Have dreams of wanderlust starting taking over your waking hours? Have you had enough of your current job or the city/town where you live? Do you want to move overseas to your dream destination but need a job because your savings aren’t sufficient and you need an income to keep paying for your lifestyle expenses? Why don’t you look to find a job in a dream overseas location? More than likely you will be happier, you will become more energised, more engaged and a lot more happier in your life! So how to find a job in your dream travel destination?
Firstly have a good look at yourself and your current life and list any skills or job experience that that will be suitable to get employment in a foreign location. Does your current job allow you to work across different counties, such as an accountant? Do you speak a second language? Do you have a talent that you can earn money from such as a singer or musician?
Also note your current lifestyle expenses that you will need to cover with an income. Some of these may be loan repayments in your current location whereas other lifestyle expenses such as housing, and food will need to be estimated in your new location. One point to note the location that you are looking to move to may have cheaper living costs that where you are so this can go into your new job search. Alternatively living expenses in your new country could be more so bear this in mind with your job search.
After you’ve come up with a list of skills that you have and a list of jobs that you would be interested in working in (jobs that will earn sufficient income to cover your lifestyle expenses it’s time to update your resume and commence your international job search!
1. Does your employer have overseas offices?
This will obviously favour white collar professional employees though this can work for employees in hospitality such as a worldwide hotel chain. This is also biased towards the larger international cities such as New York, London, Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo and Sydney that large multinational businesses tend to have their offices.
If your employer doesn’t have international offices do they have a close relationship with an overseas firm that they refer work to? If so are their any job openings with them? If not then you may be able to look for a job with a company that has offices overseas with a view to moving after you’ve have 6 months or so experience in your current location.
Alternatively is there a desirable international business that you would love to work for? Why not check their international website to see if there are any listed job openings in your destination country?
2. Use a specific job search website that focuses on international deployments
Further to the above point if your employer doesn’t have international offices you could use an overseas focused local job finding site for potential job openings.
Firstly you could look at job search engines in your destination country. 5 of the bigger job search websites include:
- Indeed
- Monster
- Glassdoor
- Seek
Alternatively you could look at worldwide staffing agency. 5 of the bigger worldwide job agencies include:
- The Adecco Group
- Kelly Services
- Hays
- Manpower Group
- Robert Walters
All of the above have openings all over the world and there may be something that suits you in the location you desire. You might also want to reach out to your local recruitment agencies and see if they have any openings overseas.
3. Do you have any contacts in your overseas destination or contacts that know someone in that potential destination?
Do you know anyone who comes from your desired location? Does anyone in your family or your social circle know anyone from that country or even a nearby country? What about any previous work colleagues? What about your college or university could they help you out? Go through your past and see if you can find someone that could put in a good word or point you in the right direction.
4. Buy a business in your ideal overseas location
This will take a little bit of due diligence (plus you may not have the capital) however it might be beneficial in your situation (particular if you come from a wealthier country and looking to move to a country with a lower wages/cost of living such as Bali/Indonesia. Firstly, are there any restrictions on foreign ownership? If you are from the U.S most European countries and countries where English is an accepted language you should be fine however make sure you sufficient research.
Secondly, check if relationship between your home country and destination country are
suitable. For example if US citizens were looking to buy a business in Cuba there may have had a roadblock or two stopping this dream or if you are from a Western country looking to buy a business in Russia. In light of the current Russia/Ukraine conflict there may be issues with any potential purchase. When looking at any potential purchase, how much are you prepared to lose (or can you afford to lose)? Governments changes, regimes can collapse, how would your financial situation change if you lost your business because there was a change in government and they banned all foreigners? The same process should be applied if you are looking to purchase property overseas. Do your research and speak to professionals in this field should you venture down this path.
5. Look for expat websites or use social media to build a network of contacts in your destination country
Let’s use the country Australia as an example. Australia has a large multicultural population ranging with descendants of European countries such as the UK, Ireland, Croatia, Greece and Italy, through to Asian countries such as India and China, African countries from Sudan to South Africa as well as South American expats. For a few of these countries they have community centres or ‘clubs’ where descendants of these countries can meet up or attend events at the community centre. These community centres also have a social media presence. You can reach out to say you are looking to move and looking for a job or you can review the discussions and see if any job opportunities have come up.
Staying with Australia, there is a large expat Irish community from the transient (i.e. backpackers) to the permanent and websites have been dedicated to Irish residents on everything that you need to know to travel/move to Australia as well as offering a job board for Australian openings suitable for Irish travellers. There could be something similar in your desired country.
Living and working overseas makes a lot of sense both for individuals and for families. Experiencing the history of your new country and being immersed in its culture daily is something money can’t buy and if you can find a way to earn money while living your travel dream then what is stopping you?