|
|
Working Overseas & Gap Years
- Thinking about working abroad when the outlook here is grey can be very tempting. New job, new country, new life? Well, why not?
- You might want to work overseas permanently, for a couple of years on secondment with your existing employer or apply to another international company.
- Sydney, Hong Kong and New York are all hotly contested postings, not least because of the widespread use of english as the lingua franca of business, but why not try somewhere in Europe especially if you have language skills to use or brush up.
- Gap Years - not just for students! Why not have a grown up 'gap year' working as a volunteer. It's amazing how many people say their break gave them some useful perspective on life and they can come back to the UK and build new lives with renewed vigour or appreciation. It's the old 'you don't know what you've got till it's gone' adage. There are some great web resources out there, many are very student oriented - you'll find our top tips below.
 Just click on the icon!
New Life Tips - working overseas
All the advice on the other advice pages applies here. If you don’t like the job you do in the UK, doing the same thing somewhere sunnier may not bring the changes you were looking for. You’ll still be miserable but with a tan! Here are our other key pointers as food for thought.
- Don’t underestimate the impact on your family, if you have one. Families need to make choices that are as life changing as emigration together or they don’t get off to a great start.
- Will friends and extended family be able to visit easily? At all? Too easily?
- If you’ve never been to a country before, you do need to visit it first before you decide to move there permanently or for a reasonable length of time. It may be better than you imagined – or not as great.
- If you have children, will you be able to maintain their education in the way you would like? If you move with a big company they will often pay for school fees in the UK or at local expatriate schools.
- If the country you move to doesn’t have English as its main language, how are your language skills? Working abroad, or the ‘immersion technique’, is a great way to improve language skills but you may need to have the basics in place first.
- What about pay and conditions? Do you understand the local rules on tax, pensions and the like?
- Will it be better to let your property here in the UK, if you have one, so you can stay on the UK property ladder and rent abroad?
- Will your qualifications be valid in the country you want to work in? There are sometimes difficulties with professional qualifications abroad in medicine, law, teaching and accounting, for example, as standards, rules and regulations can vary considerably.
- A move abroad may give you access to new avenues of employment you wouldn’t be able to consider here. Courses in diving and sports instruction can be taken in the UK beforehand, as can TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) courses.
- Emigration usually operates on a points system. You need to understand what your points score might be and what key skills the countries you are interested in are trying to attract.
Happy hunting!
Essential Resources
Do you have a great story to tell us or a resource you can reccommend to help others? Just write to us at editor@newlifenetwork.co.uk and let us know.
|
|
