Why Work Abroad?

Why Work Abroad

Are you bored of searching job pages and competing with the rest of the UK with endless applications and interviews? Then why not take a working gap year? Allow yourself to indulge in something completely different and get incredible work experience abroad!

A gap year doesn’t always mean travelling around on a budget and island hopping (as good as it sounds), you don’t necessarily need to neglect your career prospects, get the best of both worlds and combine worldwide paid work experience with seeing extraordinary sights. As such, your future career is no longer limited by the opportunities available in your home country – the right combination of experience, qualifications and attitude now means that the global employment market is much more accessible than you think. If you want to gain valuable work experience while exploring incredible new places, then you should work abroad!

Why should you make the big move?

Sometimes the job hunt might seem like a long road that does not end, or even a journey with the daunting processes that most job applications go through. Here are a few reasons why working abroad is the right option for you:

It can provide better career opportunities and prospects.

Of course dependent on your skill set and the role that you desire, there may be a greater range of career opportunities open to you outside of your home market. And, if you’re looking to progress your career, increasing globalisation means that if you do want to reach the higher positions of the organisation, you are likely at some stage to be managing an international team and therefore international experience will be critical to your ability to do that well.

It will give you new life experiences.

Whether it be moving to Europe, skiing down the slopes in Canada or surfing on the Gold Coast of Australia, an international move is likely to give you experiences hard to match at home, and which you will never forget!

Personal development.

Moving to a new country to start a new job will undoubtedly push you out of your comfort zone. Nothing helps you grow as a person like interrupting your safe and comfortable routine. Whether you’re a serial traveller or not, this experience will allow you to gain new perspectives of the world and learn things about yourself that you never knew before. This new and improved perspective will help you develop personally just as much as you grow professionally.

There are also many other benefits that making an international career move can bring you, which you may have never considered. Such as the opportunity to:

Develop your cultural intelligence and awareness.

As the world of work globalises, this skill is becoming increasingly important to employers. The experience of living and working abroad allows individuals to grow cultural skills, such as the knowledge of cultural similarities and differences and the adaptability to unfamiliar settings or behaviours, and the general drive and interest to work in cross-cultural environments. Whilst English continues to dominate as a business language across the world, many employers now say that building cultural skills are becoming as much or even more important than learning the language!

Working abroad also allows you to fine-tune your soft skills.

Coming as a pair, as you start to build your cultural intelligence you will find that, at the same time, your soft skills will also be built upon and developed. These skills include your adaptability, communication and interpersonal skills, and also help to build your resilience and self-confidence. As important as experience is, it’s the soft skills that appear and come clear within interviews, in which allow you to change between industries, jobs or positions.

Here is your chance to expand your professional network!

Of course your current network at home is great for future career prospects, but despite the prevalence of global professional networking sites such as LinkedIn, whereby we can connect with others from across the other side of the world at one click of a button, building an international face-to-face network has never been as powerful, and it is highly recognised and appreciated by employers.

The world is officially your oyster, and there is always a chance to take the full family along with you too! With the whole world to choose from, many companies would love to advise and support you with move abroad to them, so finding an international job is your first point of call, instead of moving abroad first! Moving to a new country and experiencing a new culture first hand, finding your dream career while meeting new friends, networking and boosting your own CV and personal skills … sounds good to me.

Working abroad is good for your wallet, your career and the world! Let’s find you a job!