Beyond diplomas and regulations: let shine your competencies

What’s the essence of your profession? Careers are usually organised around professions and these tend to be responsible for specific fields within societies. Lawyers take care of laws, dentists are responsible for teeth, anthropologists look at culture, civil engineers focus on structures and do on. To have a title is linked to a particular domain and therefore to a range of jobs. Within the EU this is even more stressed by the fact that many regulations define domains, conditions, licenses and other entry criteria to practice a profession.
However, this approach might lead individuals to close-end roads. This is even more evident and common with migrants. When migrating, at least two barriers must be faced if you assume your career from this perspective: diplomas, norms and regulations and, social recognition.
Within the EU there is a dominant trend to associate jobs with diplomas. If you want to develop a project or practice any activity often you will be asked about your diplomas. But even if you have any, the equivalences among titles are far from been standardised. What is considered to be a dentist in the US or in Thailand is not the same as the education provided by a Dutch institution. Except for most liberal professions, diplomas, norms and regulations are important entry barriers.
The second large barrier, social recognition has a different nature. The accumulated experience and the gained recognition in your home country loose most of their value and relevance in the new country. Your previous success stories lack the support of your customers and their capacity to refer new ones or to spread the word about your good performance. Let shine your competencies and create new ways ahead.
To overcome these barriers a different approach to professions is required; one not related to fields of work but instead to competencies and skills. Using the lawyer example, someone having such title is more than a law expert. That person can handle long pieces of text, analyse them, find connections within and even memorise them; he might be very good in finding relations, obstacles or opportunities using context information; might have the ability to compare business practices among different cultures, or to solve conflicts and conduct negotiations.
A dentist would be someone with valuable hand-skills, a well-developed sight, etc. with knowledge about healthy alimentation and experience to work in a one-to-one relation with customers. An anthropologist would have relevant competencies to observe and find out similarities and differences among groups of people, might have skills to look at present trends and compare them with past ones or forecast future ones.
The challenge is to portrait your competencies beyond a particular profession and a field of practice. You are who are independently of such context elements. By Identifying these competencies and strengths you have, related to your profession but firmly rooted into your personality and life history, you gain a completely different point of reference.
To decide which path to follow in order to continue developing your career becomes then a nice challenge for your imagination. You are beyond the profession-job framework and therefore you are out of the diploma-regulations-social control barriers. You are free to decide and create your own way. So my advice would be: re-visit your CV and look to the type of activities you have been involved, organise them and find out which ones provided you more inspiration, launched your creativity and made you happy.

Have you experienced losing your identity in 10 hours?

When I went into that plane all my dreams an expectations about the new life waiting for me were my main baggage. I never imagined that after 10 hours not only I would have moved in space but also that my identity would be challenged in such a dramatic way.
At home I had many networks: classmates, relatives, colleagues. There I was a recognised professional having a valuable experience acquired through many years working in key organisations. Somehow I had developed an identity linked to the context: my family, my friends, my titles and, my working experience. All of them meant nothing in my new destination.
The first symptoms of my new challenge started to manifest as I went through the job searching process: no networks to use, my titles had no value here and my working experience was systematically underestimated. And there it was, the core of the main challenge that migration had to offer: who am I?
It was a tough process, especially because I was not aware of what was going on. It could be said that I was a passive victim of my own process. But gradually with a big effort and using several personal development techniques I managed to stand-up and see the process from a different perspective, the one given by been in control of my own life.
Observed from there, the challenge became an opportunity. It was a wonderful opportunity to explore and find a deeper answer to ‘the who am I’ question. It was then possible to find an answer that was not based on context factors but on my heart. It lead me to get rid of those images and believes that were not in line with who I really am and therefore to walk lightly.
The gains from such process are many. But with no doubts, the main one is that my new path is not based on networks, classmates, relatives, etc. but, instead, is based in a very simple answer: I am a teacher and my task is to support others to find their own path, a path with heart.

Re-building networks

In the new country all my home networks have lost their effectiveness. Thanks to internet it has been possible to keep them alive and to continue interacting with friends, class and work-mates and, relatives. But their capacity to support me or to provide me access to new contacts of to specific resources is almost inexistent. This has obliged me to invest enormous resources and effort into rebuilding new networks.
Embedded in your home country you don’t realise the value and scope of the networks in which you are involved. Starting from close family a members and school mates and including all the acquaintances cumulated along professional life the scope of the local networks is impressive. These enabled access to all kinds of resources: information, new contacts, trust, jobs, holidays, coaches, etc.
To re-build and develop useful networks is one of the emerging challenges when migrating. There is not a single formula to apply, instead a combination of strategies might be effective.

• Friends of my friends: use previous acquaintances to leverage new ones; the trust you already have created with your friends might be easily transferred to new leads.
• Public events: attend conferences, seminars, parties, exhibitions, etc. Where you can be in contact with people having similar interests.
• Blog: create a blog and publish your ideas, feelings, experiences… It’s easy and it’s free. You gain visibility.
• Host: welcome people at home, offer your place to friends travelling for holidays, arrange diners, use social life at your own place strategically.
• Email groups: there are thousands of groups, scan google or yahoo to identify some of them where you can contribute and learn.
• Clubs and associations: these would provide you access to information an entitle you with a trusted membership
• Personal cards: print personal cards, there are free printers that might do a good job for you or use the cheap machines in train stations.

These are just but few…might you share some of yours?