Boomeranging: Expat to Repat

S5 Ep4: Damien Otto

How does an Adelaidean who considers himself not a ‘big city person’ with no real aspiration to live overseas, end up loving life in Ho Chi Minh City?

 

The is Damien Otto’s story after a generous leader at Commonwealth Bank connected him with career opportunities overseas which eventually saw the Otto family pack their bags for a life in Vietnam.

 

It seemed like the perfectly secure career move.  A secondment on a fixed term with his long-term employer who had to date, always looked out for him.  

 

Until it wasn’t.

 

At the end of his time in Vietnam, Damian was surprised to be offered a redundancy or the opportunity to find another job on his own at the bank somewhere in Australia.  Not the response he was expecting or the way he thought his career with the bank would continue to grow.

 

In this podcast, we discuss how Damien responded and the learnings he would share with other expats who find themselves in a similar situation.

 

It has been four years now and Damien is now living in Melbourne for an organisation that sought him out for the skills he gained in Vietnam.  His Vietnamese experience, while it didn’t end quite like he imagined, still looms large in his daily life. He might not be riding a scooter with his partner and two kids down the road for the weekly shop, but Damien still eats a banh mi every week and says the skills he gained in Vietnam have shaped him into the leader he is today.

S5 Ep3: Jacinta Reddan

If you are a future repat thinking life back in Australia might be too slow, then you might fall off your chair during this podcast when you hear that Jacinta Reddan, the former CEO of AusCham in Hong Kong thinks her professional life is just as fast-paced in Cairns!

Which is good for Jacinta, who admits her biggest fear of moving to tropical north Queensland and a city she had never lived in before, would be that she would be bored.

Jacinta first left Melbourne in her early 20s for an 18-month stint in Hong Kong that turned out to be a decade long stay.  Even when she returned to Melbourne to live, Hong Kong wasn’t quite out of her system and six years later after returning to Australia, she and her two young daughters headed back. 

Maintaining professional contacts and friends has been the thread that runs through the amazing career opportunities Jacinta has had both in Australia and in Hong Kong.  In fact, it was a friend and colleague from her early days as a freshly minted journalist at the Warrnambool Standard that led her to her role at Advance Cairns and an exciting new life in Tropical North Queensland after over 20 years in Hong Kong.

We talk in the podcast about how she has approached maintaining her connections with Australia, what learnings she gained from coming home the first time, how her two third-culture kids are coping with a home country that feels foreign and about her approach to life in Cairns. Her next ‘expat assignment’.

Sneak preview: she is far from bored.

S5 Ep2: Brett Cooper

After 21 years with the one employer and a life across multiple countries in Europe and Asia, it is somewhat ironic that Brett Cooper has now ended up in one country with multiple employers.

Such is the adventure of an expat-repat!

Brett’s career with Phillip Morris started in Sydney and took him to Switzerland, the UK, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. He hadn’t been on a plane until he was 18 but certainly made up for it after seeing his colleagues take the leap and making the international move himself.

Taking career chances and moving countries allowed Brett to build skills across corporate affairs, human resources, and general management.

Despite having a breadth of skills, Brett was still concerned about coming home and started planning well in advance.  Turns out, this wasn’t enough time.

In this podcast, we talk about how Brett navigated the recruiter scene back in Australia and why he decided in the end to pursue a portfolio career.  We discuss how this style of career has been the best one to not only leverage his skills but to give him the lifestyle flexibility that he needs to manage his kid’s transition back to Australia – and to ensure they lose their American accents!

S5 Ep1: Andrew Tiernan

It took three attempts and a career 180 for Andrew Tiernan to move home to Australia after 18 years overseas but despite the bumpy role to get to Melbourne he says he is now ‘in the right place’.

 

He has gone from a career working in financial services across Asia and Canada to the CEO of his own tech platform start-up signing its first clients.  His partner has found his career sweet spot and together they are carving out a great life in Melbourne, despite neither living there before. 

 

They believe ‘the adventure doesn’t have to stop’, proving you can take expats out of the adventure, but you can’t never take the sense of adventure out of the expat.

 

Andrew speaks about a couple of key factors behind his eventual success; a shifting mindset about his career, making sure his partner was equally invested in the move and asking for help from his friends and network.

 

We talk a lot about the role his network, past and new, has played in not only helping Andrew with career decisions but on supporting his business. 

 

This episode is a great reminder of the power of networks and the opportunity that can unfold if you just ask for help.

S4 Ep8: Survey Insights: Do I Stay or Do I Go?

In this special podcast episode Margot and Simone chat about the findings of their recent Australian Expat Career Survey and the release of the report ‘Should I stay or should or I go?’  that explored the role work and job plays in an Expat’s decision to come home.

 

With 450 Australians answering the call to take part, they share their 5 key take-aways along with some insights on who took part, how long they’ve been away, what expat's experiences with recruiters and hiring managers has really been like and just how long the average Aussie spends planning their move home.

 

They also talk about how expats can use these findings to support the planning of their return and how mobility professionals who work for organisations managing global workforces can support the repatriation process.  

S4 Ep7: Liz Ritchie

‘Forget Sydney and Melbourne and you’ll be happier’, is the message from podcast guest Liz Ritchie, CEO of the Regional Australia Institute, for expats living overseas and thinking about moving home.  The  Institute is an independent thinktank and Australia’s pre-eminent source of research, information and policy advice on regional Australia.  And according to their research, people living in Australia’s regions are happier than our city-dwellers.

 

Right now, there are more than 70,000 job vacancies advertised in the regions, and factoring unadvertised positions, this number is likely to be double. The most in demand jobs are skilled professionals and mid-to-high skilled trades like engineers, doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, teachers and accountants.

 

In this podcast, Liz talks about the professional opportunities for skilled Australian expats looking to be part of the positive trend of people moving to Australia’s regions as part of the Great Regionalisation!