Working abroad
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The advantages? Cultural, financial, personal satisfaction and vastly enhanced career opportunities The benefits are numerous: visiting a new country, discovering a new culture, often learning a new language, meeting some truly wonderful people, making lifelong friends and normally giving your career a real boost as well!
How many of you have worked abroad, or have considered working abroad?
You probably know that I have spent a considerable part of my career working and living in other countries, Bermuda, Sicily, USA, Canada, Spain and now France. In fact, to date, I have spent 18 years of my career in countries other than the UK, which is more than half of my total working life! It is a fantastic experience and definitely to be encouraged!
The advantages? Cultural, financial, personal satisfaction and vastly enhanced career opportunities
The benefits are numerous: visiting a new country, discovering a new culture, often learning a new language, meeting some truly wonderful people, making lifelong friends and normally giving your career a real boost as well! Not only that you become more open-minded, you learn other ways of living, other ways of working and you get to understand and appreciate different mentalities, values and beliefs.
Even if you aren’t motivated by material gain, it doesn’t hurt to know; typically you earn a better salary abroad and then get a better job and salary on your return because of your experience and knowledge and first-hand experience of an international market!
The disadvantages? Well, I, personally, can’t think of any!
Travel is so easy these days that you don’t even miss your family, in fact, your family and friends usually look on it as the perfect opportunity to visit you for frequent long-stay holidays. My sister-in-law arrived in Spain three weeks after we moved (her excuse was helping to get the house straight…) and she came at least 4 or 5 times every year for all the time we lived there… as did numerous friends. For the children the benefits are even greater, they become bilingual very quickly, my children from not knowing a single word of Spanish when we left England, took only 3 months to be at the same level in school as the Spanish students in their class, and they were being invited to play, to…