In a New Country? Try a New Profession

It starts in the airport. The brands are different. The smells are different. And it might just be your imagination, but people seem to even be moving through space differently. You’d been planning the relocation for months. But when you finally make it through passport control, get your bags, and wait for a taxi, it hits you: this is a completely new country.

As a fresh resident, you’re going to experience equal parts dislocation, frustration, and joy. And, after some trial and error, you’re sure to uncover something new that will absolutely delight you — maybe a food or a tradition. But your discoveries don’t have to end with culture. 

In fact, a move to a new country is a perfect opportunity for you to reflect on your career and find a brand new calling. Here’s why.

It’s an opportunity for change

While we do live in a modern world that’s mobile and interconnected, some aspects of life remain stubbornly attached to specific locations. Jobs are one of them. That means a move likely comes with the end of a professional era. 

Before going further, that ending deserves acknowledgement. We’re not saying you should push forward into a new professional future without ever looking back. If you just barrel straight ahead, you risk engaging in toxic positivity and missing out on the chance to give this the consideration it deserves.

But, after that period of reflection, you can absolutely see this as an opportunity. All too often, people get stuck in a career simply because it’s what they’re used to. It’s an action more informed by pure inertia than by a clear, conscious choice to enthusiastically clock in every morning.

So ask yourself — was your previous career really worth it? With this break, you have the chance to sit down and consider if your previous job is something you’d like to keep pursuing. If you find yourself realizing that the job you had in your home country no longer stacks up, you can start looking for something new.

And this can more harmoniously blend with your curiosity or your skills. Is there something that’s always been buzzing in the back of your mind as something you’d like to try? This is the time to go for it full-force. Got a hobby you’ve been toying with just out of the joy of gaining the know-how? Maybe it’s time to put some real horsepower behind it and see if it can develop into a full-fledged career.

Remember: you’ve still got skills

Speaking of skills, regardless of where you’re coming from, you inevitably have capabilities you’re bringing along with you. Even during a professional pivot, you’re still you. For example, did you work in accounting_{How to Know if You Should Make a Career Change From Accounting}? Then you have a background in data, and these capabilities are in demand across numerous professions. 

If you’re coming from this profession, your ability to handle large amounts of data would make you an ideal data scientist. Or maybe you preferred handling the financial side of things. In that case, jobs in financial analysis abound, and your skill set can help you pursue that path more easily. All you need is a little extra tech know-how, and you’re set up to pursue a new career that still makes full use of the unique background you bring.

If you’re unsure what path to choose, evaluating the transferable skills you have can help guide you. And pinning down these skills is important for reasons beyond just finding a path that inspires you. There are practicalities behind reflecting on transferable skills as well. After all, in a new country, you might not yet have completely mastered the language or the new unspoken cultural codes. These are the elements that tend to dominate communication-heavy jobs.

For example, you might have been a salesperson_{I Work In Sales - Is It Possible for Me to Break Into Tech?}. In that case, a lot of your job involved having effective conversations. You relied on language and cultural skills to get the job done. Your new context — both linguistic and social — might make it more difficult to apply this know-how to a similar role.

So when you reflect on your transferable skills, you might look to surface know-how that doesn’t rely on you fully knowing and applying cultural nuances. Sales is about more than just talking, after all, so maybe you already have hard skills in things like Microsoft Excel or data analysis. These are the sorts of skills you should try to highlight when you look at your previous career.

Follow the example of our grads

Our grads have found success by looking hard at their skills after moving to a new country. Evgeniia Unzhakova_{How an Immigrant Landed a Career in the US: Evgeniia Unzhakova’s TripleTen Story} is a prime example.

After nearly a decade teaching math at a university, she and her family moved from Russia to the United States. She knew she had to find a new direction.

I decided to choose another career path because I knew I couldn’t teach.

Evgeniia Unzhakova TripleTen grad

She realized that even if she was no longer going to teach, she still had a good background in math. That could lay the foundation for a tech career. She considered programming, but found that it wasn’t the path for her. Instead, she realized that data science was a great mix of tech and math.

After finding the pace of a local community college to be slower than she’d like, she enrolled in TripleTen. There, she augmented the skills she had with new coding capabilities. But not only that — she also found assistance in adjusting to the cultural aspects of landing a job. It came in handy during a job interview.

“I was asked about soft skills: how do you work with a team? What do you do with problems? It was strange; if you don’t live here, you don’t know how to answer some of these questions,” she said. Luckily, TripleTen had helped her build interviewing skills as well. “The team prepares you to show that you’re positive and involved.”

And yes, she landed that job. Now, she’s a research analyst at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

She’s not the only teacher who made the transition to tech when she came to America. Hulya Karakaya_{Mastering a New Syntax and a New Vocation: Hulya Karakaya’s TripleTen Story} also found tech success. An English teacher by training, she moved to the US after graduating from college in Turkey. Like Evgeniia, she realized she needed to reconsider her professional plans.

After graduating, I moved to the US. So after that, my plans changed. I cannot be an English teacher here.

Hulya Karakaya TripleTen grad

But she was in Seattle, where she regularly met techies. That inspired her to learn full-stack engineering. Initially, she used free online materials, but found it hard to unify what she was learning. “When I was studying by myself, the material was not connected. I’d forget a subject.” 

So she looked into bootcamps and enrolled in TripleTen. After gaining new know-how in software engineering, she joined an externship with Allcorrect Games_{Externship with TripleTen: Allcorrect Games}. This all gave her a strong resume and portfolio she could bring to decision makers.

Soon enough, she’d landed a job, and now she’s a Frontend Developer & Technical Writer who helps make it easier to display, edit, and annotate PDFs.

You know where we’re going with this: you can transform your career, too. And we even have the data from employers to back this up.

So, if tech is something you’re curious about, and you find yourself in the US after leaving a career in another country, you’re in good (and successful) company. Your new adventure stateside is the perfect time to launch a new professional adventure, too.

But what new profession to pursue?

The first choice is if you should make the change. The second one is which new path to pursue. And we can help there, too — take our career quiz to see which profession is best for you.