~How to get a job abroad~! | Travel/Culture hacking | Forum

Hello everyone – this is my first post! I was unaware that Benny had a forum and I'm glad to meet other polyglots.

I'm Mike and I'm from New York, currently in Bangkok working on my business and learning Thai.

I was going to post this in the "Working Abroad" thread but I realized that the conversation had started to lean towards ESL and English teaching, so I decided to post it here.

This was the question asked by the OP in that thread:

I was wondering if he could explain to us the process of acquiring the permits to work abroad, the way in which one goes about finding a job in a new, foreign land and generally the lifestyle it pertains. 

If anyone else also has any tips, stories and/or guidance on the process of earning money on your travels I'm sure it would much benefit the community. 

The advice I am going to give is specific to someone with this profile:

You have a university education, in your mid twenties to late thirties with some white collar work experience in the US or Europe (or Asia, where ever). You want to work in a sector like PR, management consulting, finance, marketing etc., in a city abroad.

Moreover, you are looking for a career in a major city like Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, or Bangkok, and you do not speak the local language well enough to use it proficiently on a day to day basis but plan to live and work there while increasing your proficiency. If you do, this will help you immensely.

I am assuming that you are still in your home city (London, San Francisco, Sydney) and are wondering how to secure a job, or at least a bunch of interview, before you spend a wad of cash on plane tickets and hotels.

I've been in that situation many times for many different countries.

Let me show you how it's done

1. Choose your city

Where do you want to live and work? My experience is mostly focused on Asia Pacific, so I'm going to proceed as if you are interested in Asia specifically. Logistically, this all works easier if you definitely know that you want to work in a specific city. For the purposes of this exercise, it is likely you will have to live in this place for 1-4 weeks from the time you land in your target city to the time you receive your full time offer and begin working – so budget accordingly. Living in Hong Kong for this duration, compared to Bangkok, will produce drastically different costs of living so be aware of this.

Airbnb has consistently provided me with good deals for weekly or monthly stays in Asia, though. Wimdu is another good option.

Good career cities in Asia: Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore

2. Find Companies

Once you know where you want to go, you have to come up with a list of specific companies you'd like to work for. Since you probably are not fluent enough in the local language to use it effectively in the office, your previous work experience will have to make you stand out and give you a unique competitive advantage among local competitors for any job position. Keep in mind that employers are going to have to pay you a higher salary than locals and have to sponsor you with a visa, both of which they don't really want to do unless you prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that your skills are indispensable or at least worth a shot to them, financially.

If you are interested in management consulting in Shanghai, your list might look like this:

-McKinsey

-Boston Consulting Group

-Accenture

-Smith Street Solutions

-Emerging Asia Group

Notice that the last two are smaller outfits that only have a Shanghai office. There are various pros and cons to working with a huge corporation and working with a small outfit. Personally I'd rather work to a small to medium sized company, but everyone is different.

3. Optimize your Linkedin Profile

If you haven't already, get onto Linkedin.com and set up a profile. As you go through the steps to complete your profile, linkedin will tell you, to the percentage, how complete your profile is. Begin adding contacts, particularly managers and colleagues that you've worked with in the past. Request a recommendation from them so that it shows publicly on your profile to anyone who might come across it in the future. Upload a professional looking picture.

4. Find your Allies

In this step, you are looking for a decision maker within each target company that will help you bypass the entire human resources and recruiting process. You are engineering a way for yourself to have an internal company referral without actually knowing anybody in the company, by using some social media hacks.

You will be using linkedin's search function to find these people.

When you are trying to get hired as an expatriate, there will usually be several other expatriates in the office you will end up working with. On the whole, expat managers seem more friendly to semi-unsolicited or totally unsolicited contact from jobseekers than Asian/local managers. You want to find your special expatriate manager who will be your means of securing a final round interview - before you even step on a plane and leave your home country.

At this point you should have set up your linkedin profile, added dozens or hundreds of connections, and sourced several references from former bosses testifying to your technical prowess in your position as well as your ability to "be a team player" and "synergize" and "take one for the team" and "shift paradigms."

If you are from Canada/US/UK/Australia, you want to find someone in each of your target companies with a name like "George Campbell" or "Emma Watson" or something as close to your native country as possible. You are targeting people with positions like "Managing Director" who clearly have authority over hiring decisions. Other things you want to look for are people who went to the same university as you – alumni connections become really strong and important when trying to build a get your foot in the door here.

Simultaneously, if you're French you might want to seek out an "Amelie Petit" or a "Laurent Bordeaux."

If you want to get into management consulting in Hong Kong, your list might look something like this:

1. McKinsey Hong Kong – Carl Kingsley 

2. BCG Hong Kong – Julia Lane 

3. Bain Hong Kong – Edward Miller 

4. Coleman Research Group Hong Kong – Judy Wronski

5. Alphasights Hong Kong – Alexis Weber

I suggest you compile a list of 20 companies with a target manager in each company. Of all the attempts you make, 25-50% will not even respond to you. Some will respond but tell you that nothing is available. Ultimately, you are shooting for about a 25% success rate, which is 5-10 interviews, depending on how many inmails you shoot you.

5. Hack Recruitment

Now you have to create an inmail pitch. An inmail is basically a private and unsolicited message that you send on linkedin to someone with whom you are not yet connected. Since it is unlikely that you will be connected to any people with hiring power in companies you like, you will have to buy inmails.

Yes, buy inmails.

Basically you can pay around 40-50 dollars for one month's worth of inmails. I believe you get 10 inmails when you purchase one month, so that is 4-5 dollars per inmail. This is worth the cost because you are bypassing most of the recruitment process and eliminating the vast majority of your competitors. You are also saving the 30-45 minutes that you'd otherwise spend filling out an online application that would inevitably get deleted anyway. 

In most companies, and particularly abroad or in emerging markets, people hire internally or they do so from internal references. The point of this exercise is to have someone give you an internal reference without having known them for months or years. That's why it is worth the cost.

The desired result of all of this is that a decision maker, someone who wields hiring power, is internally circulating your information, CV, and email around within the office. Once that's happened, you've immediately leapfrogged 9/10 other applicants, whose CVs get deleted into human resources oblivion.

NEVER do online applications. Your CV and application is digitally scanned by a computer to see if your application contains certain keywords and if you don't make the cut, GOOD BYE INTERNATIONAL CAREER.

Get your opportunity from a human being, not from a computer. 

You are going to be sending a private inmail to each of your target managers in each of your target companies. It should be structured something like this:

Dear (Jennifer),

 

-Introduce yourself

-State that you are looking for a position and specify the particular position you are looking for

-State the reasons you are qualified

-State the reasons you want to work there, try to show a uniquely passionate voice while doing this

-Request a skype or phone interview

-Mention that you are still in (London/Sydney/New York) but that you will be arriving in (Hong Kong/Singapore/Beijing) in 4-8 weeks.

This structure does many different things. First of all, sending an inmail will warrant them to at least take a look at your profile and background, because it is very rare that people receive inmails in the first place. Second, this person will be able to immediately look at your academic background, work experience, and your recommendations that you should have sourced by this point.

You are conducting this search from your home city, so you are requesting a skype call or a phone interview, which will significantly reduce the risk for both parties. Primarily, they do not have to spend time and money bringing you in for a live interview if they do not initially like you. More importantly, you do not have to fly to Asia without having several final round interviews lined up already.

You will repeat this with all your target managers. Some will respond, some will not. Some will respond to tell you that no, they are not hiring at this moment. When this happens, request that the two of you keep in touch and connect to them on linkedin. People who have used this strategy have been rejected initially, then been hired elsewhere and worked for a year, only to later on be hired by that same managing director who initially refused them. Your contacts and network abroad are incredibly valuable.

Your goal from this is to have 5-10 phone or skype interviews set up, all during the following week. Since the time zones are different, you will usually have to do these calls at strange hours.

6. Phone Interviews, Final Rounds

Ideally by this point you have set up 5-10 skype and phone interviews, scattered throughout the week.

Do lots of due diligence on each company and each manager. You should know as much as possible about that specific office and about the specific person who is interviewing you. Learn about the prominent projects they have done, so that you can cite them later in the interview and show them that you've done your homework. Also, look at their linkedin profile and see if you have any similarities with this person – if you play a similar sport or went to the same school, you can pick up the interview with some personal banter, which will help both parties become comfortable with the other side and humanize you a bit more to that individual.

Once you go through the skype or phone interview, most of the companies will offer you a final round interview for when you show up in person to that country.

Schedule all your final round and in-person interivews to take place over the course of 1-2 weeks, preferably with no more than 2 in one particular day, so that you can get your mind focused. It's also possible that you will be going through several rounds of interviews with the same company, particularly with companies like McKinsey or Bain that will require you to do case studies during the interview.

Hopefully you've scheduled at least 5 final round interviews before you go. Of this, you will end up with 1-2 offers.

If you schedule 10 final round interviews, you will end up with 2-5 offers that you can negotiate between.

Once the final offer is given, all the other logistical aspects of getting a work permit and visa will be taken care of for you.

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I hope this helps. I've studied, interned, and worked abroad on various occasions in various countries. I've also gone through the recruitment process many times, particularly in Asia Pacific, and have been forced to conduct job searches while not in my target city and while not knowing a single person in the destination. This has forced me to come up with the recruitment hacks I've laid out above.

Feel free to message me with any questions and visit my website, where I feature a lot of success stories of people who have gone abroad for careers and startups.