Looking for a job abroad: what I learned by changing countries, roles, and perspectives

From my first international job search in Switzerland to working as a recruiter for global companies: the mistakes, strategies, and lessons I now bring to my work as a Career Coach for expats.

From Italy to Switzerland: when I stopped applying at random

For several years, living and working abroad had felt almost impossible, even though it was something I had always wanted. In Italy, I had moved from one job to another without ever feeling truly fulfilled, and I had also experienced some rather toxic working environments, especially after graduating.

After seven years, and several sporadic applications abroad sent without a clear strategy, I realised I could not keep waiting. I stopped and gave myself the time to understand what I genuinely wanted. I was honest with myself and narrowed my search down to two types of role and one country: Switzerland.

I built a proper job search strategy, studied the market, and learned to communicate my experience in a clearer way that was more aligned with the local culture. Within a few months, this approach helped me land my first role in Human Resources and Talent Acquisition in Switzerland.

That was when I understood how much we can underestimate ourselves when we come from working environments where expectations are extremely high and consistently giving more than is sustainable is treated as normal.

I also realised how much preparing not just well, but exceptionally well, for international applications and interviews can genuinely change the outcome.

After almost four years in Switzerland, my role was eliminated during a reorganisation. Finding myself unemployed while living abroad felt like a punch in the stomach, especially because I had suffered a serious bereavement in my family only a few months earlier.

But it also became another important moment of growth.

I gave myself a new objective: finding a job in the Netherlands. I had always liked the country because of its more relaxed culture and the opportunities offered by large international companies, compared with the smaller organisations in the Swiss canton where I was living.

I did not speak Dutch and had no local network. Yet, one month after starting my search, I landed a role at Booking com in Amsterdam, with a full relocation package that also included benefits for my husband.

After Booking com, I worked as a recruiter for cool companies, including TomTom and Atlassian. I had the opportunity to interview thousands of people and work closely with hiring managers and directors across different departments.

I learned how structured recruitment processes operate inside large multinational companies, but also how often highly capable professionals struggle to communicate their value clearly.

People who have spent years working in professional cultures characterised by very high expectations, constant pressure, and poor work-life balance often develop strong imposter syndrome. When the benchmark is always unrealistically high, even excellent results can start to feel insufficient.

When another layoff came my way, I decided to treat it as an opportunity to build an independent career that combined my recruitment experience with the part of my work I had always enjoyed most: helping people prepare for international applications, interviews, and salary negotiations, while recognising their own strengths.

What could be better than celebrating together when someone signs a new contract for a more fulfilling and better-paid role?

I know my career has not followed a linear or conventional path, but I do not regret any of it. I have lived in seven cities and three countries, and changed industries and roles several times.

In the long term, all of this helped me develop far more confidence in my abilities. Today, my only thought is that I wish I had found the courage to start sooner. Years ago, I saw my current work as a certified Career Coach as something that could only happen once I retired.

The mistake I would avoid today: sending too many applications

The first time I found a job abroad, I was still living in Italy, so relocating with a signed contract was relatively straightforward.

When I lost my job in Switzerland, however, I immediately started sending far too many applications.

Because I had never unexpectedly lost a job before, I did not immediately consider the Netherlands. Instead, I continued applying for very different roles across several Swiss cantons, trying to secure a new position as quickly as possible.

Many of those opportunities were not genuinely aligned with the skills I had developed and would have represented a step backwards. I was still invited to several interviews, but during the process, I often realised that, even if I had been offered the role, I would not have been happy in the medium or long term.

I believe the interviewers could sense that too.

Looking back, I would first give myself a month to recover from the shock. Then, I would map the market more carefully and focus on the quality of my applications rather than the quantity.

I would also ask myself whether I still felt in the right place within a small job market that offered relatively few interesting opportunities for me, and in which direction I genuinely wanted to grow.

What I understood after moving to the other side of the table

When I worked in Italy, I experienced many difficulties: unclear job advertisements, the impression that some recruiters were not doing their jobs particularly well, and an endless amount of online advice about CVs and interviews, often shared by people who had never hired anyone.

As a result, I had very little understanding of how recruitment processes genuinely worked. I could not distinguish between what depended on the market or the company, and what I was doing incorrectly.

When I moved to the other side and became a recruiter, I finally understood what hiring managers are genuinely looking for: which aspects of a profile they may perceive as a risk, what causes them to hesitate, and what they need to see and hear before they can trust a candidate.

Today, I work with many professionals between the ages of 35 and 50+, often with genuinely outstanding experience.

Many of them come from years of micromanagement, working environments where everything is always the “number one priority”, unreasonable demands, and working days that extend far beyond eight hours.

When you are used to giving 150% every day because, in many organisations, that is treated as the minimum expected of you, you start taking your own contribution for granted.

You no longer realise that you are capable of producing extremely high-quality results, often at a pace that is difficult to sustain.

As a result, when you consider applying abroad, you may assume that local professionals are necessarily better, that people work even longer hours, or that the expected standard is simply too high for you.

In my experience, the opposite is very often true.

Expectations may be clearer from the beginning and supported by a proper onboarding process. Professionals may be given more autonomy, and work-life balance may be genuinely respected. Not everything is continuously treated as an emergency.

Professionals coming from high-pressure working environments are often valued for their commitment, adaptability, reliability, quality of work, and creativity in finding solutions, especially when pressure increases.

What many of them underestimate is the objective value of the skills and resilience they have developed over the years.

The Netherlands taught me something that has become fundamental to me: we work to live; we do not live to work.

Three ways to approach an international job search more strategically

The first is to understand what genuinely matters to you at work: which values you want to experience, which boundaries you are no longer prepared to cross, and which priorities you have for both your career and your lifestyle.

People often focus immediately on job titles or salaries, but an apparently perfect role can quickly become unsustainable when it is incompatible with what matters to us.

The second is to map out, very honestly, what you know how to do, what you enjoy doing, and the direction in which you want to grow.

Listing your responsibilities is not enough. You need to understand which problems you are capable of solving, which results you create, and what value you can bring to an organisation.

The third is to build a sustainable and highly targeted job search strategy.

This means applying less, but more strategically, and focusing on roles, companies, and countries that are aligned with who you are, the skills you bring, and the kind of professional and personal life you want to build.

The most common mistake I see is sending hundreds of applications for very different roles, across different levels of seniority, without a clearly defined objective.

Another frequent mistake is misinterpreting job descriptions and applying anyway, even when, for example, the position clearly requires a language the applicant does not speak.

I made the same mistake, and it kept me stuck for years.

Every country has a different working culture and a different way of communicating throughout the recruitment process.

This is why learning to put yourself in the recruiter’s shoes is so important. The recruiter will often not share your professional background or technical expertise.

We cannot expect them to understand our value automatically. We need to make it clear.

A lack of a structured strategy is one of the main reasons many professionals receive no responses, waste months, and gradually lose confidence in themselves.

A more intentional search increases your chances of finding a job that is genuinely worth accepting.

English alone is not enough to build an international career

Speaking English well certainly helps, but I also know people who found jobs with a relatively weak B2 level and managed to improve their language skills and grow professionally within a few months.

Networking can make a significant difference and, for some people, it leads directly to referrals and interviews.

However, it is not the only route.

The approach I recommend is always a hybrid one: direct applications, speculative applications, a complete LinkedIn profile that can be found by headhunters, and organic networking, without turning every conversation into a request for a job or placing unnecessary pressure on other people.

Cultural adaptability also matters enormously.

In the Netherlands, for example, having lived and worked in different countries is often considered an advantage. I have worked for companies where between 80 and 150 nationalities were represented.

In these environments, knowing how to collaborate with colleagues and clients from very different cultures and continents is not simply a nice addition. It is a fundamental skill for achieving the team’s objectives.

Another crucial aspect is the way candidates present themselves during an interview.

One of the most frequent reasons I have seen highly qualified candidates rejected relates to their communication skills.

Interview anxiety can prevent you from genuinely listening to the other person, reading their non-verbal communication, and understanding when to expand on an answer and when to stop.

The ability to be concise and respond with concrete examples rather than generalisations can make all the difference.

The way you communicate your career story also matters, because it influences how confident you appear.

An international candidate should not present themselves as if they need to apologise for not being local. They should present themselves as someone who brings valuable experience, different perspectives, and adaptability.

When the problem is not your experience, but how you communicate it

I often think about the story of a professional I worked with who was employed by a very large multinational company.

He was highly capable, but also very modest. His experience and the results he described already demonstrated that he had everything he needed to continue growing.

However, he worked for a manager who behaved more like a boss than a leader, and he could see very few realistic opportunities for promotion within the company.

Over time, he had stopped recognising his own talent.

He tended to apply for jobs mainly when he reached the limit of what he could tolerate, but he always used the same CV: more of a list of tasks, supported by a few figures, than a cohesive career narrative.

He had been applying abroad for months and had received very few responses.

When we started working together, one of the most important steps was helping him look at his experience through the eyes of an international recruiter and within the context of a Northern European working culture.

Skills and behaviours he considered normal or unremarkable were actually very strong evidence of his leadership, his ability to manage highly complex situations, and the value he was capable of bringing.

As he rediscovered these examples, he also began speaking about himself with greater confidence and conviction during our mock interviews.

Within a few weeks, he was involved in two recruitment processes in two different countries at the same time. He reached the final stages of one and signed a contract in The Nordics for the type of role he had wanted for a long time through the other.

The most rewarding part for me was watching him finally recognise what his experience had already demonstrated for years: he had the profile, results, and professional maturity required to work for a Big Four firm.

He simply needed to stop presenting himself as someone tentatively asking for an opportunity and start showing up as the valuable professional he already was.

It is not too late to build an international career

To younger professionals, I would say: create a flexible plan, without placing yourself under the pressure of believing that every choice you make today will inevitably determine the rest of your career.

After graduating, for example, I did not have the financial means to move abroad immediately.

For years, I lived in shared houses, rented a room, and saved as much as possible, even when that required making significant sacrifices.

When I was finally able to take the step of moving abroad, however, I had developed far greater self-awareness and much more clarity about what I wanted.

Sometimes it takes longer than we would have liked, but that does not mean the opportunity has disappeared.

We can change direction several times throughout our lives and discover that we have access to far more possibilities than we currently imagine.

To mid-senior professionals, I would instead say: do not be afraid that it is too late.

You are not too old, and you do not need to be perfect to build an international career.

Many professionals I work with, particularly those coming from working cultures where work-life balance is poor or non-existent, tell me that their greatest surprise after relocating was discovering how different the concepts of professionalism, competence, and leadership can be.

They were also surprised by how much easier and more sustainable the work itself felt compared with what they had expected.

By comparing their experience with that of local colleagues, they realised that their previous working environments had often been an extremely demanding training ground.

They were used to managing constant emergencies, excessive workloads, ambiguity, and significant responsibilities that frequently went unrecognised.

But because all of this had become so normal, they no longer saw it as evidence of valuable skills.

The most important lesson my years as an expat have taught me is this: when something comes naturally to us, we tend to take it for granted.

Experiencing another country, another culture, and another way of working can become an extraordinary opportunity to look at ourselves differently and finally recognise all the talent we have built and are ready to offer.

The people I work with almost always share one recurring characteristic: they are worth far more than the environments they worked in led them to believe.

With greater clarity, stronger positioning, and the right strategy, they can finally make that value visible and build an international career that is more fulfilling, sustainable, and well paid.

Are you ready to do the same? Then: