Ditching My Mom for a Job Abroad was a Really Good Decision.
The back story:
I’m from London and, until about 14 months ago, I’d never lived outside of the UK. I’m 27 years old now, so that’s a good two and a half decades spent audibly groaning about the same gray skies.
If I’m honest, I’ve been a pretty lucky boy in my career. Of course, you make your own luck by doing the right things and being in the right places at the right time, blah, blah, blah. But to land a gig as a copywriter at what was (at the time) one of the internet’s biggest startups — about a month after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in journalism — was pretty good going, I’d say.
Especially when you consider that this was around the time the global economic crisis was making previously fresh-faced graduates look like they’d served time in Vietnam and come back with horrible stories to tell, thanks to the stress of trying to find a decent job.
Then & now:
Wind the tape (or skip the blu-ray disc, whatever) forward about four years or so, and here I am tickling the keys of my MacBook in the Spanish capital, Madrid, where I now live and work as Head of Content at Tyba.
In between then and now, there were, of course, some good times and some shitty times, both personally and professionally. But when I got an offer to work for a company that has the balls to take on such a bold mission (fixing recruitment) — in a city where the sunshine basically holds a season ticket — I really couldn’t say no.
Are you sure about this?
Friends, family, and even my own conscience had a good go at playing ‘Devil’s Advocate’ with my decision to move abroad.
— But, do you actually speak any Spanish? — Do you actually know anybody there?” — What about being away from your family? Aren’t you gonna miss them?
Best decision ever:
In the end, though, my adventurous, curious, and ballsy side won the mental arm wrestle, and like a cheeky, thieving plumber, I took the plunge. The reality is that moving to Madrid for a new career challenge has turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made*.
So, for those of you considering packing your bags, boarding a flight and moving abroad to earn your keep, I thought I’d share a few reasons — based on my own experience — as to why it can be a sweet decision — especially while your hairline is still a respectable distance from your eye line.
You’ll become a human Swiss Army Knife.
Moving abroad teaches you how to adapt and develop Chuck Norris-level flexibility in the way you handle tough situations.
OK, in my case, I had already been to Spain a few times. But lounging around in your Speedos in a hotel resort swimming pool and shovelling sangría and paella into your mouth a couple of times is not the same as living somewhere.
Here’s an example: here in Madrid, most banks close their doors at around 2pm during the weekdays, and only one or two of them are open for business at all on a Saturday. That means you need to get all your bureaucratic shit together before lunchtime, otherwise you’ll be waiting another day, my friend.
Coming fresh from London, that was a bit of a surprise for me, to say the least — especially as banking is fairly high on the list of things you need to take care of pronto when you move abroad.
But while it can be a bit of a pain in the backside to suddenly change the way you normally do things, you actually end up becoming more flexible, quicker to react to situations and also more empathetic towards other people.
And if or when you do eventually move back to your home country, you’ll have a ready-made example of your ability to adapt, which you can whip out like a secret weapon in an interview setting, the way your grandma whips out naked baby photos of you at inappropriate moments.
Trust me, adaptability will come in handy in any job you have in the future.
Your career ladder shrinks.
We all know that finding a job in any country is no walk in the park — unless you’re looking for a job as a professional dog walker. The job market for so-called millenials is as competitive as a game of Scrabble between family members at Christmas.
I happened to touch down in Spain when its economy was just starting to recover from a powerful roundhouse kick it (and many other countries) had been dealt by the global financial crisis. Since living here, a few people have kindly reminded me of how lucky I am to find a job I enjoy, as a foreigner, in a country where jobs are scarce for indigenous citizens.
But here’s the thing: if you have your metaphorical house in order, know the specific field you want to work in, and have done your homework on which countries are looking to beef up in that field, the door to your dream job suddenly creaks open a little wider.
On top of it, you have more chance of being given more responsibility in a shorter time.
For example, a lot of people aren’t aware that Madrid actually has quite a healthy startup scene. Yet you don’t really see herds of eager tech talent sprinting over here as fast as they do to, say, London or Berlin or San Francisco, for example.
The upside is that there’s consequently not as many tech cooks crowding the Spanish ‘startup kitchen’, so there’s not as much competition as an ‘outsider’ for the jobs that you want. You also get major brownie points for being a native English speaker. It carries a lot more weight in the rest of Europe (and beyond), especially in my field (marketing & communications) because a lot of companies always have one eye on going global.
You can grow an extra tongue.
OK, I must confess: after more than a year of living in the capital city, my Spanish is still mas o menos, shall we say. That’s partly because I spend most of my waking hours at work, where the language of our modus operandi is English — and partly because I’ve sucked at making more of an effort to practice.
But there are so many positives to having a second language up your sleeve (or even a third if you’re feeling greedy). For starters, people who speak more than one language tend to earn more.
Then there’s the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, the companies looking to grow beyond their immediate borders — which, in the tech scene is most companies — are more likely to make you a key part of that on both a national and international level.
It’s a funny thing, but people also perceive you to be smarter when you’re multilingual; it’s like when Super Mario tramples on a mushroom: instant level-up. It turns out there might actually be some science behind this thinking, too.
Your address book will get fatter.
Facebook, Twitter and all their socio-technological cousins have made the whole world one big, happy, connected family. OK, maybe not necessarily happier, but we’re all far more connected now than at any point in history. Fact.
When you work abroad, you construct new relationships, you expand your circle by adding new people who work in your field, and all of this happens on an international scale. So when the time comes to move on to new pastures, you can keep these relationships tucked in your professional pocket and use them to your advantage in future roles.
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The takeaways:
The more miles you clock up on your personal dashboard, the more difficult it is to drop everything like it’s hot and set yourself up in another country.
Therefore, it’s a good idea to take on a job abroad earlier in your career, so that you can start stacking up experiences and skills that’ll ultimately make you stand out from the crowd.
And if any of the aforementioned isn’t enough of a reason to stuff a suitcase with essentials and say sayonara to your mother, the stories you’ll be able to tell about your experience certainly will be — trust me.
As for me? Well, I’m still very much in the middle of my adventure abroad and loving every minute so far. And none of it would have happened if I hadn’t closed my eyes, inhaled sharply, and taken a leap.
So, my advice to you? Well, in the words of a well-known sportswear brand: JUST DO IT!
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*A curry I recently destroyed comes a very close second.
You can read this original post on Tyba, if you’re feeling curious. There, you’ll also find some other bits and bobs I’ve written.
