What are the soft skills required to make it anywhere in the world? And how do you utilise these skills in a globalised job market? Here are three simple and easy to apply success factors from my personal experience.
In addition to your technical expertise your intercultural competence is crucial to the success of an overseas experience. Train your ability to understand underlying beliefs and values. Learn about the driving forces of your colleagues’, partners’ and customers’ behaviour. Put your own culturally determined view repeatedly to the test.
Highly qualified people go where they find excellent development opportunities and the best quality of life.
A study by the Boston Consulting Group reveals that there will be a shortage of more than 6 million skilled professionals in Germany alone by 2030. This labor shortage forecast applies to many other countries too. The demand puts businesses under pressure for attracting world class global talent. Read more
I studied computer science, more exactly I studied Artificial Intelligence, maybe because of those beginnings I often found myself thinking of people while I was developing programs and working on computer projects. Years later I realised there couldn’t be computers without people and that it was from their relation what great things could happen. So I shifted my line of work towards usability and user experience. To understand and improve how we, humans, interact with technology and how to improve those interactions.
The move to Germany was a combination of professional and personal objectives. I was part of an international community already while in Portugal, but I wanted to work in a more international environment. Vodafone Group projected that path for me and in 2009 I moved to Düsseldorf.
