Venturing overseas to get a degree makes you attractive to employers – and it’s fun.

Thanks to David Comp for the tip on this article. David also points to the oddly cheery “and it’s fun” in the subtitle, as well as the fact that this fun factor (which we can’t help agree with) is never discussed in the actual article. David asks: “Why then did the author feel the need to include this in the sub-title of the article?” A good question, especially when you consider the last line of the article:

“If you don’t like it, you can always go home.”

Fair enough and certainly true. But related to both David’s take on the balance between an academically rigorous study abroad program and one in which students are able to travel, drink “underage,” and generally cut loose, as well as this idea of whether study/living abroad is always “fun,” I’ll throw out there that: 1) life abroad is not always fun and 2) even the un-fun parts can still be beneficial.

A quick example: my girlfriend studied abroad in Paris for a semester, though it was supposed to be a year: she cut it short because the experience was a difficult one for her (she didn’t like it, so she went home, I suppose). That doesn’t mean she didn’t like everything about the experience. There were many parts of France and the French and life with her host family that she loved. But there were also an overwhelming number of difficulties (expenses and difficulties with overaggressive and culturally-insensitive French men, to name but two) that made her experience a truly “un-fun” one, so much so that she cut her time there short. She didn’t have “fun” on her study abroad experience in the same way many people do—traveling every weekend and drinking into the wee hours every night. Yet her experience in Paris was still very formative. She gained important skills that she continues to use to this day—not just language and cultural skills, but also perseverance, adaptation, and self-reliance. Despite some negative experiences, she still holds a great affection for France and the French people. And despite the fact that she wasn’t able to travel all over Europe like many of her classmates, she came away from the experience with a desire to see more and go further, a desire which she has been trying to satisfy through further international experience and travel as she gets older.

As David says, everyone has a different definition of fun. In the same way, the “success” of a study abroad experience can come in different ways for different people. It’s important to both be open to what comes your way while you’re actually studying abroad, and to allow yourself the opportunity to discover how that study abroad experience continues to affect you (perhaps in unexpected ways) as you move further away from it.

Lots more Lipton here. Of course, any Lipton reference inevitably brings us back to Will Ferrell and a scrumtralescent Alec Baldwin:

Parents of returning study abroad college students found the experience initiated a sea-change in their willingness to be more responsible, act independently, and take on the world by themselves.

I place this and other arguments like it in the category of “things I wished I’d known 7-10 years ago when debating my dad about the merits of going abroad.” That I would be gaining “maturity, self-confidence, appreciation for other cultures, and independence,” marketable skills in any profession, would probably have sounded a lot better than, “Well, uh, why not? I know you don’t want me living in the basement anymore anyway…”

In other news, was my study abroad really 10 years ago? Almost. Guh.

The near-term focus of the HTS program is to improve the military’s ability to understand the highly complex local socio-cultural environment in the areas where they are deployed; however, in the long-term, HTS hopes to assist the US government in understanding foreign countries and regions prior to an engagement within that region.

The areas of cross-cultural communication, intercultural understanding, and cultural anthropology strike me as particularly ripe for talented, linguistically-skilled and culturally-nuanced people looking for an internationally-focused career —and as areas, as the HTS makes clear, where there is a lot of work to be done:

Iraqi drivers would unaccountably fail to stop when ordered to at checkpoints, and American soldiers, fearing a suicide bombing, would open fire—sometimes killing innocents. One possible reason was a devastatingly simple cultural confusion: the American gesture for “stop”—arm straight, palm out—means “welcome” in Iraq. “This and similar misunderstandings have deadly consequences,” McFate wrote in Joint Force Quarterly in 2005.

Luby Ismail, profiled in Working World the book, runs Connecting Cultures, which facilitates diversity training and cross-cultural awareness for a variety of clients (including the military). A good resource for those interested in cross-cultural work is the Intercultural Management Quarterly and its corresponding institute at American University run by Dr. Gary Weaver, a former professor of mine at AU and something of a legend in the cross-cultural communication field.

Luckily Ta-Nehesi Coates steps in and does the heavy lifting for us. His take on all matters black and white is as thoughtful, thought-provoking, and balanced as it gets. If you don’t read him regularly, I would recommend it.

UPDATE: It also occurs to me to acknowledge, in the context of the international affairs arena (though this could apply in any industry), the discrimination a job applicant with a “non-American” sounding name could face. The Times article points out that Barry Jabbar Sykes, ”who has a degree in mathematics from Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta, now uses Barry J. Sykes in his continuing search for an information technology position, even though he has gone by Jabbar his whole life. ‘Barry sounds like I could be from Ireland,’ he said.”

Did the name Jabbar imply to potential employers that he’s black (which he is)? Non-American (which he isn’t)? Perhaps Muslim (no discussion of his religious affiliation, which is how it should remain)? Some combination of the three? Do applicants for a U.S.-based job, no matter their race or country of origin, face discrimination if they have a “foreign” name, one that isn’t boilerplate Anglo-Saxon? It’s certainly possible. Perhaps a “foreign-sounding” name indicates the applicant is a non-native English speaker, and thus doesn’t possess language skills that are up to par for the job? Or the requisite cultural skills? Every new job has a learning curve, but perhaps the “non-American” applicant’s learning curve will be too long to make it worthwhile to hire him or her? It’s actually quite easy to see how someone (even myself) could judge an applicant in these ways solely based on their “foreign” name or the “foreign” manner in which their resume or cover letter is put together, etc. (Does my recent rant about “odd” cover letter salutations fall into this category? Seems like it easily could, and this may be something I need to check myself on.) Of course it’s up to every job applicant, no matter their name, race, or country of origin, to put together their application in a professional way–clear, cohesive, concise, well-written, no grammatical or copy-editing errors, suitable for the cultural/national context in which they’re applying. But it’s also up to the hiring manager to view each application and its inherent parts with no prejudgment or bias.

As to those “foreign-sounding” names…if a person’s name says very little about what they look like, it says far, far less about who they actually are and what they can do. Even so, the human temptation to assume based on surface indicators stubbornly remains.

I’ve only had five cumulative months of employment since, this in spite of a “practical” degree (economics) from a “good” school (East Coast whatever – if my situation is any indication, an Ivy degree doesn’t mean jackshit). Friends of mine with relatively less worldly degrees in many cases have not been able to find a job at all in over a year. And it is not that we’re just sitting on our asses, playing video games because we think we’re above a certain kind of work – this high-handed claptrap is perhaps the most irritating snobbery of so-called “experts”, of a piece with their stellar market analysis over the last decade. No, when we say we can’t get a job, we mean we can’t get any job.

Certainly white-collar jobs, those that we thought we were being prepared for, are so few and far between that they’ve become the stuff of lore, a mythical entity. When someone manages to snag one of those these days it’s treated like a fucking miracle, complete with celebration and deepest envy both. This just for a job! Not two years ago a job was practically a birthright, plentiful and in season; now it’s something to forage and kill for. But we’re having to compete now for jobs that anyone can do – which makes it that much harder to get them as well. Temp agencies mostly turn us away. Shit, even the damned Safeway near me isn’t hiring. I’m perfectly content to bag groceries or wash cars or do construction, but there isn’t a scrap of work to be had.

If all that sounds unbelievable, then you just don’t know what it’s like right now for young, inexperienced people whose first taste of the labor market has been one of closed doors and pounded pavement and steadily increasing panic. At the moment I do have a part-time temp job and I’m grateful for it, but I don’t know how long it’ll last. Every time a superior passes my desk I quake because he or she could be coming to give me the axe – this is how we fortunate employed spend our days, adrenaline-riddled and constantly on tenterhooks. I don’t have health insurance. I’m engulfed in student loans.

How does this compare with your experiences? Are recent college graduates looking for work in international education, exchange, and development having this much trouble? Is the white-collar job in international affairs out there to be had, or rather a “mythical entity”?

IIE’s Open Doors 2009 report was released last week. We paid close attention to this at the Alliance, but I forgot to mention it here. So, here you go. Open Doors is the standard for international educational mobility data—and the 2009 report happily illustrates that the number of foreign students studying at U.S. universities and Americans studying abroad are both up more than 8 per cent. Still, only slightly more than 260,000 Americans are studying abroad, which is not enough…

…and apparently President Obama agrees, as he announced that he wants 100,000 Americans studying in China (which is a pretty hefty increase from the current number of just over 13,000). How and when this will happen remains to be seen, but we are, as always, optimistic.

Have Work, Will Travel — An Australian world traveler makes the case for an expanded working holiday program in the United States.

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Mad Men fans:

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone:

From a purely practical perspective, though, this wanderlust can throw up professional development hurdles. That is, us young folk inflicted with wanderlust, because we are fixated on traveling to exotic locations as part of our careers, tend to view potential job opportunities solely by the travel opportunities inherent within them. I’ve said this before, like yesterday, and I’m drawn to it again because of this BusinessWeek article focusing on the top employers for those who want “international work that will take them abroad.”

I already made my argument yesterday as to why one will be well-served to examine the entirety of a potential job or career track rather than focusing only on the travel aspect, so I won’t rehash things again. But I will make a point I don’t think I’ve made as extensively in this space as I should: that an internationally-oriented job can be deeply fulfilling and help to satisfy wanderlust even if travel isn’t a regular component. In my case, my days are spent deep in issues of international exchange, which I find to be cool and terribly fulfilling. Because I’m immersed in a professional world that is completely international, I always feel international, regardless of where I physically am.

I may be sitting at a desk in DC, but I’m emailing with the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. I’m contemplating the potential implications of the lifting of the travel ban to Cuba or of Obama’s promise to send 100,000 American to study in China. I’m meeting with an education ministry representative from Ireland who is helping in our efforts to convince Congress that exchange programs need to be properly, but not overly, regulated. I’m talking to the Fulbright Commission in Mexico. I’m talking to an EducationUSA advisor in Budapest. I’m talking to an exchange agency in Bangkok who is helping to recruit our next international intern.

True, I get very excited about the actual international trips I get to take and for me, like for so many of us, the ability to travel (for work and for pleasure) is a big part of my existence. But the fact that I am immersed in an international world and international issues with international people on a daily basis and in my daily work is not something I take for granted—and all of this does, I find, help to satisfy my wanderlust during those times when I’m not able to jet off for some place new.

And I’m happy to report that they’re moving along well, and naturally. We haven’t felt the need to force things—say, by going to a professional event together simply because we felt like that’s what we’re supposed to do. Rather, we’ve kept it low key and that’s worked well for us. We’ve met for a beer and just chatted—a bit about school and career stuff, but mostly about ourselves, getting to know each other. She came to an Alliance event, heard a Congressman speak, and got to meet several people in our field and find out more about what kind of work they’re doing. And we’ve kept in good touch via email. I’ve forwarded her articles or event listings I’ve come across, and she’s asked me questions that happen to pop into her mind. For example, the other day she emailed me:

Do you keep in contact with your former employers? And how much contact with people is enough to claim that you are in contact with them? Is this like you exchanged business cards with them at an event once upon a time or you drop them an e-mail to say hi every few weeks?

I realize the obvious answer is that it is entirely circumstantial and depends but I thought I’d ask. The reason is that I will probably have to start applying for jobs in the near future (scary!) and will probably need references. Because I was gone all last year I don’t have references from my junior year (unless I apply somewhere in [country where she studied]) and will probably have to depend on my supervisor from sophmore year internship (and wherever I intern next semester). Is it unfair for her to be called by a prospective employer if I haven’t talked to her in a couple of months (I contacted her over the summer)?

A good question, one I was happy to weigh in on. I like that she’s thinking about things like this and that she feels she can ask me about them—not because I know the right answer but rather because it’s good to discuss and talk stuff like this out. Even if we don’t arrive at an answer, at least we’re moving the discussion along.

So I’m pleased with the way the official mentoring duties have gone so far and hope to have more positive updates soon. After the jump, my answer to her email question.

This is a really good question.  Yes, it depends, but I would say there are probably guidelines you can follow to figure things out.  I would say, first off, if you just met someone at an event and exchanged business cards, you probably shouldn’t be asking them for a reference: both because they don’t know you and because that is way too much to ask of a contact you don’t know well.  Then of course there’s the opposite end of the spectrum—the person you know very well and keep in good touch with. They are easy to ask.

But it’s the area in between that’s hardest, and where you seem to be (and very common too).  I do keep in touch with former employers, some more than others for sure. As for your sophomore year supervisor, I would say it’s definitely unfair for you to have an employer call her if you haven’t talked in awhile and you didn’t reestablish contact and ask her if you can use her as a reference. In fact, I think that’s good practice for all references—always ask someone if they’ll be a reference in general and then keep them posted as to when you are applying for a specific job and when someone might be calling them. I think it’s courteous, plus it allows them to give you a better reference, as they’ll be more prepared and expecting the call.

But I think it’s totally appropriate for you to call or email or, best, go see your old supervisor and reestablish contact. Maybe buy her a cup of coffee and say you’d like to catch up.  Say, hey, you were a great supervisor, you know my work well, and I’d love to ask you to be a reference as I start to apply for jobs. Assure them you’ll keep them posted if and when they can expect a call. I think this is something most people are generally willing to do.

These are questions I continually raise in my sessions. Traveling/working abroad is not synonymous with pursuing an international career. They can overlap, and for many of us hopefully they will—but they are not one in the same. Just because a job has a travel component or allows you to live in a different country doesn’t mean it’s the right job for you or your international career. It might mean that, but you’ve got to look deeper—go beyond the travel component.

This issue loomed large during my sessions in Tulsa last week. At an evening session last Tuesday, I first threw out a few remarks and then chaired a panel discussion that included a Foreign Service Officer, a TU marketing professor who had done the Peace Corps, the Director of Business Intelligence for the Hilti Corporation (based in Liechtenstein, Hilti “develops, manufactures, and markets products for the construction and building maintenance industries, primarily to the professional end-user”), and the Director of Global Business Services for the Oklahoma Department of Commerce. It was a great panel, representing a diverse array of jobs/experiences with international elements to them.

Yet I kept being forced to draw the conversation back from discussions of “how will this job take me abroad?” to more concrete discussions of “yes, but what do you actually do in your job?”

For example, the Foreign Service Officer spoke about his 32 years living in umpteen different countries and some of the cool adventures he had. All great stuff. But I felt compelled to draw him back to the specifics: What was his daily work like? What did he spend his days doing? He was a consular officer—how did his work differ from the work of other professional cones in the Foreign Service? What about some of the difficulties that come with moving every few years to a new country? With living in difficult and dangerous locations? The travel is cool and all, but it won’t matter unless you enjoy the work you’re doing and the life you’re leading.

Also, take the Hilti representative. He spent much of his time talking about his company’s internship program, how students are recruited for it, how one might get hired on full time and then, after that, what it would take to work abroad or travel abroad regularly from a U.S. location. It was all about the travel. Which, again, is all well and good, but, again, I felt the need to draw him back with a simple question: but what do you actually do? I had no concept of what kind of a company Hilti actually is, let alone what this Director of Business Intelligence’s job might entail on a day to day basis.

So he told us a bit about it. And I’ll admit, I kind of zoned out. It had something to do with sales, more to do with statistical analysis and several other things that make me break into a cold sweat. The next day I spoke with a TU student who’d done an internship with Hilti and found it not to be to her liking. She’d been drawn in by the sell of the “international” and hadn’t looked deeply at what kind of company Hilti is and what she’d be doing as an intern. What she ended up doing were tasks not at all suited to the kind of work (she discovered) she’d like to be doing.

I don’t mean to bad mouth Hilti here—on the contrary, it seems like a fine company and its rep at TU a funny and interesting guy. I also understand that there are many people who would love to work at a place like Hilti and do the kind of work that makes me break into a cold sweat. My point is that we shouldn’t be judging a job or a potential opportunity by the simple fact of whether it has an international travel component. That may be one part of our judgment, but we also need to be looking at what we’ll be doing day in and day out during that job. How do we want to spend our days? I want to travel to great places, for sure—but I also want to do fulfilling work that matters to me and that I enjoy. Work that takes place in an environment I can thrive in and with people I like. Work that allows me to live the kind of life I want to live. Don’t let the travel part trump all other considerations, or you run the risk of finding yourself in a job that travels, yes, but one that you really don’t like all that much.