings are created equal, but you should be engaged and ready to participate as circumstances require. If you want to multi-task during online meetings, consider the following:

1.     What is your work culture? Every business has a different approach to meetings, virtual or in-person. Many companies hold few formal meetings, while others seem to be a carousel of endless internal and external meetings that leave little time to do actual work. What is your employer's expectation of employee behavior during virtual meetings? If your company emphasizes proactive participation, it may be a poor decision to multi-task during your Zoom call. If your company goes through the motions and it's common for employees to pop in and out of meetings, figuratively and literally, you may have leeway to use Zoom time as work time too.

2.     Are you on a video call with your boss, a customer, or a client? Do not multi-task. In each of those cases, they should be your only priority. Nurturing your most important professional interpersonal relationships outweighs the jump you can get on whatever reports are languishing on your desk.

3.     Is it an emergency? If you're in an unavoidable Zoom meeting and must finish the most important report in history by high noon, go dark and multi-task. Sometimes you have an uncompleted task that is a much higher priority than the contents of a meeting. If backed into a corner, follow the course of action that fulfills your time-sensitive deliverables.

4.     Where are you? Multi-tasking is easier if you are alone in your home office than sitting around a conference room table with ten co-workers. Your multi-tasking will be noticed and judged if you're in a cubicle surrounded by cubicles, especially if some are occupied by people on the same Zoom call. In contrast, you can tackle that Inbox if you are in a private office or space. Once again, read the room – the actual room. Does your physical space lend itself to multitasking during virtual meetings? 

5.     What's the meeting? Meetings are big and small, in size and importance. A quarterly all-staff meeting is different from a weekly report between a handful of people. A meeting about a company relocating is more important than a meeting to review sales data. A call regarding sensitive personnel issues may require your full attention, but a routine touch-point does not. The topic or goal of a specific meeting may be vitally important to you, and you should act accordingly, but if you have a cursory role, you may consider multi-tasking. Read the meeting.

6.     Are you actually good a multi-tasking? Two important facts are typically absent from any discussion about "multi-tasking." First, multi-tasking is neurologically impossible. Rapidly going from task to task is the best we can do. Two, most people are not very good at rapidly going from task to task. Just because you can multi-task does not mean you should. Have an honest conversation with yourself. How much are you going to move the needle during your Zoom call? Are you doing your best work if you have one ear to the speaker?

7.     How do you want to be perceived? Whether or not you are aware of it, you have a professional reputation that follows you. An important part of your professional reputation is how people perceive you. Your participation in meetings, virtual or not, influences others' perceptions of you. For example, if you work remotely with your mic and video off most of the time, it is easy for people to believe your multi-tasking is making coffee, folding laundry, or watching TikTok videos. In contrast, if you are visible and engaged during every Zoom meeting, you project emotional intelligence, diligence, and authority.

8.     Proceed with caution. If you decide to multi-task during Zoom meetings, be cautious. Be sure to turn off your mic and camera!

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

I Got the Job – Now What? Make a Splash In The First Year Of Your New Job

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You got the job, which means you are on the cusp of a new, and hopefully, long-term relationship. Education, experience, intelligence, and hard work got you through the door, but now it’s a brand-new game with uncharted pathways to success.

To thrive, you must navigate and master your new employer’s corporate culture, office politics, cross-functional organization dynamics, talent management, and the ability to influence people. An acclimation period is to be expected, so prior planning reduces the length and uncertainty of the learning curve.

To help you ease into your new job, break down your orientation into three areas:

1.     Get to Know Your Employer

2.     Talent Management

3.     Learn to Influence

Get to Know Your New Employer

Organizations are more complex than ever. Org charts and subsequent workflows, responsibilities, and key performance indicators have changed over the past 40 years.

There are diverse internal and external stakeholders, constantly evolving reporting structures, traditional work hierarchies working in collaboration with specialized outside consultants, and project-based workgroups – just to name a few possible features of your new job.

Throw in work-from-home or hybrid work models, virtual meetings with participants scattered around the world, and the novel pressures of corporate responsibility (think Disney in Florida), and it is easy to visualize a new job as a labyrinth that is equal parts opportunity and dead ends.

During your interview process, you never saw past the entrance to the maze. Here is a checklist that can be the ball of string that helps you move through the labyrinth.

·      Learn the organization. On day one request an org chart. If there isn’t one available, make your own.

·      Introduce yourself to your manager(s). Yes, you may have met your manager, or managers, during the interview process. However, they are busy and they barely know you. Take the first step.

·      Introduce yourself to clients/customers. Once again, take the initiative. Be your friendliest and most helpful self and get them on Team You.

·      Understand your job scope. Ask as many questions as you need to get a thorough understanding of what is expected of you. Understand the administrative processes involved to successfully do your job. At the same time, know where your responsibilities end and others begin. Don’t be blindly aggressive or you may start a turf war you will lose.

Talent Management

The good news is that YOU are the talent! The bad news is that you’re being watched and evaluated. The other good news is you can influence the process to your advantage. The bad news is that it is a lot of work that you, and you alone, must do.

So, what is talent management? It’s ongoing reviews and performance appraisals. Every business has its way of evaluating its employees. Speak to your immediate supervisor about the process and be proactive:

·      Align performance expectations and document them.

·      Keep your manager informed.

·      Demonstrate independence in action and thought.

·      Identify and adopt modeled behaviors.

·      Track your wins, challenges, and metrics.

·      Want additional challenges? Ask for more.

·      Put in place an individual development plan.

·      Know that you’re not just being evaluated by your manager.

Learn to Influence

What is influence? The Merriam-Webster definition is “(n): 1. the power or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways. 2. The act or power of producing an effect without apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of command.”

The knee-jerk corporate definition is getting what you want. The more enlightened definition is to work both inside and outside organizational structures to get the job done. Influencing is not individual behavior. It’s a toolbox and mindset, and career progress and success are increasingly reliant upon it.

Do not confuse influence with:

·      Bossing (command & control)

·      Requesting

·      Asking

·      Begging

·      Cajoling

We’ve all been there – people with less experience, who do less, somehow advance, but workhorses who make everything happen are passed over. That’s because you’re not the only one in the labyrinth. There are trails of string everywhere and together they make a web of relationships with a common goal – to find the exit and fly toward the sun (don’t get too close!). Consider the following when you think about the elements required to achieve your professional goals:

·      Emotional intelligence/people agility gets rewarded.

·      Technical expertise alone is not always the ticket to advancement

·      Learn to project manage. Bonus tip: project management is a combination of intelligence and three-dimensional thinking. Project Management does not necessarily require training (but it doesn’t hurt) or fancy software (but it doesn’t hurt). The Great Pyramids, which have lasted 5000 years, were not designed or built by anyone with PMI certification or using MS Project.

·      Be an active contributor

·      Build effective partnerships.

·      Offer alternative solutions.

·      Don’t miss the opportunity to “own” pieces of the business.

·      Know when to lead and when to follow. When to give. When to take. You got to know when to hold ‘em. Know when to fold ‘em. Know when to walk away. And know when to run.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.