Conducting a Successful Cross Regional Job Search

Anita Brick: Hi. This is Anita Brick. And welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking with Jeremy Rickman. Jeremy is the area manager and member of the Corporate Officers Sector of Russell Reynolds Associates, which is, as we all know, one of the largest and most prestigious search firms in the world. Jeremy, thank you so much for making the time.

Jeremy Rickman: It's a pleasure. Absolute pleasure.

Anita Brick: Just to give us a little bit of a frame around this, people listening to this call, they could be listening in from Chicago. They could be listening in from Singapore, or anywhere in between. What are key things to consider before embarking on a cross-border search, or even taking on an international, a global assignment?

Jeremy Rickman: It's a great question, and it's something that I can reflect on both professionally and personally, because having been with Russell Reynolds for seven years in our London office and having previously not worked on an international assignment, the CEO asked me if I would move my family to Chicago three years ago. And so I went through sort of questions and the sort of dilemmas and excitement that you get when faced with a cross-border opportunity.

You know, for me personally, I immediately went into thinking about issues which we'll develop in a minute around career development, family opportunity, seeing the world from a different perspective completely. Is it right to move to an established economy, or would I rather move to an emerging economy? What will that do for my career? Do I need, you know, language skills, how’s relocation going to work? And being an accountant, I immediately started to think about the tax implications and well, of course, you know, we go through those.

But ultimately what it boils down to was, is it right? Would it accelerate my career? Is it something from a personal and a family point of view that would be great for our family? And I can report, you know, after three years that it's done more than enough on those, both of those fronts to be a decision that I'm delighted to have made.

Anita Brick: And that's great. You talk about career development. Is it right for the family? All the different factors. Not to get too personal, but how did you assess whether it was right for you? I mean, was it a family decision? Was it a you decision? How did you come to see that it was actually going to be the right fit for you?

Jeremy Rickman: It wasn't an immediate decision. We've been almost rehearsing this for a few years within the family, never knowing whether it's going to happen, but at least rehearsing it, my wife and my family, around how would we feel if we got the opportunity? If we had the opportunity, where would we want to go? It helps us because when the opportunity came up, we could quickly filter through what we'd been considering and playing with over the previous few years and came to the conclusion quickly as a family, and it was a family decision that it was the right move to make.

It's interesting because two years prior to that, we'd been asked to go to Hong Kong and as much as we'd love to go and work in an emerging market, and I suspect that we probably will in the next five years, my wife was pregnant and it wasn't the right time for us to go there, so we passed on that one.

Then Chicago came up, and because we'd already been through, would we, wouldn't we? And if it comes up, what are we going to do? It was an easier decision for us to make. You know, my wife made it much easier for me because she is very interested in international travel. She's obviously determined to make sure that from a career point of view, I follow the path that I want to follow. And so she was very supportive and it was very, very helpful to have the family and my wife around me to help me make the decision.

Anita Brick: Well, it's interesting, there was an Exec MBA student, I'm assuming from the European campus, because he was saying that I'm a bit apprehensive about uprooting my children for the move outside of the UK. Any suggestions on how to make that move smooth?

Jeremy Rickman: Luckily for me, my kids were relatively young, but in executive search we move people all the time. In fact, I just uprooted a family of nine, two parents and seven children. And boy, you know, the discussions, the dynamics, were all around ... The first point actually is timing. We try to plan these things around the school year, and if they don't work, you'll often find that the executive might go early and the family will follow for a September school year start.

I would definitely consider the timing of it as one important question. The second one is then, depending on where you're going, how good are the schools? Are you going to have to pay for them? Can you use the state education system? Is your employer going to support you from a relocation point of view with schooling, or are you going to be left to do it under your own steam?

Those are very, very important questions that you need to be asking from a family point of view. And plus, even from my wife, I mean, is there a network? Is it an expat network? Do you have to make it up as you go along? The more you head for an emerging market, the more likely there is to be an expat community. And you've just got to decide whether you want to integrate into that or you want to go independent.

Anita Brick: It sounds like one of the things that's really important is to have a lot of clarity within yourself. Also within your family. So you have that support. But from the other side now, putting on not the person who actually made the move, but putting on your executive search hat. What are things that you look for in potential candidates in terms of skills or knowledge or experience or personal qualities? What are things that you look for when you're looking for candidates for these kinds of assignments?

Jeremy Rickman: At the level that we're working at right now in today's market, particularly for those international roles, the first things that we always talk to our clients about beyond technical skills are leadership skills, which are almost the first thing that we talk about. We always talk about competencies, by the way. And most employers are now looking for competencies, and leadership is one of them.

The ability to communicate extremely well, particularly, you know, if you're in a country where it's not your native language, it's not only verbal, but it's written communication as well. Many, many of our clients are constantly thinking about succession planning. They're looking for candidates who can not only do this role, but actually the next two roles above them. And so you need to be clear with them.

Exactly what your specialist subjects are, what you're good at and where you want to head, where you want to go, and position yourself with your resume to make sure you bring out your expertise and it will help to lead them as we do. When we read resumes and CVs, we read it and we start to see a pattern emerging around where a particular individual is going to go.

Ultimately, they're looking for succession planning into their leadership roles, and those leadership skills need to be brought out in the resume.

Anita Brick: You mentioned competency. So that kind of a bucket of leadership and communication are two key areas of competence that you look for. What are some other areas?

Jeremy Rickman: We've made a bit of a science of this, actually. When we bring new executive search consultants into the firm, we train them to interview against five particular competencies, which I will share with you now. And that's boiled down from 24 competencies that you could select from. And these are the five that we have found are the most important.

First one is business acumen. Our clients are looking for people who are inquisitive about the business world, who've developed some business acumen that can be in various different functions and technical capabilities. That's the first one. And I can go into these in a little bit more detail. Once we've gone through the list setting strategy, they're looking for people who are very good at developing new ideas, anticipating market trends, leveraging their own knowledge to help to advance the business.

You know, looking at socioeconomic trends, you know, just what's going on in the economy and how they may impact the business and ultimately be somebody who's a bigger-picture person than what I would call a tactical person. I'm going to digress slightly, if I may. That's a really interesting dynamic going on in China at the moment, where many, many multinationals have set up in China and have got their expat leaders out there, and they are desperately seeking the next generation of leaders to come through who are local Chinese people.

And they tend to be more tactical than strategic. And they're trying to develop those strategic deals amongst the locals such that they can ultimately hand over the region and the leadership of those teams to local Chinese people, rather than having to rotate expats into those roles every day. Setting strategy is a very important one.

Next one is executing for results. You know, when you position yourself to have a new potential employer. Two things worth mentioning. One, your resume has got to be succinct, but it's got to be able to pull out where you have achieved things—what you've done that shows that you personally have successfully implemented strategies through a team or on your own to get things done.

The second point is that when you're being interviewed, some people fall into the trap of telling the story of the company, and they ignore the fact that the client, the employer, wants to know the story of you, of what you did to enhance that company. It’s very subtle, but so many people fall into that trap of just telling a story about a business, rather than it's all about what I did.

And I think you need to use the word “I” and “we” in equal measure to make sure that they're comfortable that you can be an individual contributor and work in teams. But that again, executing for results is another one of the important ones. And the fourth one is leading things, and we've mentioned this already. You know, it's really important from a succession planning point of view that employers are hiring future leaders.

You know, they're looking for people who can develop loyalty amongst teams, you know, create succession management plans, is a great coach, is a great mentor, thinks about diversity, and doesn't just employ people who feel and look the same as he or she does. The best teams are often built with very, very different and diverse groups of people. And, you know, somebody who is a good delegator as well.

I think a lot of us, I mean myself in this, you know, as we're growing up in our business careers tend to do everything ourselves. And then have to at some point learn to let go and delegate. And that's quite a difficult thing to do.

The fourth one, and this, again, sort of boils back down to communication, is building relationships and using influence. Some of the components of that would be, you know, learn how to read others and learn how to use their skills and leverage them to influence others. Get behind and understand people's personalities and their DNA and understand, you know, what makes them tick so that you can influence them better.

Become a good negotiator. Try and negotiate win–win situations with your peers and with your customers, even if it seems like an impossible situation. Be a strong communicator, be compelling, and build rapport with audiences. Make sure that if you're in a room with people, that you're capable of building relationships in a networking sense, with a lot of them, rather than a small number of them. Earn people's respect, you know, lead from the front. We're often looking for people who lead from the front and gain respect by their actions, rather than just their words. You've got to be credible, and to be credible, you've got to be doing things that people want to do and follow.

Anita Brick: All of those things would apply. Whether someone was looking for a position in her home country or really doing something cross regionally. It seems like there are things that become barriers. So even if people have the things that you talked about, which are extremely important, what are some of the things? Let me give you a couple of examples.

That was a question from a student who actually might be one of those next generation in China leaders. He said, I'm wondering, how can I leverage my US and China experience, my technology background, and my business degree together to create a long-term strategy in my career?

Jeremy Rickman: As you ask me that question, I'm thinking about, that's somebody that I'd like to meet.

Anita Brick: There you go.

Jeremy Rickman: Because he was.

Anita Brick: Anonymous, unfortunately.

Jeremy Rickman: Yeah. That's a shame in a way, because here's somebody who already has a sector focus. They're technology oriented. They've got the education that the client would be interested in. They've already worked in China and they've already worked in the US. My comment to them would be, what a great start. I mean, what a great background. You know, you're very unique already, in a sense, because you've got a great mix of experience.

What I would then say is you've got to take control of this now, and you've got to decide what exactly you want to be with that experience. You've got to start focusing on the areas that you want to be an expert in. By doing that, you can then go and approach a number of different places to find your next role, which would be to get to know the executive search community, develop a list of those companies that you'd love to go and work for, and make direct approaches to them.

Don't forget about the job boards and don't forget about LinkedIn. You'd be amazed—or maybe you wouldn't—but executive search firms are all big subscribers to LinkedIn. We use it not only to find people, but actually to reference people. And you must present yourself well on LinkedIn. The experiences that this particular individual has got already is a great start though, and I would say, just make sure to reiterate that based on that great, great bedrock of experience, you then are very clear with potential employers about what you want to do, and you get to them using those various different tactics that I've described.

Anita Brick: A good point about LinkedIn. I mean, and I think your point is well taken. And if the person who submitted that question is listening, you're more than welcome to call me, and I'm more than happy to connect them to you.

Jeremy Rickman: Yeah. Of course.

Anita Brick: Yeah, I think that's— the question then becomes in LinkedIn specifically, what should be in that profile? Some people just put their entire resume into the profile. And then if you're looking to, let's say, someone else was saying that he's been in consulting for about 20 years, would really like to work in the US, which he hasn't done, but he's worked in other parts.

He lives in Europe and he's lived in Asia. What would be some signals that someone with really cross-regional experience now wants to gain some experience in the States? What would be some triggers for you, if you or someone who is doing research for you at Russell Reynolds was looking for someone like him.

Jeremy Rickman: In no particular order, I'm going to give you the caveat: too much information is a killer. We work in chunks of, you know, 30 seconds, if you like. It's almost like a law firm. The old analogy around a resume shouldn't be more than two pages long, is as relevant today as it's ever been, because we don't have time to read four or five or six pages.

So you've got to be concise, and it's just as important in your resume as it is in LinkedIn, because your LinkedIn hopefully is a snapshot of your resume that's going to get people's attention. So we need the roles, we need the date, we need the location. You've got to find a way to put in bold or bring out that.

You've got a huge amount of international experience. Again, I'm addressing the person who wants to work in the US. An employer is going to look at your education, is going to look at the roles that you've done, is going to look at the countries that you've worked in, and he's going to be looking for good career progression, as well as a link between all of the roles that you've done, such that you're not perceived as a generalist, but they could quickly see where you would fit into their organization.

So I would organize the information to make sure that there is a clear link to what you want to do next, and that you make it clear that you want to work in the US. But I don't think that that person that is living overseas and wants to come to the US is necessarily going to find the next role simply by having a really well-organized LinkedIn profile.

And that comes back to, yeah, there are various strategies and tactics that I must use to get to that next employer. And I've talked about some of those already: direct approaches, executive search job boards. And I would say the other thing is, if you really want to stand out from the crowd, I would organize a trip to the US or to whichever country you want to go and work in, and I would take 3 or 4 days down there, organize some meetings with executive search consultants.

I would do direct approaches to particular employers, and I would try to build a set of meetings and really show your interest in that particular country by going and spending some time there, because a telephone conversation with somebody 10,000 miles away is very different from having them sitting in your office where they're showing you real commitment to wanting to be there.

Anita Brick: That's a really good point. And there was a question asking that, do you need to go? And it was an Exec MBA student who said, there was no opportunity, it didn't make sense to him to go, but you have to be on the ground. I mean, I hear that over and over and over again. Why would someone take you seriously without that level of commitment?

Jeremy Rickman: You're absolutely right. You've got to find a way to get out there because you know you're going to stand out from the crowd. This is specific to executive search, but I guess it would be specific to an employer as well. I am more likely to work with somebody as a candidate— My company is more likely to work with them if I've met with them.

You know, if I had a face to face meeting with them and subsequently, once I've met with them, they drop me a note every three months or so. And when I— they ask me this question when I meet them: how often should we stay in touch? And I say, look, don't inundate me, don't bombard me, just remind me every three months.

Today I had a note from somebody saying, hey, we met, you know, 90 days ago. Just a quick reminder of what's going on out there. And I've got an opportunity for him. And it helped that that communication channel was open. And the fact that I'd met him meant that I could immediately remember him and think, yeah, you'd be a great candidate for this search.

So long story. But yeah, if you can get in the door and meet with people and show the willingness to get into the country that you want to work in, then I think it will. It will make you stand out from the crowd.

Anita Brick: So that's a very positive thing to do. Are there any things that you would say are really red flags for you that would make you want to run in the other direction?

Jeremy Rickman: Let me spin this slightly differently in a way, because I think there is one big red flag that comes up in every search that we do that I think everybody should be aware of, and that is relocation. These days, given the state of the economy and housing prices, you've got to make yourself as flexible as possible in the sense of you're owning a house or you're renting a house.

Are you able to move quickly? Are you tied to a location for a while and it would be difficult to extricate yourself. Anybody who's got a lot of ties, and they may well be financial ties, that are difficult to get out of, is going to be less interesting because, you know, many employers have got to the point now where they're not prepared to put money on the table to buy out housing prices that are underwater.

It's almost become a threshold beyond which my clients and employers won't go. They will go some of the way, but I think you can make it easier for them. But just being in a position of flexibility, you know financially, that it's an easy move that you can make. So that's one of those big red flags that you've got to try and get rid of.

Anita Brick: I've heard two very different sets of answers around the next question that was submitted by an alum. Some people say if you don't have ties to a region, it makes you a rather undesirable candidate. I was talking to some alumni who are living in the States, grew up in India. I want to go back to India and they're getting resistance because they haven't been there in 10 years.

Are there some ways to bridge the gap? Number one, if you don't have a strong anchor there, you haven't really lived or worked in that community in a while.

Jeremy Rickman: I'm going to give you two perspectives. The first one is it can be difficult, and you've got to find a way of working your network. It's twofold. It's your local network in your current country. And let's take India as an example. Tap into people that you've worked with that you know, that you've maybe studied with, who have better connections into that country and work their networks if you can.

It's quite difficult. You've got to be very creative about it. But the second perspective is that I wouldn't fall into the trap of being concerned that having no network means you're not going to find employment. I used to present to the London Business School, to the MBA students there, and we talked constantly about the BRICS countries, and all the conversations we're having with our multinational clients right now are around Brazil, India, and China.

You know, I'm going down to a Fortune 20 company tomorrow to spend two hours with their HR groups, talk to them about our businesses in Brazil and India and China, and how they can find candidates for those particular countries where their growth is absolutely explosive. So the fact that you don't have a network down there right now, I don't think is as important.

I think it's finding the way to get to the employers who are desperately looking for talented people to go and work in those economies, and it's being creative about direct approaches to them and working with the local recruitment. There are jobs out in those particular areas, and I think you don't necessarily need a well-established network to go and find them.

Anita Brick: I would make a pitch for GTS, which is our Global Talent Solutions, where job postings are, because we have a global employer development team that is virtually always on the road, looking for opportunities across the globe. And certainly if you're listening, go in and create a job agent that pushes the jobs from the specific locations where you have an interest to your email box. So at least you'll know that they're coming in and a bridge has already been built there, and that can help mitigate some of the risk to employers, too.

There was a question. It was an unusual question, and it was along the lines of positioning, which you talked about before. And this Executive MBA student said, how should I design my profile if I'm interested in being employed or hired by a foreign company in my home country?

From my point of view, after my MBA, there are two ways of being introduced through your CV and letter. One is as a quote unquote national product. Or is it better to position myself as an international product? I've never heard that question, that kind of question before.

Jeremy Rickman: So the interesting thing about that question is that most companies, let's take US-based companies, if you look at their employee base, they struggle because many of the employee base don't want international assignments. And I think what I'm hearing from this particular Executive MBA student is I want to get into a foreign domiciled company, but in my own home country, and if you can bring that flexibility of being able to travel internationally.

And I think this goes for anybody out there who's looking for a new employer today, those employers are far more interested in individuals who have already got over the hurdle of, am I prepared to travel? And I don't mean travel from the home country on a day to day basis. I mean to do this job. And then the probability is that my next job is going to be overseas.

Those individuals who are open minded and flexible have got a far better opportunity right now to find a new role, because so many of the growth opportunities in companies, whether it's foreign domiciled companies in the home country or vice versa, I'm looking for people who are able to travel. So I would say when you're designing your profile to specifically answer the question, I would say you make sure that as I said before, you bring out your education, you bring out your international experience, you bring out the fact that you are prepared to travel.

I'm very interested in travel and that you bring out those specific areas of expertise around those competencies that I have described that makes an employer look at this and say, I have to see this person. They've clearly got the flexibility and experience and skills that I'm looking for, so I must see them. So it's all about positioning yourself to open that first door.

And part of it is having the ability to move overseas. I found, you know, there were very few people, lucky for me, in my firm that actually wanted to live and work overseas. And that puts me in a category of probably the top 3 percent of people in the company who are prepared to do it. And it's given me leadership opportunities that I might otherwise not have been able to get in my home country.

Anita Brick: I agree with you. I think that is true. I think that that can be true for most parents too, because they may not want to move around. They want to create more stability. And we see that, talking to people. And then on the other hand, if you can highlight that you are exactly what you said—someone who is flexible, someone who is willing to move around—it gives you a stronger positioning.

When you think about a layer on top of that, what would be more attractive to someone in the search community, or from your perspective? You talk to clients. From hiring managers, is it someone with a fairly narrow and deep amount of experience, or is it someone who is more of a general manager who has experience cross-functionally, or is it very dependent on the situation?

Jeremy Rickman: Yeah, I mean, it is quite dependent on the situation. I worked in Mars Confectionery, where there was a premium on being very broad, and they move people around between the different functions, you know, [...] responsibilities, human resources. And so they don't like people who are particularly narrow. And then you go to a different employer where it's all about technical expertise and being very strong in one particular function.

And I would say the answer, I'm going to fudge this a little bit. I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle. I think there's a danger that if you're too broad, you are going to confuse your future employer, who's going to look at your resume and say— they're going to want to try and put you into a box.

As much as you might not want to be put in a box, they're going to be looking for a string of experiences, business skills that makes them say, OK, given that set of criteria, that set of experiences, this person could run this or they could do that. If you're too broad and too thin in your experience, it's going to put them off a little bit because they're just not going to quite know where you're going to fit.

Conversely, if it's all about one particular thing and that's all you've done, you're more likely to be slotted into a technically oriented tactical role and then hopefully develop into a broader general management role than if you've gone a little bit broader and got a little bit more experience.

So I would always encourage people in their careers to make sure that they have over time, from a core strength—in my case, finance—developed themselves beyond that and added on different skills through doing different roles. But I think there has to be a common theme that an employer can read into your resume that doesn't confuse them and make them think, wow, this person is just all over the place. From a generalist point of view.

Anita Brick: Well, and I would agree with you, I think it goes back to something you said at the very beginning: that you do have to have some depth. You have to be relevant in a way that's meaningful to them, but you also have to have the strategic perspective. And if you're too narrow, you can't do that. But if you're too broad, as you said, you'll be a little bit to a lot of different places and probably not have the depth of expertise to really ratchet you in, especially if there's risk involved in moving you to a location where you haven't worked before.

Jeremy Rickman: Correct. And from an employer's point of view, if they are going to move somebody from an international location, that obviously carries a higher risk tariff, you know, in terms of will this person fit? Well, I think as a result of that, they're going to be more risk averse and they're going to pick the people that more clearly have the skills and experiences that they're looking for.

So I think the broader people will probably struggle more than the people who have stuck to a particular discipline and then broaden out from there. They're also— by the way, one of the other really important things to think about is cultural fit. What we found is when we place a candidate, the ones that fail in the first 12 months, the majority of them fail because they're a poor cultural fit.

I would urge the people listening that they need to make sure that a) they are comfortable in the culture of the country, that they're choosing, and that they've spent enough time in it to know the cultural nuances, but b) that they're comfortable in the culture of the company that they're going to, because they can be very different. And, you know, I'll give you some examples.

I mean, GE versus Unilever, very, very different styles of companies. And you've got to make sure that you understand the type of companies that you're going to be successful in. Because when you're traveling internationally and it's about cultural fit, you don't want to be in a situation where within 12 months you're looking for another role.

Anita Brick: It's true. An Exec MBA student said she landed a new role. She's about to embark on it. Any advice that you would give her as she's just starting that new assignment?

Jeremy Rickman: Yeah, I've got four. Integration: There's a danger that you work so hard at being successful in the job that you're doing, and you focus just on the job that you forget that you've got to integrate within the business on a professional and a social level. So many employers will judge the success of an individual not only by their contribution, but how well they've integrated into the organization. And people always fall into this trap. Spend as much time doing your day job as you do getting to know people and networking within the organization so that you can build your support network within that organization.

Second thing, I've mentioned it already, is cultural sense. You know, be aware of the culture of the company. Seek out people who can help you to understand how to be successful and what it takes to be successful in the way that you operate, in the way that you are, in the way that you communicate with people, in the way that you present yourself.

You know, be sensitive to the fact that every company has its own culture. You need to be able to morph into that culture to be successful, be open minded, go into it with a sense of, you know, half full. You're excited about the opportunity. You're going to make things happen, you're going to make things work. And if you hit some hurdles, jump over them, go round them, find ways of getting through them.

Because, you know, when you've moved overseas and you're working at a new employer and you've moved your family, you know, you hit some hurdle and if you're not resilient, it can quickly become not so much fun as you thought. And I think you've got to be as open minded as you can be and find solutions to problems to make yourself and the whole move successful.

And the fourth one is really, really tactical. But we haven't talked about it at all. So I'm going to talk about it quickly now: visa management, work permit management. I've come over here on an L-1 visa that gives me a maximum of seven years to be renewed after three years, and then another two. And to, you know, be aware that there may well be a clock ticking and it may force you to be thinking about what your next move is once the visa has expired.

You've got to be working with your employer on what's the length of time they want you there. What's the exit strategy? Is it staying and finding a way to become a national or get out of the US and get a green card? Be thinking about that. But time flies by. It's incredible. I've been here nearly four years now. Those things are going to catch up with you quickly. So go into it understanding that you've got to be on top of it and you've got to be working on what that exit strategy or the future looks like if you're going to stay.

Anita Brick: Well, very good point. I mean, actually, you read my mind. An alum had asked that question, and it sounds like he is in the beginning of year seven and he's done six years of his assignment. He has one more. And that was exactly his question, because— and of course, you have to be present and doing a great job, but a lot of people forget their network.

And then when they want to reenter their home country or whatever the next place is for them, they just have a lot more work to do than if they had kept those relationships up all along. And I know everybody's busy, but it seems like that is so crucially important.

Jeremy Rickman: Yeah. In my role in executive search, I see so many people who have moved overseas from the head office of their company and have moved around and have been away for 5 to 10 years, and then they decide it's time to come home. I'll be honest, more often than not, there are not very many roles in the head office for that person once they've been away for so long, and it's not because they may not be qualified to do the jobs, but there are only a finite number of roles within that head office.

My advice to them is very, very, very clear. You've said it: work the network. Stay in touch with people back at the home office. Make sure that you've got connections around the world in your organization. That means that you don't hit a dead end, that there is always another move for you. And if you want to get back to the home office, that you've maintained those connections and you've stayed in touch to the point where when an opening comes up, you can be flexible enough to move back instead of dictating the timing to them.

It's tricky. It's very tricky. And I would also say be prepared when you go overseas for the fact that there may not be a role for you when you get back, and as a result of that, be open minded about when it's time to come back, starting to work with other opportunities and talking to recruiters and search consultants and using those tactics that I've already described to start thinking about, If I don't get a job back in my home office of my home country, where else am I going to find employment?

Anita Brick: It's a good point, and I think it's like you said, stay in touch, stay current. Because also, people at the home office, the senior team is going to change, certainly, over a period of 5 to 10 years.

Jeremy Rickman: Correct.

Anita Brick: So your network may not be as viable as it once was.

Jeremy Rickman: So yeah.

Anita Brick: Really crucial. Very very good point. Do you have time for one more question?

Jeremy Rickman: Of course. Yeah.

Anita Brick: Unlike the people we were just talking about who have an assignment and are thinking about how to onboard properly or how to think about the next assignment when this is done, if someone has just contemplating this, what do you think are kind of the three most important things to do if you are embarking on a cross-border job change?

Jeremy Rickman: OK, I'm going to try and stick to three.

Anita Brick: That's OK. I won't hold you to it.

Jeremy Rickman: Develop a strategy. So what I mean by that is work out where you want to go. The clearer you are about where you want to be, the easier it is to focus on opportunity and to give clarity to potential employers. And I'm going to say again—and I'm going to, you know, you're going to laugh because I'm going to be boring—but don't underestimate the magnet that is Brazil, India, China, and frankly, other emerging markets.

It's funny, my colleagues in China have told me to stop calling it an emerging market because frankly, it's emerged. But nonetheless, it's a massive employer right now to be targeted. And if you have the flexibility, think about those three countries in particular. Not only are they very, very big employers right now, but the experience that you would get from them will stand you in good stead wherever you go from a career point of view, anywhere else in the world.

So the first thing is to develop a strategy for where you want to be. The second thing is, and in fact, it's linked to something I've just said, make sure that you have an exit strategy. Make sure you're thinking about where might this lead and where might this go? Do I want to be away for 20 years? Are my ties so strong to my home country that I want to be back in five years? So be thinking about what you might want to do next.

The third one, I think I'd have to say, once you’ve decided where you want to be, I think you've got to work out how are you going to get there? And that comes back to working your network, having direct contact with potential employers. You know, I hate to say it, but many employers don't want to pay executive search fees. And they are delighted when people write directly to them enough to be considered for new roles. So, you know, work the direct contacts.

Make sure you develop relationships with executive search consultants in the local country. As much as I'd like to tell you that if you get to know your local search consultant in Chicago who says, yeah, sure, I'll introduce you to my colleague in Sao Paulo, they may well do, but you should also make sure that you get to know those people in Sao Paulo. They're all on the net. They're all on the websites. You make direct contact with them. The final piece is just those job boards.

Anita Brick: Some people say job boards are a waste of time. What kind of job boards would you consider to be MBA level, executive level, holding those kinds of opportunities?

Jeremy Rickman: I talk about it in the sense that I know people need to work it, but I don't actually operate in that world at all because I'm always doing executive search for people. So I don’t really know the answer to that.

Anita Brick: That’s OK. Let me … I'll throw in a couple of points. One is, well, as I mentioned before, the Chicago Booth GTS, which is where the job postings are. And then some people will say if you go to professional associations, functional industry ones, they actually do a fairly good job of two things.

Number one, their compensation information is usually pretty good. And secondly, you may find more targeted jobs in that way as well. And then some people would say, you know, of course, go and talk to the alumni who are in the different— I mean, there are literally dozens and dozens of alumni clubs around the globe. Talk to them and get some insight locally: where do people find jobs and and how? And that may give you another layer of information.

Jeremy Rickman: Well, that's helped me out. Thank you for that. I know the answer to the question now.

Anita Brick: Well, there you go. There you go. Any final words of wisdom you'd like to share?

Jeremy Rickman: Yeah, I know I'm going to go right back to the beginning. From a personal perspective, I am absolutely delighted that I made an international move. And as much as it is, you know, to the US, which has been a fantastic experience, you know, if you want me to do this again in a few years time, I'm going to do my best to make sure that I'll be in Hong Kong or Singapore or Beijing the next time you speak to me, because, you know, that's where a lot of the action is happening, and I can't wait to try and get involved in it.

So I would say, you know, to anybody listening to this, don't be afraid of an international move. It will pull your family together. It will open your eyes to seeing the world from a completely different perspective, and it will undoubtedly enhance your career. So grab it if you can, with both hands.

Anita Brick: And it sounds like it's possible, but you have to plan and you have to execute and you have to be committed.

Jeremy Rickman: Correct.

Anita Brick: Jeremy, thank you so much. I know you're super busy and thank you so much for making the time.

Jeremy Rickman: It's a pleasure. Absolute pleasure.

Anita Brick: And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.