Working abroad?

[Randy Marsh]

Hi folks,

Just thought I'd pose the question of working abroad on here as I know there's a few of you who work in the IT Sector or live/work abroad.

I'm coming up to the end of a 2 year graduate scheme with an IT multinational where I've been working as a Business Analyst. I understand that there's opportunities to move internally with your company abroad - but I'm not sure what the protocol for this is? Is it more a case of the company putting the idea to you or can it be initiated by yourself?

The other alternative I was thinking about was to sign up with a recruitment firm and see whether they can help me out at all. I actually had an offer from a recruitment consultant a few weeks ago for a job in Spain (only requiring English) with another IT multinational but the job wasn't an area I wanted to go into.

Any tips / experiences would be appreciated. Cheers.

 

[Randy Marsh]

Ideally I would be looking for a role where English was the primary language, but then I have no issues with learning the local language while I'm abroad. I was quite interested in the Spanish role I was offered (it was working for CSC in a Service Centre they have there where English would suffice) but alas the role was not really for me. I would have been happy to learn Spanish regardless as I would want to integrate into whatever country I live in.

We do have internal job boards at the company I work for... there is literally hundreds of jobs listed in regions all over the World. However, part of the reason I was asking here was that I don't really know how to initiate the whole process, and the HR team we have at my local office aren't really too sure themselves!

I agree that communication is going to be a barrier in my field, as BA's are meant to be client facing and therefore being restricted to one language isn't going to help my cause. However, I have had some fellow graduate mates from my company go to Abu Dhabi and Singapore who only speak English so I think I may be able to overcome this obstacle.