Cross-Border Job Search

• You are in one country and you want to work in another
• You would like to be considered for jobs in other countries and regions
• How do you do it?

Perhaps you are an expatriate and you want to return to your home country, or you are working in your home country and would like to gain experience of working in another country, or of having multi-country management responsibilities. How can you maximise the probability of achieving your aim? Here are some tips which we hope that you will find helpful and rewarding.

1. Try registering on www.bluesteps.com. This is a service of the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC). The AESC is the industry association of the leading retained search firms worldwide. By subscribing to bluesteps.com you have the opportunity to bring your record and achievement to the attention of these firms.
2. Look at the list of search firms who are AESC members on www.aesc.org. Submit your resumé/CV to the firms in your target market. Try also to identify firms or individual consultants that specialise in cross-border search in your industry sector. Keep an eye on search firms’ web-sites, some of them list current searches.
3. Make sure that your resumé highlights your interest in a cross-border move, and back that up with the reasons why it makes sense – achievements that are relevant, experience of relevant markets, language skills, prior international experience. Put this in the resumé, not just in the covering letter – resumés are retrieved from databases, covering letters are rarely filed. Business references from your target location can be helpful.
4. Call friends, contacts, former colleagues, former suppliers, and former customers and let them know about your plans, particularly those in your target location. You never know when they may be asked to make a recommendation of possible candidates for a job. If they don’t know your plans they may not think of you.
5. Ask the same people who they would talk to in your target cities/countries/ organisations. People can be remarkably helpful. Turn yourself into an active, structured networker.
6. Build your knowledge of your target location. Read the newspapers and business journals – some may be available on-line – visit, keep up to date. Help people to see that you are really interested. Let people know that you can be available for interview in your target location – recruiters can often (mistakenly) discount people from another location. Ideally have an address or a telephone number in the target location, and include it on your resumé.
7. Do things that will raise your profile in your target location, for example offer to speak at conferences or trade association meetings; a double opportunity, you demonstrate your know-how and you demonstrate your interest in the location.
8. Build your knowledge of target organisations, and build contacts in them. Most organisations would rather recruit someone they know.
9. Above all build experience that will strengthen your international credentials; build the achievements that you can cite in your resumé or in an interview.

We hope that this helps and that you will achieve your aim. Good luck!