What No One Tells You About Working Overseas

Working overseas while travelling is the dream for many people. We save up our money, live on a strict budget and do what we can to make the dream a reality.

Getting that visa so we can work and therefore travel for longer, is something many of us do.

Here are ten things no one tells you about working overseas:

1. You will work a similar job to the one you had at home. This one I didn’t except — stupid, I know. You bring with you your skills from home, your personality from home and you still have the same career history. What you did at home is what you will do overseas. Are you an accountant? Accountant firms will love that. Did you work in hospitality? Restaurants will love that.

2. You don’t have the contacts to talk you up. You don’t have your mum who talks about you to her friend who talks about you to her friend who talks about you to her cousin who talks about you to their boss who wants to hire you. No one knows you so you start from scratch at the bottom of the career ladder.

3. There will be boring days. Just like back home, there will be days when all you do is work. You wake up, work, watch TV, sleep, wake up, work, watch TV, sleep. You will get bored. It happens, let it happen, make a plan for something fun in the future.

4. You won’t earn enough. No matter how many hours you work, it might be non-stop for two weeks, it might be three days, you will likely fall short. This is because you are in a new country, there is a new currency and you keep messing up the conversion rates. The train ends up being more expensive than you thought, you pay for that ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity, you forget to budget for groceries. It happens.

5. You will become close with your coworkers. You might not always get along on a deeper level but these people get you through the hours of the day. They have the same worries and concerns around money, they also want to experience life to the fullest, and most likely they are travellers too — we tend to all end up in the same jobs.

6. Working will eat away from your personal time. You will have to put off friends and reschedule the events you were hoping for. You might not get to do everything you wanted to do. But that’s life, a budget is a budget and you need to stick to it.

7. You will be judged. Travellers are supposed to travel around the country, experience every little thing, eat all the local food, go to all the touristy places, avoid all the touristy places, spend all their money getting to obscure towns, live large and die young. People will question your decision to work as much as you do. They forget money doesn’t grow on trees.

8. You will constantly compare your workplace to the one back home. You will compare hours, your coworkers, your boss, the workplace customs, dress code, transport etc. You will compare it to home and maybe it will lead you to reach out and give lots of compliments to your previous boss.

9. There will be awkward culture clashes and confusion. In my new job it seems as though we tell our boss when we are leaving — not the other way around. When my boss asked me if I was going home before my shift ended, I became flustered and unsure if they were being rude and questioning my work ethic. They were just asking if I wanted to leave. Food is another thing. Working in a restaurant means free food. I think my boss thought I was being rude when I didn’t eat at the end of my shift — I assumed we had to pay for it!

10. You must adjust your communication style. My boss is now very direct with me. No jokes, no beating around the bush. If she needs to get her point across to me, it is direct. There were too many misunderstandings before when she tried to be ‘nice’ in her instructions. You also need to be direct when you want something. Do you need time off, do you need advance payment, help with transport, help with your work tasks? Be direct and explain the entire situation. They may not realise you are unfamiliar with certain words, foods, or laws. Yesterday I learned there is a law here regarding working multiple jobs — you need eight hours in between so you can have enough sleep. That’s right, it’s a law. I guess I’ve been breaking international law. Whoopsie.

Working overseas is about as fun as working at home. It’s not. But it helps you get the money you need to get to where you want to go.

What have you discovered while working overseas?

Did you come across any culture clashes?