August 14, 2005
Working in Switzerland to Ski? No, Just Polishing the Résumé
By DAVID KOEPPEL

Living and working in Europe was something that 30-year-old Patrick Riley had long dreamed about. As a student at Boston College, he spent a semester at the Sorbonne in Paris, and after graduation in 1995 he tried, without success, to find a job on the Continent teaching English.

So when he was offered a job in early 2001 as a technology reporter for CNET Networks in St. Légier, Switzerland, he jumped at the opportunity.

Mr. Riley had worked in a series of media-related jobs in New York for six years, but at 26 and single, he was excited about the fresh start. His new company paid him 10,000 Swiss francs (at the time about $5,700) to help relocate, and a salary increase from his job in New York. He rented an apartment in Lausanne, on Lake Geneva, with views of the Alps.

His exhilaration was short-lived. After four months, CNET scaled back its news division, and Mr. Riley was laid off. But he was not ready to give up on his European dream. He eventually landed a job as a television screenwriter, and in 2004 found his current position as a news editor with Eurovision, a provider of live video news and sports programming, based in Geneva.

"It's a great place to be, comfortable, with beautiful surroundings and plenty to do," said Mr. Riley, an avid snowboarder. "You can't beat the lake and the mountains, and Geneva is an international city, like New York or Washington."

Many Americans have been drawn by the allure of living and working overseas. The State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs estimates that more than three million American citizens now do so, and increasingly they are young, single professionals like Mr. Riley.

Even a decade ago, these specialists say, many companies chose to send only senior executives abroad, often with their families, but that is gradually changing.

A 2004 inventory of clients by ComPsych, a Chicago-based provider of worldwide employee assistance programs, found that single expatriates outnumbered married ones - 51 percent to 49 percent - for the first time. And a 2004 survey conducted by GMAC Global Relocation Services, based in Woodridge, Ill., found that 66 percent of expatriates were aged 30 to 49, an increase from 60 percent in 2002. Professionals say many factors are behind the advent of what the author Margaret Malewski has called GenXpats. Globalization is perhaps the most important, said Ms. Malewski, 30, author of "GenXpat: The Young Professional's Guide to Making a Successful Life Abroad" (Intercultural Press, 2005). Ms. Malewski said technology had made it easier for corporate offices to supervise less experienced workers overseas.

Younger singles are often more flexible and enthusiastic about taking overseas assignments and, perhaps even more important, are cheaper to send abroad.

A long-term relocation (more than two years) can cost two to three times the employee's salary, said Kim Froggatt, vice president for global services at Primacy, a corporate relocation firm in Memphis. An assignment that fails or is not completed can cost even more, she said. Younger employees generally have lower salaries and do not have the expenses associated with relocating a spouse or children.

Richard Chaifetz, chairman and chief executive of ComPsych, said that flexibility, openness to challenges and the ability to deal with frustration were among the most important qualities for an expatriate.

"Working overseas adds to a person's breadth of knowledge, improves their people skills and exposes them to innovative ideas across the world," he said. "I've never seen it hurt anyone."

Jared Shapiro, an editor in New York and the co-author of "Going Corporate: Moving Up Without Screwing Up" (St. Martin's Griffin, 2004), says many younger workers are drawn overseas to escape the disappointment of their first corporate jobs.

"There's a certain shock factor coming out of college and into the corporate world," Mr. Shapiro said. "Getting up early, microwaved meals, halogen lights. It's not glamorous; often it's quite mundane."

Working abroad may allow young workers the ability to thrive in a new atmosphere and make them more marketable when they return.

Robyn Glennon, 34, of San Francisco found that five years of working and living in the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Paris was an invaluable experience, both personally and professionally. Ms. Glennon went to Prague in 1998 to become a consultant at an Internet company.

"Every day was a challenge - the language, the people, the homesickness," she said. "But I was learning something new every day."

Some of the Czech employees she supervised were not used to having a manager as direct as Ms. Glennon. There was even some hostility. A Czech native, speaking of Americans in general, once told her: "We're thankful to you for teaching us about business. Now you can go home."

While there is much to endorse about working abroad for younger workers, there can also be loneliness and difficulty in forming social networks. And when workers return to the United States - as most do eventually - the experience can be fraught with personal and professional difficulties. Relocation professionals advise expatriates to plan for their return well in advance.

When Ms. Glennon did return to the United States from Paris in July 2003, she found that coming back was not easy. It took her 10 months to land a job in her field, and she yearns to return to Europe someday. Returnees often find they are no longer a "big fish in a small pond," said Ms. Froggatt of Primacy. While working in Singapore, she formed a support group called Going Home Again to help prepare American expatriates for life back in the United States. If the repatriation process is not handled properly, she said, many employees leave a company within a year of returning home.

Many companies do not discuss with overseas employees what their role will be after the overseas assignment ends. Ms. Froggatt said that professionals like Ms. Glennon, who are not returning to a home office, should be even more diligent about keeping in touch with professional contacts, to ease their entry back into the work force.

George Sandoval, a San Francisco native who came back to the United States last December after spending several years in Switzerland working in Web and graphic design, acknowledged that the return had posed problems.

"I don't think I've completely readjusted," said Mr. Sandoval, who recently started his own business. "When I first got home, I hardly went out. In Europe, people take more time to be with friends and family. Here, everyone is constantly in a hurry."

-- New York Times