Your Résumé: The Translated Version

Other than your tax return, your résumé is probably one of the most important and time consuming documents that you will ever write.  You carefully analyze your word choice to ensure that it conveys the correct meaning and frames you in the best light.  You list your skills, your experience and your education.  You delete, you tweak, you move things around until you are satisfied.  Then you have someone else edit it and repeat the process.  The final document consists of precisely chosen verbiage representing everything you have done in your life that would make the company want to hire you.  At least you hope.  You sit by the phone and wait for a call.

The process sounds familiar.  Everyone from the 16 year old high school student to the 55 year old who is considering retirement has written a résumé at one point in their life.  We’ve all applied for jobs and understand that an excellent résumé is key to getting that interview and getting a foot in the door of the company you want to work for.

But what is the company you want to work for isn’t local?  What if it is global?

Your résumé is still important and you are likely to go through all the same steps that you would normally go through when applying for a local job.  But the rules have changed.  Dun dun dun. (Cue the menacing death march music).  All of a sudden you are competing against other individuals that probably have a similar work or educational background (which is typical) but more importantly is that these people are probably local to the company.  If the company is in Thailand, then the fact that they already know the language, know the culture, are familiar with the people, best business practices, customs and all sorts of other affairs naturally makes them more suitable for the job at hand because they are the people that the business is going to be targeting.

So other than taking some extremely intensive Thai language lessons and Googling how to build a résumé that won’t completely throw the HR department for a loop, making them wonder what on earth you were thinking, what do you need to do to ensure that your application doesn’t just get a few chuckles and then end up on the top of the pile of office memos bound for the paper shredder/incinerator?

Well first, you do need to do some serious research about how to act professional.  You may think that professional courtesy is universal but with that mind frame you are definitely not going to get a call back.  What is professional in one country might be unprofessional in another.  Some cultures value getting right down to business while in others, it is expected to spend the first few minutes asking about each other’s personal life.  When accepting another person’s business card, never put it directly in your pocket or handbag or what have you in a casual manner that in America, wouldn’t get a second thought.  In fact, when interacting with someone of Asian descent, it is customary to accept the business card with two hands, examine it carefully before placing it in a hard cover folder of some sort to ensure that it does not get crushed.

Next, you must demonstrate your professional personality.  If they are going to go through the trouble of contacting an international job applicant, they are going to want to know what to expect from you in a professional setting personality-wise.  Are you going to clam up?  Are you often nervous?  Do you approach problems with a cool and collective mindset?  Do you stay goal orientated?  Can you resolve conflict before it gets blown out of proportion?  These are all assets that you are going to have to figure out a way to sneak into your résumé with your choice of wording.

Probably the most important thing to do when applying for a job outside of your locale is to know how to sell your cross cultural skills.  Do you speak a second language?  Have you spent time working with teams of culturally diverse people?  Can you put yourself in the shoes of a minority group to assess what sorts of needs they have that could be addressed?  You need to let potential employers know of any unique experiences that you have had that would benefit their company.  It is a good idea to mention things such as cross cultural work experience, whether you have a positive attitude with new work environments, project successes that focused on multicultural customer segments, volunteer experiences abroad, facility with respect to picking up new languages, travel experience, etc.

International internships, if you have done any, are a great thing to highlight.  And if you already speak a second language, even if it is not their own, you should still mention it as it demonstrates your ability to focus on a complicated task and see it through to the end.

If working internationally is something you would like to do down the road but are not quite sure what you want to do quite yet (after all it can mean a really big move complete with enormous shipping crates and insurmountable rolls of bubble wrap), consider looking into acquiring some of the above mentioned cross cultural skills so that when the time comes, you are prepared. 

Have you ever wanted to work internationally?  What is holding you back?

http://www.transitionsabroad.com/publications/magazine/0609/international_resumes.shtml

http://www.english360.ca/internationalcareerstudies


http://www.black-collegian.com/international/global_resumes_0706.htm 

You’re Retired, Now What?

Building off my previous post entitled “Boomers are Getting Schooled” which talked about why some active boomers are not settling into retirement and their walkers right away, I’d like to talk about some of the preferences that these adults have when considering an active and engaging lifestyle.  And it is not all about travel and keeping oneself entertained while fighting off society’s push to put you on the bench.  Older adults are changing the face of adult education as they go back to school and as they seek to be engaged.  And just as any confident adult, these stubborn strong-willed boomers know what they want and they are not about to settle.

To Recap: What Motivates Boomers

Borrowing from another entry, I will quickly recap the motivation that most people have to pursuing further education within their industry, beyond their career or even into their retirement years and what is probably (in my limited perspective at least) going through their heads.

• Burnout – Another stress filled day at work... and I get to do the same tomorrow. Yay?
• Excess & Affluence – Am I really putting all that I have to good use?
• Sensory Overload – I need to take a step back and get some perspective.
• Depression & Trauma – I don’t want to die without ever having experienced...
• “Danger Age” – When did I get old and how do I make it stop?
• Freedom from Responsibilities – The kids have moved out; I can finally have a life.
• Turning Fifty – My life is half over and what have I got to show for it?
•  Retirement – I’ve got way too much time on my hands.

So what are these people motivated to do?  Well, I’ve already answered that a few times but just to be clear: they want to do something, anything that will convince themselves and the people around them that they are not yet dead in the ground.  They want to learn.  They want to try something new.  And it just can’t be any ol’ “something”.  It has to be exciting and something they never would have had the courage to try before.  And it had better be stimulating. 

Facts about Lifelong Learners: Their Preferences

Some adults actually choose to literally go back to school in order to learn and branch out.  Of the 16 million college students in Canada, over half a million of these students are over the age of 50 (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2006). For you younger generations, that means that for every 32 students in your college business class, there is probably going to be one “older” person sitting at the front asking a lot of questions.  (I’d highly recommend sitting next to this person as they probably study the most, take impeccable notes, and being associated with them will automatically put you in your professor’s “good” book). 

And all this does not even take into consideration the number of lifelong learners who are enrolled in non-credit and other lifelong learning courses sponsored by adult education programs.

Older students going back to school in pursuit of lifelong learning typically have a preference for:

• community or junior colleges, where 50 percent attend, because of the convenience and outreach programs
• intergenerational classes, where they can learn from younger students and share their knowledge with them
• avoiding programs targeted at senior citizens and older adults. They prefer lifelong learners or third generation learners, because it implies continual learning
• classes offered on main campus or branch campuses. However, there is an increasing number who prefer online courses because they are comfortable with technology
• programs such as health services, teacher education, fine arts/humanities, human service and counselling, and entrepreneurship. They also enrol in both credit and non-credit continuing education courses.

Courtesy of David R. Wetzel. [2005] Why Older Adults are Going Back to School. Continuing Education Suite 101. http://david-r-wetzel.suite101.com/why-older-adults-are-going-back-to-school-a266406

Your Options

Going back to school is not the only way that lifelong learners can feel more engaged with life.  The 50+ crowd makes up a good percentage of the global population (you boomers are all advertisers talk about these days).  So it makes sense that in the past decade or so, thousands of programs have sprung up specifically tailored to make active retirees feel like they are still on the ‘up and up’ and haven’t been put on that aforementioned bench or back burner or whatever you want to call it.  Below is a list of some of the more popular options and links to programs that you might consider looking into as they all cater to mature demographics.

Go Back to School

Ryerson University

George Brown College

City of Toronto

ICS Internships/Apprenticeships

Volunteer

OASIS

City of Mississauga

Work Part-Time

Work Less, Live More

ICS Work Abroad

Askville

Travel

ICS Edutourism

iTravel2000

Internationally Diverse Employees are Sexy

You can stop dialling your lawyer to file a sexual harassment lawsuit.  I am not about to encourage CEOs and HR managers to start hiring job candidates because the new employee is a curvy Brazilian supermodel or a well tanned Italian stallion.  Excuse the controversial headline and start thinking “attractive” along the lines of what cultural diversity can contribute to an organization that is faced with the culturally diverse challenges that a globalized workplace delivers. 

So just to be clear, hiring hunky Alessandro because he is an enjoyable piece of eye candy is NOT alright.

It IS alright to hire Alessandro because his education, work experience and professional work ethic make him a good fit for the available position.  And it is perfectly acceptable that his cultural background gives him an added edge in the eyes of the potential employer because the marketing position that he applied for means that he will be dealing with many partner companies overseas in Europe making his heritage an added bonus when it comes to bridging the lines of communication.

Encouraging a culturally diverse workplace where there are people from a variety of international backgrounds is extremely attractive to employers for a variety of reasons ranging from the fact that it is profitable to the fact that it is marketable. 

According to Targeted Diversity Recruitment Centre, a diverse workforce enhances:

1. Connection with the customer:
The needs of diverse customers can be better understood when the workforce itself is diverse.

2. Employee motivation:
Employees maintain productivity when they know that they are treated with dignity and respect.

3. Employee innovation:
A work environment favourable to diversity is open and flexible and also favourable to employee innovation.

4. Employee recruitment and retention:
A workplace that emphasizes interest and concern for its employees as people first is able to attract a higher-quality workforce.

5. Continuous quality improvement:
An environment where employee talents are valued will help to continually improve quality.

Creating a diverse work environment is important to employers.  It demonstrates that they support the inclusion of all ethnicities and all backgrounds; encouraging equal opportunity employment.  Companies that encourage this type of a workplace also tend to be the ones that provide the most support and training for their new hires. 

So how does this relate to you as the job seeker, not the employer?  It would seem like you are out of luck.  After all, you can’t exactly change your genes.  So if you are a pasty white person (no offense to the pasty white people, I am one of them too and I feel your pain when it comes to trying to get a tan in the summer and ending up looking like a lobster instead) there isn’t much you can do about it if the recruitment office is looking to diversify the team and wants someone with a unique ethnic background.

But let’s think about it for a moment.  Are they really hiring based upon skin colour?  Hopefully Probably not.  They are more likely looking for the diverse cultural viewpoint that they assume is coming with that skin colour. They might indeed be looking for someone to join the business development team that deals mainly with East Asia.  They assume that they should hire someone from that regional background with the expectation that this person will be familiar with the cultural expectations and nuances of doing business in Japan, China, Taiwan and maybe even Mongolia. 

They are hiring someone with cultural experience; they are hiring someone who knows how to effectively communicate and deal with these ethnic differences.  Why can’t that be you?

The workplace of the 21^st century is looking for diverse employees so you need to make yourself more diverse.  So what if you are one of the aforementioned pasty white people who grew up in a small town in Northern Ontario where the closest thing you had to Chinatown was sushi you can pick up at the pre-made food section of your local Loblaws Superstore.  I know I did.  But that doesn’t mean much on the grand scale of things.  I still know that many Asian countries are high context cultures, preferring to leave things unsaid and let cultural expectations fill in the blanks.  I know that word choice is extremely important since very few words can have such a complex message where as in low context culture such as America, everything needs to be explicit and fully explained.  I know that harmony, order and self-development are important underlying values and therefore confrontations and other forms of disagreements are often avoided which could come at a cost if the party I am dealing with is put in an uncomfortable situation and I don’t realize it.  And I got all that from my extremely brief International Marketing class at college.  Think about the insight I could gain if I actually travelled to and worked in Japan for a few weeks or even a few months.

There is no reason why we need to be restricted by our cultural diversity or lack there-of.

With all the educational travel opportunities available through the hundreds of organizations, there is no excuse for not being diverse on a global scale.  At the very least you can Google the information but that does not compare to living it firsthand.

Here is my advice.  Consider taking some time away to live it firsthand.  If you are a student, take a semester off or commit your summer vacation to doing an international internship.  If you are a more seasoned professional and don’t feel like you are able to take what amounts to 3-6 months off in order to do an internship, consider completing an educational tourism program where you take an intense two week vacation that is dedicated to learning a new skill and immersing yourself in the culture at the same time.  Imagine that you are a senior journalism editor and you had the chance to travel to Cuba to work on an international magazine alongside Cuban locals, engaging in everyday conversations and business interactions.  It would be not only thrilling but a wonderful career advancing use of those vacations days you have been allocated. 

When it comes right down to it, diversity is here to stay.  Globalization of the workplace is happening.  International internships, edutourism travel programs and further training are the tools you need to adapt.  Because when it comes right down to it, the business world is changing and if you want to stay ahead of the curve and not close off any avenues of opportunity, you need to be prepared.

Remember, diversity is sexy attractive in a good-for-customer-service-and-innovated-work-environment kind of ways and not an Alessandro-is-super-cute-when-he-has-no-shirt-on kind of a way.

http://www.equalitymagazines.com/index.php/why-diversify/why-hire-diversity

http://www.mongabay.com/reference/country_studies/japan/SOCIETY.html

http://www.internationalcareerstudies.com