There’s no doubt about it – even with solid job growth in dozens of career fields for the 2008-2018 projections decade, the competition for high-paying positions is still intense. Employers are always on the look out for the cream of the crop, so today’s young job seeker must accumulate admirable list of accomplishments in order to have a leg up on everyone else.
Besides having an impressive list of accomplishments at the academic level, employers such as Ernst & Young are also interested in applicants who have worked overseas in an internship or other job, or served with an organization such as the Peace Corps. Ernst & Young’s director of campus recruiting for the Americas, Dan Black, says that as far as he is concerned, young applicants with this background have a leg up on everyone else.
“We definitely see overseas experience as an advantage,” he says. He directs campus hiring for the London-based accounting and consulting giant, which has 140,000 employees worldwide. “Our clients are demanding more of us these days,” he explains. “They want diversity of thought and diversity of values, and many of our clients are multinationals.”
Employers feel the advantages do not stop here.
Dawn Chandler, a management professor at California Polytechnic State University, notes that spending time abroad can teach workers to deal with very different leadership styles. In Scandinavian countries, for instance, leadership is more egalitarian and participatory and less authoritarian. In Asia, on the other hand, the gulf in power between junior employees and leaders is much deeper. The U.S. falls somewhere in between.
Another advantage, notes Chandler: Time overseas familiarizes you with international legislation and standards. “If your firm wants to open a plant in China, it helps if you know how to get through the bureaucracy there,” she says.
Finding yourself a member of a minority group in a foreign country can be character building, both professionally and personally, notes Gary Baker, the U.S. global mobility leader for the consulting and accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has offices in 154 countries. “It gives you a greater respect for other cultures, and you learn to be better at managing teams that are diverse.”
According to Mary Ann Walsh, a New York career and executive coach specializing in global talent management, climbing the ladder overseas is much faster than climbing the career ladder in the U.S.
Walsh has a number of American clients who moved overseas shortly after college and graduate school. They advanced much more quickly than if they had tried to climb the career ladder in the U.S. One young woman who works in financial services is already doing deals with senior Chinese executives even though she doesn’t speak Mandarin.
Another client of Walsh’s headed to London for a financial services job straight from college. Then he went to Hong Kong. He lost that job, but he was quickly snatched up by a boutique firm. Now 30 years old, he was recently hired by Goldman Sachs ( GS – news – people ) in Asia. “Over there, the recession was just a blip on the radar screen,” Walsh notes.
Working overseas is not just for fresh graduates. Mid-career professionals tend to move up faster with their current company after returning from a stint overseas as well. If you are interested in working overseas, opportunities for Americans are abundant in China, Brazil, and Russia.
To learn more about getting a job overseas, pick up a copy of International Jobs: Where They Are and How to Get Them by Nina Segal. Segal is an international career development consultant in New York.
