Best practices for properly preparing expats

Some people begin preparing themselves for an expatriate assignment when it is only a possibility. Putting some work into the idea of an assignment well in advance of the reality seems like getting a good head start! What's your primary reason to do this assignment? What does this do for your career path? Do you know how the rest of your family feels about this? Here are a couple of articles that share the types of questions that expats should grapple with before taking an assignment:

• 15 extremely important questions to ask yourself before moving abroad
• 11 questions you should ask yourself before moving abroad

And then, accepting an expatriate assignment comes with a pretty big to-do list and brings on so many different emotions for someone. Excitement, nervousness, fear and maybe even a bit of grief are not unusual to experience after accepting an assignment. Not only might you be dealing with juggling all those feelings and to-dos, on top of that you might have family members all over the place with their emotional ups and downs.

We have prepared numerous pieces of content to help support someone considering an assignment or someone that has just accepted one. This article helps an expat consider a number of different employee readiness issues that could get in the way of a successful international assignment. 

While everyone has unique situations, personal circumstances, skills and strengths, and emotions, one great resource for people are the learnings from other expats who share them through expat blogs. They offer value by providing knowledge from a variety of sources, experiences and views. They won't tell you exactly how your experience will go, but will allow you to ponder the various "what ifs." 

In this particular blog post, "Before you accept that exciting expat assignment, know this first," the expat shares his experience with culture shock, bumping into internal cultural differences across the company, late-night conference calls, and the challenge of possibly finding yourself in a situation with limited upward mobility. In pointing out some of the challenges he faced, he also offers some suggestions for solutions to those challenges. 

Interested in more posts on the "expatriate experience?" Try one of these:

• Is the true expat experience anything like Emily's?
• COVID-19's impact on expatriate management
• Supporting expatriates through the new era of social distancing