How to Work Abroad Without Experience – FREE Guide

Moving and working abroad is a mixed bag of emotions. On the one hand, it presents struggles (in readjusting, adapting, etc.) to the person involved. On the other hand, you are sweet because, amidst the struggles, you are breathing in the clear scent of hope. Aside from the struggles of adapting, one may face the challenges of being alone, starting life afresh, and the fearful task of finding a job.

Seeking a job abroad without work experience is really problematic. Required yet problematic.

Aside from fetching more for a better living, moving abroad makes room for new ideas, unlearning, and relearning. One beautiful thing about learning is that it doesn’t stop at any age. By staying properly engaged, you, in fact, age backward. You become more capable, both physically and mentally. So you do need a job, not only because immigration officers, What’s more, western countries have a credit system

The importance of having a job cannot be overemphasized and includes the following:

• Self-dependence

• Self-respect

• Learning

Getting a Job abroad

It might interest you to know that oftentimes, getting a job abroad can be a lot simpler than getting a job at home. This is even the case if you want to work abroad without experience. At home, one essentially needs experience to get experience, and overseas, there isn’t such a hitch.

One of the benefits of working abroad is that for those who have what it takes to say goodbye to the familiarities, securities, and comfort of home to earn a living overseas, working abroad makes travel financially feasible.

‘So how do I get work abroad without experience?’ you might be asking now. Guess what? You’ve got nothing to worry about. We are here to make you understand that finding a job overseas with no experience is very possible, though daunting.

WATCH: The Top 10 Easiest Countries to Immigrate To

We are happy to bring you the relevant steps you need to follow to get this done. These steps will help turn you into an open-minded, motivated, and, ultimately, hireable employee.

1. Get Certified to Work Abroad Without Experience

Certification is a professional qualification that certifies a person’s ability. No certification for working abroad without experience exists. However, the chances of getting a job increase with getting certified to do something.

One could get an RSA (Responsible Service of Alcohol) certification to travel and work in Australia in one of the sectors, say, the hospitality sector (it’s a one-day class). Or you could get a certificate in plumbing. A certification in any field is evidence that you have a skill and take it seriously.

These certifications give those who have them a one-up over everyone else, and oftentimes they don’t take much effort to get, so you’ve got to go get one! Isn’t your qualification given acceptance in the country you’re traveling to? It was a waste of time getting it because it proves—without a reasonable doubt—that the one in possession of it has some idea about what he or she is doing.

So, we present to you the very first step to working abroad without experience, which is none other than getting the necessary qualifications.

Because the use of the English language is becoming more widespread across the world, many of the jobs that are readily available abroad are openings for English teachers. About 375 million people speak English around the globe, and there are over 50 English-speaking countries with English as either their official or primary language.

The meaning of this is that, for native English speakers, getting by in most corners of the globe is not a hard nut to crack. For speakers who are from non-English countries, knowledge of the language is a high skill that is in need.

Though no qualification is necessarily required of you by some schools, if one has an impressive résumé and is fluent in the language, such a fellow tends to be given preference to those who don’t have such a certification.

The Two Most Popular ESL Qualifications:

– TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate

– CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults)

The commonest and easiest qualification for those with an interest in teaching English overseas is the former, which is a 120-hour course that you can take online.

We recommend that you get your TEFL certificate through the website i-to-i. The reason behind this recommendation is that the i-to-i program is not expensive and upon completion of the program, it gives you access to an extensive job board. Other companies are slightly cheaper, but they don’t offer the same kind of access to around-the-world job placements.

Ultimately, the TEFL course will leave you with a good idea of what expectations you should have as a teacher and will prepare you for lesson plan ideas, behavior management skills, and cultural sensitivity training.

As an English teacher abroad, you have the potential to make some great money as an English teacher, especially in the UAE.

It is popular to teach English abroad, but it isn’t the only job opportunity available for you. Anything that places that requirement of getting a simple certification or any other easy qualification on you, the earlier you get it, the better.

This can be your long-awaited opportunity to work abroad without experience. And it doesn’t have any involvement with selling your soul at a shitty job to gain experience beforehand!

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2. Keep an Open Mind

Beggars have no option, right?

A life abroad, however enticing it may be, may not beg for a job overseas. But if, in any way, you have an iota of interest, there’s still a need to keep an open mind about the jobs available to you because you’re trying to get work abroad without experience.

Inevitably, a lack of experience narrows down one’s options in that one might not have the ability to get a job in some specialized field because, even with experience, one can barely find anyone who understands.

Lack of experience in a specialized field doesn’t make landing a job an impossible feat. What’s just required of you is to be open to different types of work. Open-mindedness and being willing to consider new and different ideas or opinions about this context are very necessary.

Many of the readily available jobs abroad are part-time gigs, which include hostel work, manual labor like farming, serving or bartending, care-taking or running tours, or adventure excursions.

According to Go Overseas, the most popular overseas jobs known so far include teaching English, supporting a family as an au pair, WWOOF-ing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, a network through which independent farms welcome international workers in exchange for food and accommodation), fostering tourism as a hostel employee, and working as a freelancer in some way.

3. Consider Volunteering First

Do you have any paid experience just yet? Have you considered volunteering for any kind of experience? It is indeed a huge advantage. Volunteering for one unpaid experience proves that you are a hard worker who has a keen interest in working in whatever field in which you choose to volunteer because it is equivalent to spending your free time doing it without compensation, which you have done anyway.

Volunteer work is available in abundance, both at home and overseas. And since you’re not getting money, the fact that you want to work abroad without experience is often totally fine.

Volunteer work can be the long-awaited stepping stone for you to obtain work abroad without experience.

One can volunteer before traveling or go to their destination of interest and volunteer while there. If you go for the latter, you might even have the option to move up—going from a volunteer to a paid employee eventually.

As has been confirmed, most volunteer programs can pick one up, put one up, and feed one; one usually just has to cater for the cost of getting there. You get an additional bonus of travel and medical insurance, plus support from on-site staff. We recommend that you watch programs like Go Overseas, Go Abroad, Projects Abroad, and Cross-Cultural Solutions to enable you to sort your many options by country, price, or cause.

4. Make Yourself Easy to Hire

The application process to be offered a lot of jobs can be exhausting and, oftentimes, quite lengthy. Multiple rounds of interviews may await one since the job is located abroad and, therefore, your employers won’t necessarily get to meet you in person before you are offered the job.

They’ll be on the lookout to feel confident that they’re hiring someone they can trust to attend to the job and have it done well, but they’ll need to have built that trust virtually, which means taking some more time and effort.

Preparation and eagerness will be shown in applicants by having all of your documents ready before even applying—this shows them that you are both prepared and eager to work.

Your Passport:

If you are interested in a volunteer job, getting your passport should be the first thing to do. Without it, getting work abroad without experience is to be forgotten since you won’t even make it on a plane! Also, you should make sure you have any necessary qualifications the job requires, as well as any certificates to prove those qualifications, ready.

Applicants are to go to the official government website of the country they wish to work in. They will be told what their work visa options if there is already a job offer, their citizenship, and their age.

Gather information:

Gathering information like your bank account and routing numbers or having an already set-up PayPal account, depending on how the company for which you’ll work pays employees, is advisable for applicants at the start of the application. to avoid any occurrence of time wastage during the application or onboarding process.

In trying to obtain work abroad without experience, you are to make the process as seamless as possible for the employer so you are a more enticing hire in the list of applicants the employer will possibly have since a lot of people are after getting a job to work abroad without experience; hence, being hired in this case is likened to the survival of the fittest in terms of making oneself easy to hire.

5. Go Through a Working Holiday Program

Working holiday programs are programs that help expats find work overseas while they’re abroad.

First, you’ll need to get yourself a working holiday visa. After you’ve obtained a proper visa, you are eligible to join programs that would help you more easily find odd work abroad without experience.

For instance, programs like Placement International will link you up to job portals and a staff that can help place you. Green Heart is another organization that will hire and host you, so you’ll get a job and a place to post.

6. Harness the Skills You Already Have

In this one, you are to boast about the experience you already have. Everyone has experience in something; hence, a harness of these skills, whether they apply to teaching positions or not, is required to be hired.

There is something you can do well, and you need to put it together in a portfolio to showcase those skills. Harnessing skills is necessary because every employer would love to have one who has personal or practical knowledge, one who is an expert in something dexterous.

For a startup, you may not be receiving payment from someone, but it is necessary to start somewhere! You should have something tangible to prove to prospective employers that you are, indeed, a practiced professional and a good fit for the job.

Do you possess a niche skill? If you have a yes as an answer to that question, then we recommend that you go in to obtain a work visa for it. Provision of visas for certain skill sets.

In New Zealand, if your thoughts are about finding work abroad without experience, first look into the aforementioned Working Holiday program.

If that doesn’t suit you, you might be able to resort to applying for one of the following visas, depending on your skillset:

• The Skilled Migrant Category Resident Visa: This is specifically for applicants who possess the skills, experience, and qualifications needed for the growth of New Zealand’s economy
• The Essential Skills Work Visa: This visa is open for those offered full-time jobs in New Zealand by employers who’ve already checked if any New Zealanders were available to have the work done
• The Specific Purpose Work Visa: The Specific Purpose Work Visa is for those who have skills or expertise that’ll be of benefit to New Zealand
• The Post Study Work Visa: The Post Study Work Visa is for recent graduates who studied in New Zealand and were offered an opportunity to work in the same area as their qualification

Aside from these visas enumerated above, there are still lots more.

You may have a needed skill but not even know it yet so take the time to make findings and do well to utilize any opportunity found that is related to your skill.

Two of the best countries to work abroad for skilled international students include New Zealand and Australia. But, aside these two countries, depending on your circumstances, there may be other countries you’re eligible to work in, too. So, it’s up to you to search them out.

WATCH: Top Best Countries to Get Longest Work Permit After Graduation

7. Be Willing to Accept the risk and Reap the Rewards of Working Abroad

One of the things you should keep in mind when working abroad without experience is that you won’t always get the exact job you chose the first time around. And the possibility of always getting jobs before traveling is very tiny. Sometimes, you just have to show up and play by ear.

Travelers who travel based on seasons seldom have fixed plans. And your mindset shouldn’t be that of someone who’s on vacation but of someone who is going to be working and living in a new place for an extended period.

That implies no stress. There is no strict agenda. There is no fixed timeline by which to abide. With this, willingness is required to go out there and give it the best shot possible. You have to be open to what happens.

In going in search of a job overseas, there is a need to be confident and persistent. You should be just as prepared when applying for jobs at home. That means sending hundreds of applications to the internet.

Copies of your résumé are to accompany you as you roam the city. Stop in to speak with managers at bars and restaurants, in schools, at tour companies, and lots more. Just make it obvious that you are looking for a job by putting it out there. Putting it out as such into the universe brings about a conspiracy to help you get what you want.

Don’t stop speaking to people, because the more people you speak with, the more connections you’ll make. Eventually, someone will know or have a connection with someone who will know someone who needs a worker. And that worker will just be you!

8. Take Advantage of Your Social Networks

Have you ever wondered why social networks are called social networks? The reason behind the name is that they exist to connect people. Networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook are there to connect people for several purposes and utilizing them will possibly leave smiles on your face in that you will be hired for your desired job. Via social media, you can connect with hiring managers or people who’ve worked abroad where you want to work. Then this connection could lead to their recommending you for the work.

We also recommend that you join Facebook groups for specific niches within particular regions. What is required of you is to leverage those groups to help yourself find work by making people aware that you are coming and looking for employment. A lot of these groups are solely aimed at helping people find work and helping managers find employees.

If you conduct yourself like a professional and, beyond that, apply persistence, you will find work abroad without experience. And in case it is not the job you wanted, you’ll have your way worked out. By being open-minded and confident, you could travel the world and make money while doing it.

Are you thinking about working abroad but don’t have any experience? Let us know what you sticking to.

9. Re-skill and Opt for Internships

There is an ample amount of skill to justify a great job in the field of your choice because the dynamism of jobs in today’s age demands that your skillset needs a big modernization as the years go by. So, it makes real good sense to sign in to the acquisition of new skills using Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) from leading universities when you are looking for a job abroad without any experience.

This keeps you at the top of your game when it comes to getting those highly sought-after internships at various firms, paving the way for a full-time job in the future.

WATCH: Top 10 Paid Internships to Travel and Work Abroad around the World

10. Display Competence Across Your Academic Career

Before having work experience, academic grade points (GPA) are of particular importance during the initial phase of your career. Did you just ask why? Simply put, the GPA and associated internships and academic achievements are the only way a potential employer can judge you at first sight.

As wonderful as landing an interview and showcasing how you can add value to the industry and the organization is, it is just but a secondary requirement to being hired, as scrutiny is given to your academics, leadership, and co-curricular experiences, which primarily determine whether you will get to the interview shortlist in the first place or not.

11. Participate in Competitions and Hackathons

Various companies are usually desirous of identifying top talent and this they achieve by organizing regular events and competitions like science fairs, business plan competitions, and hackathons.

If you are seeking a job, and you don’t have any work experience yet, this can be one of the best ways to utilize your skills appropriately to achieve top grades amongst other competitors. The winners that emerge in these competitions are automatically chosen by firms as their employees.

Aside from these events, one can receive automatic hiring from industries or be offered cash by coming up with practical solutions to problems faced by the industry. The thumb rule is obeyed here, that is, the bigger the problem, the higher your reward for solving it successfully.

12. Bag Industry and Academic Referrals

Both short and long industry internships aside, presenting fantastic learning experiences can be a stepping stone to future employment prospects.

If you are not successful in getting an offer from the internship employer, don’t fail to bag a referral from them, as it is the second-best thing to further your prospects. On a similar note, a referral from your university professor can also do astonishing things when it comes to shortlisting your candidacy for an interview.

Strong linkages typically exist between professors and industry professionals about the overall ecosystem of companies, which gives their referrals a strong weight for a successful job offer.

13. Work Across Multiple Roles

Being in the age of AI and machine learning, people with multiple skill sets are highly sought after by companies. So, if you are interning at a company, don’t be streamlined in your acquiring knowledge rather, widen your horizon by working across multiple areas in the firm. This will give you bragging rights, but beyond that, you are also exposed to providing higher value among recruiters looking for talent that can juggle across the firm.

Students who take up summer internships across multiple fields during their academic careers have validity for working across multiple roles.

A higher chance of getting shortlisted for job interviews is open to students with this exposure compared to the ones who have a lesser breadth of internship experience. Howbeit, this cannot hinder the significance of excelling in academics with an exceptional GPA.

14. Settle for Lower Initial Compensation

Searching for a job abroad without any experience but having an above-average GPA with relevant skills, there is a fighting chance of you getting an offer. However, at times, the offer does not meet your expectations in terms of compensation. That does not call for fretting. What is expected of you is to evaluate the job profile and prospects of future growth in your chosen field.

If any hint that the role offers tremendous growth over some time is available from your evaluation, accept the initial lower compensation just to have the entry barrier broken. Sometimes, companies are unable to offer inexperienced candidates top compensation due to uncertainty that is likely to erupt in the future. But as one performs and delivers results, there will be an increment in the compensation as well as in one’s profile.

As is said, lower compensation at a small firm with promising growth prospects triumphs over higher pay at a conglomerate with a low-growth environment.

15. Keep Immigration Policies in Mind

Keeping immigration in mind is another important aspect to be put into consideration, especially when searching for a job abroad. Here, the immigration policy of the country one has in mind has to be considered. In the current protectionist political environment across the world, room is not given to the mobility of talent anymore.

Stricter conditions regarding visas and shorter periods of stay have meant that companies abstain from going through the trouble of giving employment to students outside their home country. This is a cause of talent shortages or even substandard talent across fields in some countries.

If your company is situated in an immigration-friendly country, nothing like it exists. But if you are about to apply for a position in the United States, for instance, be very careful about the requirements and conditions of your employment before signing into it.

16. Be realistic

Job seekers who are after work abroad in their chosen career without experience are to be realistic about the kind of position they could take up without experience. In being realistic, applicants are to adhere to the following:

• Don’t have too high an aim. This is with regards to the pay one is to be making. If asked how much to be paid, ensure that you don’t aim too high in making the pay you wish to be receiving known.
• Set aside entry-level positions for the best chance of success.
• In not aiming too high, job seekers are not to aim too low either.

17. Understand the business culture

An understanding of the business culture prevalent in the area one wishes to apply for a job is very important. This will enable one to write a suitable resume for a job hunt because resumes are written in different formats throughout the globe, so one is to have his/her tailored to his/her Curriculum Vitae to suit local needs.

On a similar note, in some cultures, the worth attached to contacts is more compared to credentials. The meaning of this is that networking could be a fundamental part of the process.

For optimal success, we recommend that you research the business etiquette and cultural minor distinctions of your new home.

Let’s Help You

You are wondering how to go about processing your admission to schools abroad. Don’t worry! We’ve got your back! Enrolling in the top universities in the world can increase your chances with employers. Unfortunately, it can be quite expensive to study abroad due to the current economic crisis. But this shouldn’t limit you, as there are other options you can explore to enhance your career. 

MPower Finance and Prodigy Finance are some of the best student loan providers for international students. They also do not require a cosigner or collateral before an application. At EdXtra Associates, we can help you with your loan application process. We also provide educational consulting services for international students to help make their journey easier and faster. You can reach out to us, as we’d love to guide you through this journey. 

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