Boomeranging: Expat to Repat

S4 Ep6: LJ Ferrara

If you were an Aussie living overseas who managed to navigate your way home during COVID, chances are you are very familiar with the Aussie Expats Coming Home Facebook page and its founder LJ Ferrara.

 

What started as a group to help LJ navigate her own journey home in 2018 after 20 years overseas, became a vital source of information and support for thousands of Australians trying to get home during COVID.

 

At many points during the pandemic, LJ and her community were providing answers to expats and their questions faster than what they could source from public and government channels.  The power of this community saw it swell in numbers almost overnight.

 

In this episode, we explore how LJ and her expat community helped Aussies during this time and how the community today is supporting expats navigating the logistics of coming home.  With planning to come home often intrinsically linked to securing a job back in Australia, we talk about how long LJ thinks expats should be allowing for the transition. 

 

And here’s a hint for expat dog owners, 6 months is not enough!

S4 Ep5: Deborah De Cerff

Deborah de Cerff’s career is supporting the careers of expats.  For the last 30 years, she has helped individuals and organisations move lives and careers across the world and back again.  She is now Founder and Chair of The Employee Mobility Institute advocating, promoting and growing the talent mobility industry throughout Australasia.    

 

Over her career, she has seen many changes to how organisations view and treat expat assignments but no period has offered up more changes than right now. The global talent shortage is forcing many organisations to re-think how they view and support traditional expat assignments.  In the past, organisations have focussed on ‘global mobility’ but with the demand for talent so fierce and flexible working having a seismic impact on where many roles are now based, the focus is moving towards ‘talent mobility’ or ‘career mobility’.

 

Could this be the end of the word ‘expat’?

S4 Ep4: Louise Broekman

Senior Australian expats with global experience are highly sought after for positions on Advisory Boards according to Lousie Broekman, founder and CEO of the Advisory Board Centre.  Louise founded the Centre 10 years ago and has grown the Centre to be one of the leading professional bodies for the advisory sector globally with a presence now in more than 20 countries. 

 

In this episode, we discuss how Australians with knowledge and experience working in international markets are highly sought after by organisations using advisory boards more and more to test and manage growth opportunities. Louise discusses what organisations are using advisory boards for and the sectors and markets in hot demand.

 

She believes expats with knowledge and experience working in international markets make excellent candidates for Advisory boards – particularly as more and more Australian companies and start-ups look at their global growth ambitions.  But she also stresses that joining an advisory board is not a ‘retirement plan’ and outlines what it takes to be an effective chair and board member.

S4 Ep3: Julia Van Graas

Has the new era of flexible and hybrid working opened up new opportunities for C-suite expats looking to return home? Co-founder and Chief People Office of Leaders on Demand Julia Van Graas certainly thinks so.

 

Julia leads a team of experienced, hands on c-suite executives who deliver on-demand support to CEOs and organisations looking to scale.  In this podcast she talks about working with the on-demand team, 85% of whom are Australians who have lived and worked overseas, and the experience they bring to Leader on Demand clients in Australia.  And why this style of work, is so attractive to returning Australian executives.

 

We also discuss the impact of flexible and hybrid working is having on how leaders work – and where, which Julia believes will open up more opportunities to senior executive Australian expats.  She believes Australia needs to take this opportunity in this period of transition of how we work to really re-think the ‘where’ we work to really unlock Australian talent anywhere in the world.

S4 Ep2: John Versace

Career, lifestyle and financial goals are all linked and so is the planning.  John Versace is a financial planner at Apt Wealth and leads their expat practice. For the last six years he has talked to Australian expats every day in all corners of the globe, expats carving out careers in tech, medical fields, advertising, entertainment…even a few vets!

 

Australian expats come to John and his team at various stages of the ‘coming home’ process and while the initial inquiry is often financial, work and lifestyle tend to dominate the early conversations.  Knowing where someone is in their career and understanding a person’s lifestyle expectations are critical to John to understand an individual expat’s financial needs.

 

In this podcast, John shares conversations he is having with expats right now around career, lifestyle and financial goals and the trends he is seeing when it comes it comes to work back in Australia.

 

He also shares the common misconceptions many expats have about their finances coming home and when is the best time to start planning the move – both for the sake of your finances and your career.

S4 Ep1: Johanna Pitman

While the headline of a ‘skills shortage’ appears to be welcome news for any Australian expat planning to come home and find a new role, CEO of Advance.org Joanna Pitman warns it may not be the silver bullet expat think it is.

Johanna speaks from her experience not only as CEO of the professional network for global Australians who works with industry, government and Australia’s overseas expat community, but also as a 15-year expat herself who returned home in 2007.

 

Expats who are specialists in their field or who have spent 10 to 20 years away from Australia, need to be conscious of their ‘specialised skills set’. This skills set can have advantages delivering Australian organisations skills they ‘didn’t know they needed’ but can also be challenging in a skills shortage where organisations are looking for very specific skills to be met.  Johanna offers advice for how expats should approach the today’s local job market and how they should best position themselves and their experience.