How young people can travel abroad, see the world, and get paid.
Perhaps you’ve read or heard in recent years that job opportunities for young people today are limited. You’re convinced that adding international work experience will help separate your resume from the competition, and give you some valuable life lessons in the process. Plus you’ve always wanted to see the world.
So where do you go from here?
Like anything in life that sounds super difficult, the key is breaking it into manageable chunks. Remember you aren’t the first person to explore professional options in a foreign country. So take heart, there is already a bit of a path to follow.
The beauty, of course, is that you can follow this path while still leaving your adventure completely up to your own personal style. The following are some helpful guidelines for how to make that happen.
Step 1. Choose Your Line of Work
The first thing a prospective international career requires is some focus: what exactly do you want to do?
Though it can certainly help, it is not necessary that you choose to work in the same industry where you’ve studied. One of the benefits of working overseas is that, unlike a job back home, your most distinguishing quality is the fact that you are foreign. In other words, companies may be more attracted to your language and cultural attributes than they are to your college degree.
It is also not necessary to think of this decision as permanent. Many young people worry that their choice of industry will follow them their entire career. Not true. Research has shown that the average professional these days changes jobs a lot more often than in the past (about every 4 years), so you don’t need to feel like you’re confining your future to one kind of work.
With that said, it is important to choose an area where you think you will fit in. Make sure you like the kind of work it will entail and believe in the end goals of that particular industry. After all, the last thing you want is to pass 40 hours a week in an exotic paradise doing something you loathe.
Step 2. Identify a Location
Once you’ve figured out what kind of profession you would like to focus on, you can set your mind on picking an international destination that is right for you. There are a few things to keep in mind when making this decision.
First, choose a place with a climate and culture that you think will be amenable to your personal style. Obviously, you can never be sure about a place before you go, but you should focus on the knowns — weather, language, time zone, size of city, etc. Don’t go too far north (or south) if you can’t take the cold.
Second, now that you know what kind of work you want to pursue, it’s often helpful to focus on cities or regions that have a good reputation in that profession. Shanghai or London might be excellent cities for financial services, but perhaps other locales would be superior for agricultural jobs. A fun and helpful resource as you make your decision is CityLab from the Atlantic, a site focused on exploring the cities of the future.
Finally, understand how cost factors into your decision. The farther away the location, the higher the transportation and logistical costs. But could those costs be recouped by living in a city with a low cost of living?
One key component to moving abroad is setting up a reasonable budget that you can adhere to. This means saving an appropriate amount in advance of your trip, based on what you are trying to accomplish. When you break your budget into steps, it’s much more manageable. For example, let’s say you wanted to spend a year in a middle market city in China. Estimating $1,400 for roundtrip airfare, $7,300 for food (at $20 a day), $2,200 for housing, $500 for health insurance and $4,000 for transportation and incidentals would bring you to just over $15,000 for an entire year. This means you’d need to save this amount or plan to earn about $1300/month in China to sustain a comfortable lifestyle. It’s likely that you could do a bit of both.
At the end of the day, it is not necessary to choose just one city, though it might be ideal. Instead, consider having two or three options, ranked in order of preference. That way, if you can’t find your dream job or internship in one place, you may have something close somewhere else.
Step 3. Research, Research, Research
While some people think they can just show up and get the job done, the truth is that most of us won’t get far without doing our homework.
There really is no limit to the amount of research you can do before you journey abroad, but your goal should be to understand as much as possible about a location without having set foot there. This will earn you respect later when you experience things for the first time, since locals will see that you care about their culture enough to have studied it.
Here are some tips for researching your destination city:
- Check out the CIA Fact Book and read the overview of your host country. This will give you the fundamentals of geography, demographics, economy, etc.
- Find English language newspapers and start reading them on a daily or weekly basis to get a feel for important current events. Start here for a list of newspapers all over the world.
- Contact the chamber of commerce in that city or country to get access to information, lists of companies and other relevant business information.
- Read a travel guide — buy an actual book or visit one of any number of sites such as Lonely Planet, AFAR or Fodor’s. Or, if you’re more of a visual information consumer, go to YouTube and start searching for videos of your location.
- Look into study abroad programs in the host city — these are great places to learn about educational opportunities for foreign ex-pats.
- Use social networks like Couchsurfing.org and WAYN.com to meet locals and ask them questions about their country and culture. You might make a valuable friend in the process.
- Sign up for a class and start learning the local language immediately — you will not be fluent in time for your trip, but having the basics will be key.
Step 4. Get an Internship
If you want to get professional overseas work experience and money is not the primary driver of your decision, the next best thing you can do is start off with an internship. Internships typically mean that you will be spending money instead of making it, but the benefits are impossible to overstate.
First, an internship program will give you hands-on experience in the country on a temporary basis, which means you don’t have to commit to a full-time salaried position. It allows you to get a sample of the work you’ll be doing without having to commit for the long haul.
Another benefit is that, whether you decide to pursue a career in that industry or not, an internship looks great on your CV to prospective employers. No matter what job you are aiming to get back home, that marketing internship in South Korea last summer is going to catch someone’s eye.
Finally, internships can often lead directly to job offers from the company providing the internship. Even if they do not, they allow you to gain valuable networking experience and contacts in that industry, which may open doors with other similar employers.
There are two ways to find an internship, generally speaking. You can go out on your own, build bridges and create your own opportunity. Or you can work with an agency or consultant that specializes in matching your skills and interests to a suitable employer.
If you have the time, money and enterprising spirit, the former option may be viable and highly rewarding. But in reality, this route is fraught with difficulty and may be a recipe for frustration. For that reason, it is strongly recommended to work with a company that already has the relationships with the right firms to help you find a match. Here is a good starting point.
Step 5. Prepare to Travel
As the old saying goes, failing to plan is planning to fail. This is certainly true for international travel. But don’t be alarmed, it is not as difficult as you might think.
In fact, we believe that the best travel experiences are those that leave a certain amount of flexibility and room for change. So don’t get obsessed with planning out your daily itinerary or every place you want to see and visit.
Rather, the key to good travel preparation is to take care of the ugly, bureaucratic and logistical challenges that often put a damper on otherwise wonderful international experiences.
Though not comprehensive, here are the main things to look out for:
- Travel visas and entrance fees
- Location and policies of local embassies and consulates
- Vaccinations and health concerns
- Room and board in the host country
- Transportation options, including to and from airport and work
- Safety, crime and legal concerns
Details on almost all of these aspects can be taken from the U.S. Department of State, especially the Alerts and Travel Warnings. In fact, you should also consider signing up for the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, which provides helpful updates for U.S. travelers while abroad, and also serves as a way for people back home to find you if something serious goes down.
The bottom line is that you want to compile the most important info to help you mentally prepare, create an accurate budget, know what to bring with you and know where to go in the case of emergency.
Beyond that, decide where to go and what to do when you get there.
Step 6. Go Forth and Prosper
If you’ve followed the first five steps here, you need do nothing more than pack your bags, say goodbye to your friends and family and board an airplane. The rest will be a stimulating adventure that will resonate in much of what you do for the rest of your life. And if you‘re worried about getting homesick while you’re away, remember that foreign countries also have the internet so keeping in touch via Skype and other communications tools is a cinch.