If you are a repat coming home at Christmas, no doubt you have started to think about your next career move once back in Australia.
According to expats in our 2022 Australian Expat Career Survey, 50% of expats spend a year or more planning their career return. For those repats who have not started, while it can be tempting to delay your career planning to post Christmas lunch and a beach holiday, I strongly advise repats coming home in December to start their planning now. Yes, there will be hirers and recruiters who only want to talk to you when you get home, but there is a lot of preparation you need to do before you even start these conversations and definitely things you can do before you board the plane.
Here is my recommended October checklist for inbound repats.
Clarity
October should be the month where you get or are already clear about what you want. You should know if you are looking for a like-for-like role, whether you are open to a side-ways move or whether you are looking for a complete career change.
You should have a clear idea of what you are looking for including the sectors and organisations that interest you, your preferred working style (hybrid, remote, full or part-time) and location.
If you have a job or work in an industry that isn’t dominant in Australia, you will need to be clear on what pivots you are prepared to make and what your deal breakers are.
And by now, you should have started to think and prioritise your lifestyle factors including where you want to live, potential school transitions for kids and pet relocation.
Potential employers will respond a lot better if you have a clear idea of what you want and what you are prepared to do. Recruiters are not career coaches so they will be expecting you to have this clarity.
This clarity will take you time, particularly the longer you have lived outside of Australia so make sure you give yourself the space to do this important job.
Positioning
This is how you tell your story and how you position what you offer to the Australian market. If your organisation or role doesn’t exist in Australia, you will need a way to translate your global story into a local one. Reaching out to existing Australian networks or people in your industry can help you shape your positioning and potentially identify any challenges you may need to overcome. This work can start before you leave.
Market trends and mapping
The process of understanding local market trends and mapping your market can be started any time in your preparation runway but the earlier the better.
Any local Australian networks are an obvious starting position but if you don’t have current networks, look for relevant industry groups and associations.
You can also look to resources like the InSync monthly newsletter which will have a monthly ‘jobs in the news’ summary, the AFR’s work and careers newsletter or follow the career’s section in The Australian.
Reconnecting with your network – be BBQ ready!
For people coming home at Christmas, I say don’t underestimate the power of conversations at a backyard barbeque. Sometimes these social occasions are the perfect place to test out your positioning, see if what you are looking for resonates with strangers and to gather intel on the market. Say yes to every invitation!
But to be ‘barbeque ready’, you need to have done work on getting clear about what you want.
Understand and use the Christmas lock-down to your advantage
Many organisations switch to ‘holiday-mode’ early in December with senior decision makers not all back in the office until after Australia Day. This is not to say that job discussions don’t happen during this time – but you need to be mindful that decisions and conversations might be slow. While it might be a bad time for new roles and decision making, it is a great time for soft diplomacy and networking. Increasingly you will find senior executives working in January at different times. January is used for planning and there are generally no major business events, conferences or meetings so executives can be more relaxed and available for conversations. This is an ideal time to reach out to new and existing contacts in your network for those informal conversations.
MY BIG CAVEAT: If you are coming home with a pet and have not started THEIR repatriation journey, then good news…you probably have another three months to plan your career transition! You need at least 6-12 months to bring home a pet. Along with the challenges of the local job market, the challenges of bringing home a pet remains one of the hottest topics at InSync events! If you need some help, take a listen to the podcast I had with LJ Ferrara from Aussie Expats Coming Home where we touch on this important topic/nightmare.
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If you need some more help preparing for your career repatriation, you can join one of our free monthly workshops- Managing Your Career Repatriation
