Hi guys. Welcome back to Global Business Environment, course two. We're in module five and this is part one. In this module we're talking about, how do you get a position as an ex-patriot? What's it like to live and work abroad? One of the things that you might want to consider first, are the factors for success. The factors that might go into your company deciding that you are a good fit for a position in a foreign country. I have here a site, whatishumanresources.com, whatishumanresource.com. And it has some of the factors you might consider, or the company might consider when looking at sending you abroad. And we see a variety of factors that are pretty obvious. For example, do you have good cross cultural awareness? Are you able to look at your own culture, but also are you open-minded about other cultures? We see at the very top there language skills. Will you be able to survive in the foreign country and also successfully work in a business environment with your language skills? Do you need to be trained to acquire those? Will the company do that for you? There's a whole other host of interpersonal skills that are considered important for most businesses when looking at sending you abroad. I remember when I was applying to work for American Express in Mexico City frankly, one of the most important things was the fact that I was already fluent in Spanish, and the fact that my wife was from Mexico. So it was assumed that I had this ability to operate in a cross-culture environment. That I would be able to pay attention to the differences to, to listen to be aware of non verbal communication issues. And so I think that you need to be prepared to present your case if you decide to apply for a position abroad that you have these skills and characteristics, and to develop them further because the experience working abroad will definitely test those skills. I have some other data on background the function area of background that you might consider being most in demand for expatriate opportunities. when, when looking at your portfolio and if you would do well abroad you need to look at what is in demand. And you can see that operations and research and development legal are at the top of the list these are positions or functional areas in business that businesses tend to rotate people through foreign assignments to, to give them experience, to provide experience in the foreign market to educate in the foreign market about corporate culture. To learn from that foreign market and bring it back to headquarters, et cetera. Human resources is the bottom of the list you might assume that's because it's very important for human resource department in a foreign subsidiary to have knowledge about local hiring practices, etcetera. And marketing there at the bottom in sales as well. So it tends to be more functional areas that tend to be more focused on positions that have less interactions with the local market, per say, and more on understanding some discipline in business. Here's some more data I'd like to show you where what are common countries that expatriates come from, where do they originate? And this is some data from about two years ago, 2012, and we see that a little less than half of expatriates in the world based on this survey of Fortune 500 companies little less that half, about 42% come from Western Europe or the United States. And almost 68 almost 60% originate from the emerging markets. That shifted, it used to be the case that it was less common for the emerging market managers to have opportunities to go on expatriate assignment. So this is great if you live in emerging market, you should be aware that it's becoming more and more common for you to have opportunities to go abroad. In fact, when I worked for American Express in Mexico City, several of my colleagues were hired in positions back in the United States, we call that inpatriation. They are from a foreign country working in the subsidiary, and they go in as foreigners so for them, they're expatriates because they're not from the United States. But they're inpatriates because they're going to the headquarters and giving bringing knowledge and skills that they've acquired. Why do companies hire expatriates? What are they interested in? Business development as I said extend the corporate culture, to develop individuals and help them gain skills knowledge, management skill acquisition abroad. To replace perhaps missing talent that isn't available yet, that hasn't been developed in new markets sometimes, there's specific problems that are tackled or approached by a by an emb, by an expatriate. And so, there are whole host of reasons that companies use or consider when looking at sending expatriates to new markets or any markets. Expatriate sending expatriates abroad has stayed the same or increased for the most part based on this survey and so I encourage you to look more at the data that we have. Here on this site you can see that expatriates are expensive so they are not cheap for companies. They're going to take the decision very carefully there going to consider a lot of factors. And the truth is that expatriate failure rates are quite high it's very common for companies to send people abroad and for the assignment not to work out. We're going to look later at why that might be. What some of the issues are that expatriates face when going abroad. To finish up this part I just wanted to show you. Some information from a blog site afrom provess, a professor Sebastian Reich who is a professor in Spain and he has some data here on the most common locations for expatriates. The United States is the highest has the highest percentage of expatriates received, 20%, China's at 13%, and the United Kingdoms at 12%. You can see what are considered to be difficult assignments, and this can be for a variety of reasons, which again we will look at here in the future. So this doesn't mean these are the only places that are potential spots for you to land as an expatriate, but it is something to consider where the most positions are as you start to consider whether it would work for you. So, this will end part one, and we'll come right back at it in part two. And look at some other issues that you might face being an expatriate. Thank you very much. See you next time.
