Suitability of my profile to work in a foreign country

by KISHORE
(HYDERABAD, ANDHRA PRADESH, INDIA)

Dear Carl,

This is Kishore from INDIA. I am very happy to see your website with complete guidance for aspirants to work international.

I have a great desire to work globally. I am an INDIAN CITIZEN. I would like to work abroad. I have a doubt whether my profile suits or not. I did my MBA (Finance) in INDIA, completed in 2004. From then onwards I did 2 small jobs, off-role jobs for 3 years. Then after I switched another job, which is a company role. I have worked for 7 months for that company. Unfortunately global economic crisis influenced the company, as a result company started to control it's cost by firing it's employees. I also got a PINK SLIP and FIRED from the company. From the last 2 months i have been searching for another job.

Please guide me in this regard.

Thank you.

KISHORE


Response from Carl: Thanks for your email, Kishore. I moved to New Zealand after I graduated from university and when I started looking for jobs, I realized immediately that what what we in North America call a resume - generally called a Curriculum Vitae or CV in New Zealand and some other countries - was vastly different (and longer) than what I was used to. I approached a CV writing service to help me turn my resume into a CV.

The CVs that I saw were personalized documents with information including date of birth, hobbies, interests, etc and was several pages in length as opposed to a resume which is generally 1-3 pages and usually contains little to no personal information. In North America, we don't recommend putting your picture on a resume but I know of some countries where it's fairly standard. The point is that you need to be aware of how things are different in the country/countries you are thinking to move to when it comes to a job search.

Having said all of this, this was back in 1994 so I suspect since it's so much easier now to email resumes/CVs and with less formality (ie. fewer printed documents) being the norm, it's possible things have changed since that time.

I have found that generally, companies are going to give you a better look if you're actually in that country and are ready to interview with them. When we would get resumes from people from other countries looking for jobs, we'd quickly tell them that once they were actually here, we could help them search for a job. As a recruiter, it's hard to help someone who isn't in the country find a new job, unless of course they have a very desirable skillset that a company might be willing to look at an international candidate.

Keep in mind that the global recession makes a job search even harder right now so the local candidates who are already ready to work are often going to get the jobs. It really depends on what sort of job you're looking for, what country/countries you're thinking about and of course, the related legal issues (ie. work permits, citizenship, etc) that you might face too.

Carl