How Can You Get Jobs In Developed Countries By Building Your Skills and Network?

Are you a professional based in a developing country? Do you dream of leveraging your living standards and getting a job in a developed country?

Additionally, do you dream of living on a decent salary that well represents your skills and talents? You are in the right place!

If you are interested in moving to another country for work, please check our article “How To Get Jobs In Developed Countries As a Professional In a Developing Country? Part 1: How To Sneak Into Another Country?” Here, we will touch other topics, such as self-education, building professional skills, applying for remote jobs, branding yourself, and building self confidence.

Online Education Has Opened To International Students… And Is Becoming a Standard.

First, let’s briefly talk about the current state of affairs in international education.

Today, capitalism has sneaked into the education sector. Namely, education slowly moves online. In addition, universities need to compete with independent educators, educational influencers, and private education firms.

Similarly, more and more content becomes freely available online. Online educators change business models and move from hiding behind a paywall to open, sponsored content. Consequently, this shift happens as soon as they possibly can.

In this situation, you can learn entire professions from YouTube or even TikTok! Or, take free courses from teams representing prestigious institutions such as Stanford or MIT via Coursera and other open education platforms. These are among the most practical self-development resources for professionals available today.

Interestingly, in the developed countries, the interest in free online education is also rapidly increasing on behalf of university education.

Why Are Employers Losing Faith In Traditional Degrees?

Young professionals representing generation Z, also known as “boomers,” no longer believe in the role of the public education system in their life success and don’t trust higher education in general. They are eager to learn and start careers on their own rather than spending most creative years of their lives and often, getting in a massive debt, during the years spent at the university.

According to Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, many employers have removed college-degree requirements from job postings in recent years, recognizing that such requirements had eliminated a large share of talented candidates from consideration.

Furthermore, employers finally noticed that resignation from conventional recruitment strategies and dropping the higher education requirement for some jobs can diversify talent pools and improve on the overall team productivity. 

What Do CEOs Say About Hiring Without Degrees?

In a recent interview, Merck CEO, Kenneth Frazier and former IBM CEO, Virginia “Ginni” Rometty both admitted that university degrees are not as indicative of professional excellence as it used to be in the past.

Well, in fact, this is a process going on for years now. Today, university diploma is mostly a way to make the early-stage recruiters’ jobs easier. 

They often have no specialistic knowledge on the offered positions and an academic title is nothing else than a heuristics, or a stamp of quality that gives them evidence that the candidate has some knowledge in the field instead of just saying so. And that’s all it is.

Moreover, there are multiple well-paid professions that you can land without a university degree. Please find more information in our article “High Paying Jobs Without Degree: How To Start a Career Without Higher Education?“

What does this mean in practice? Overall, in terms of chances for learning and self-development, we are more equal than ever before. If you think that you don’t have enough options to get solid online education, perhaps you should browse more!

Why Are Businesses Worldwide Open To Hiring Remote Workers?

Meanwhile, many businesses in developed countries still undervalue international talent. They often assume that specialists — developers, writers, and analysts — are more capable when educated in the developed world. As a result, they tend to undervalue equally skilled candidates from developing countries.

On the other hand, they may worry that professionals from developing countries have different values and working styles. As a result, they fear these professionals won’t be able to adjust.

However, the pandemic substantially accelerated the process of equalizing chances for decent earnings worldwide. In the times of global village, remote teams slowly become a standard. Businesses are more and more welcoming to the idea of getting talent living overseas on board.

According to the World Economic Forum, global digital jobs that can be performed remotely from anywhere are projected to grow by roughly 25% to around 92 million by 2030.

Still, sometimes hiring experts living in developing countries is formally not possible. For instance, this is the case in Europe as the European Union is highly protective of European employees. However, nothing can stop businesses from taking you on board as a subcontractor.

For instance, there is a range of services that can be fully delivered remotely and learned by yourself. Moreover, you can master them for free and from the comfort of your home. So, what are your options? To name just a few:

1. Coding & Data Science.

Similarly, it has become easier than ever to learn to code by yourself, even with modest beginnings. In fact, it is a matter of curiosity, diligence, and self-discipline rather than traditional academic education. Building this kind of discipline is part of how to develop a growth mindset. Similarly, employers don’t really care about academic titles.

There are certain exceptions, such as Google that requires at least a Bachelor’s title from job candidates. It’s mostly because of the way computer science is taught at universities, how much time is spent on theoretical fundamentals of coding, and how this type of training specifically fits Google’s projects.

Overall, in most cases, recruiters will test your skills rather than looking into your academic curriculum.

If you consider software development as a career, not every programming language is equally useful. For example, some languages have many more industry applications, while others are dying languages such as Latin.

For the full list of programming languages that we can recommend from professional standpoint, please check our article “Top 5 Most In-Demand Programming Languages in the Today’s Job Market.”

Data Science As a Related Path.

Unlike coding itself, Data Science also contains the scientific part — as the name suggests. As a Data Scientist, you not only build pieces of code, but also try to understand real-world problems. In addition, you build new solutions that can be tested in the real world.

For instance, you might work on a new algorithm that interprets sound. This algorithm could help build more accurate hearing devices for people with hearing problems.

Or, you might analyze why customer satisfaction scores are low among the company’s clients. Then, you determine how to improve the production process to raise those scores.

If you are curious and eager to solve real-world problems, Data Science might be the right career path for you. In addition, it could guarantee an exciting professional life with a great future. However, the path to becoming a competitive Data Scientist is much longer than the path to becoming a software developer.

For a tutorial for how to start this career, please check our article “5 Steps To Build a Career in Data Science and Land Top Data Science Jobs.”

Also, Data Science is not a secret craft that is only available to the few. You don’t need to attend commercial courses to learn all you need from scratch. You can successfully start your Data Science career by going through open-source tutorials such as “Learn Data Science Tutorial – Full Course for Beginners” from the freeCodeCamp YouTube channel.

2. Graphic Design.

Graphic design is yet another way to put your step in the door and get a remote job. Your natural talent and work ethic matter much more here than any school. You can start by using the free Canva account and learning on your own or by taking some online courses.

For instance, Skillshare offers hundreds of courses in graphic design such as the “Graphic Design Basics: Core Principles for Visual Design” for beginners.

3. Web Design.

Web design is a marriage between coding and graphic design. To become a good frontend designer, you need to be strong at both.

Again, Web Design is a type of expertise that you can confidently learn by yourself. Specifically, you can build increasingly complex projects and take online courses.

For instance, you can find beginner-level courses “Beginning Web Design for Creatives, Visual Learners, and Everybody Else” and “Web Design and Copywriting: Build Insanely Effective Landing Pages With Old School Secrets” at Skillshare.

4. Content Creation.

Today, if you don’t exist online, you don’t exist at all. Businesses understand this very well.

As a result, they invest in public communication with their clients through social media activity or blogging. Therefore, a company blog and news section have become an integral part of every business.

Having said that, there is a lot of room for international talent in the realm of digital content creation. There is a wide range of specialties — media communications, informational content writing, infographic creation, and copywriting.

For example, you can choose the one that best utilizes your talents. If you enjoy photography, you can even monetize this by shooting stock-like photos for your clients!

For more, this career path is a relatively safe direction to choose. Content creation doesn’t go anywhere — now after the pandemic, every business wants to have online exposure. Having a good content creator who consistently produces good quality content on the team is gold.

Moreover, good content is not easy to reproduce by AI, especially when it comes to using humor or metaphors. Therefore, as a content creator, make sure that you invest time and effort in developing your own style.

Also, put your own personal touch into everything you do. In addition, your creations should be something more than just putting together encyclopedic, dry information.

5. Branding and PR.

Branding and PR are related to content creation. However, this area of expertise is more focused on strategizing and channeling the communication from a helicopter point of view. As a result, the goal is to achieve the desired effect long term.

A branding or PR expert usually creates a branding and public relations strategy. They then work with a team of content creators to put this strategy into action.

Meanwhile, they make sure the company avoids major pitfalls — such as copying another brand or becoming greedy or controversial. They also avoid targeting too wide or too narrow an audience.

If you feel like a strategist who can win people’s hearts, this path could be a good fit. Similarly, if you can engage others in the company vision, you should give it a try.

Smaller companies especially often lack the budget to work with major branding firms. As a result, they might be interested in collaborating with an agency operating from a developing country.

6. Online Marketing.

One could talk for hours about online marketing — who doesn’t need it today! Roughly, online marketers can be divided into two categories: SEO experts and online campaign creators.

An SEO expert knows how to optimize a website so that it captures as much organic traffic as possible. Google’s whole business model is based on advertising. Specifically, it charges businesses one to twenty dollars per click to rank at the top for a given keyword.

The charged amount depends on the keyword. For instance, keywords related to finance and education are generally more expensive than keywords related to gardening or weather.

In general, however, businesses need to pay tens of thousands of dollars monthly for organic traffic that generates valuable leads. That’s why SEO experts are so valuable to them.

An SEO expert analyzes website traffic and finds the right keywords for maximal organic reach in the desired area. In addition, they optimize the website so that it ranks high on Google naturally, without paid advertising. He or she is also responsible for optimizing the website parameters so that it loads fast and is functional.

Paid Advertising and Campaign Creation.

On the contrary, the online campaign creators create paid online campaigns via major platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram. They need to track complex metrics, including visitor origins and demographics. In addition, they monitor CPC (cost per click), CPA (cost per client acquisition), the customer journey, and retention rates.

They also need to test multiple versions of the same ad to find the most efficient one. This requires analytical thinking and strategy. In many ways, running online ad campaigns is an analytic job rather than a marketing job.

Online marketing often has a bad reputation as manipulation. In fact, it is simply a form of marketing like any other. It can be a fascinating job that offers personal freedom and the chance to work with multiple interesting brands.

To learn more about digital marketing, please check our article “White Collar Jobs in Digital Marketing: Hot or Not? On 5 Biggest Myths around Digital Marketing.”

7. Video Editing.

Today, visual content is often more appealing to the audiences than written word. Plus, people want to buy from people, not from businesses.

No wonder that businesses are eager to pull off their own YouTube and TikTok channels and let their own CEOs speak to the camera. Consequently, they search for engaged followers and leads there.

Of course, this requires a professional editing job. If you have a creative mind and enjoy video editing, you might consider pursuing this path professionally.

For instance, you could create an agency offering video editing services. The demand for such services willingly grows in time.

8. Remote Management.

Today, brands not only delegate coding but also, project management. At the end of the day, for remote teams it doesn’t matter where their team leader is located.

If you feel like you are a people’s person and a natural type of a leader, you might be willing to consider going for online project management certificates such as, for example, the free Google Project Management: Professional Certificate at Coursera, and applying for remote jobs.

9. Community Management.

Community Manager means “the liaison between a brand and its followers on social media.” The startup culture naturally adopted community management as part of the game. After all, every startup needs a proper hustler. 

Plus, community building is a natural way of building a brand and scaling the business — usually much cheaper than paid online ads. No wonder that within a few years after the outburst of interest in social media, all reputable businesses incorporated teams of Community Managers into their operations.

Just as the name states, a Community Manager will be appointed to any task that involves a community. You might be asked to promote brand awareness, manage Public Relations campaigns, create (social) media content, moderate chat rooms or online forums, communicate with the users, organize and moderate events, maintain social media presence, acknowledge the customer base, or other things of that nature.

To learn more about the job of a Community Manager and find tips for how to start, please check out our article “Community Manager: The New, Hot Job For Those Who Love People.”

How Do You Define Your Core Competencies?

In the process of becoming a respected expert, your personal branding will be crucial. What are you best at? In your online communications, your pitch needs to be clear. Getting this clarity is part of how to identify your career values before you pitch yourself to anyone.You need to be sure of what your craft is, and openly say it to your leads.

We tend to be proud of skills that took us the most effort to acquire. However, these are often not our biggest talents. What is easy for us, can be extremely hard for others!

If you are not sure what your strongest side as a professional is, you can ask your coworkers, friends, and family. In addition, listen to their fresh, outside view of yourself. They might surprise you!

Put Yourself on the Map.

Make sure that you are present online and that your personal branding is consistent. Namely, be consistent with how you introduce yourself on various social media.

In the Western culture, we use to put our given name first and our family name last. So, if you wish to work with brands in the Western cultural circle, you might adjust to this convention.

Also, it is preferable to use the same (preferably professional) profile photo to be easily recognized across multiple platforms. Remember that we don’t have the ability to easily differentiate faces of people ethnically different from us. So, if you use the same profile photo, you make yourself much easier to recognize for people overseas.

Of course, it is also crucial to set up a professional, complete LinkedIn profile. Additionally, learn how to network on LinkedIn efficiently so that you can get the best out of it. It is entirely free of charge — your success on LinkedIn only depends on your diligence. This is one of the more accessible business development networking strategies available to anyone.

To learn more about how to start on LinkedIn and how to network on LinkedIn like a pro, please check our articles “10 Steps to Create an Effective LinkedIn Profile” and “Top 11 Rules For Effective Networking on LinkedIn.”

Build a Personal Website.

Lastly, it is highly valuable to create a personal website for yourself or for your business, and set a Google Business page for your professional activities to start collecting testimonials. After all, your own website is your own plot online — while a LinkedIn profile is like building a house on someone else’s plot.

Namecheap offers domains for as little as $6.99 per year, and Bluehost offers highly affordable hosting plans starting at $9.99 per month (with only $2.99 for the first year).

And, in times of AI, you no longer need design or coding skills to create a professionally looking landing page – tools such as Butternut can help you create a website in seconds.

Create a Compelling Resume.

Your resume, (or, a CV) should be:

• Easy to find online and download,
• Complete, well-structured, free from spelling and grammatical mistakes, and aesthetic,
• Competitive: show you from the best angle as a professional.

Please find more information on the dos and don’ts of a resume in our article “Perfect Resume and Why It Is NOT Perfect For You: Marissa Mayer’s Resume and Personal Story.”

Now, do you have hard time getting down to the process of writing a CV? Are you procrastinating and don’t know where to start? Well, you have at least three good options to help yourself so that things will get in motion:

1. Free CV Template.

Dozens of websites offer open access to free CV templates, including Canva, Resume.io, or Office Templates. You can get virtually any design you imagine for free!

2. Using a Bot.

Using free-access bots such as ChatGPT by OpenAI can effectively help you structure your CV. You can start by using a simple prompt such as “create a template for a CV” or “create a template for a CV in software engineering.” 

Then, you can ask the bot follow-up questions to expand on any of the proposed sections depending on your needs.

Of course, you can also merge the two strategies given above: use one of the free designs available online, add sections suggested by the bot, and fill the final template with your personal information. 

3. Scraping Your LinkedIn Profile.

Are you short on time? If your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date and complete, you can use it to create a fast draft of your resume by saving your LinkedIn profile to a PDF. To learn more on how to create a compelling LinkedIn profile, please find our article “10 Steps to Create an Effective LinkedIn Profile.”

Start Somewhere. You Can Start Small, It’s No Shame!

To get your first clients, you can consider joining platforms such as Fiverr or Upwork. On these platforms, you can post any gigs and then adjust your offer to be able to make the most out of your time. In general, these platforms are good to start, experiment, gain experience, get some leads, and collect testimonials for your services.

But as soon as you get a chance to run from there by exporting your clients beyond Fiverr and working with them on a regular basis, you should do this. The point is: on Fiverr, you compete with other sellers on the price while on platforms such as LinkedIn, you compete on the brand and quality. It is always a better option in the long run.

Also, focus on a few strategic clients and make sure that they can give you real recommendations — not just five stars on Fiverr and a thumb up, but they will also pick up a phone and call their contacts to vouch for you and find you next clients. A few strong recommendations will take you further than many random ones.

Polish Your English!

In the process of developing your online career, also make sure to polish your English! Many professionals in developing countries are wonderful researchers, software developers, engineers, graphic designers, or content creators, but their English does not feel natural and that makes them waste lots of opportunities. Their job applications sound scammy and they do not make as professional impression at the online interviews as others.

So, develop the habit of using Grammarly to polish your text before sending it out to the client, and practice written and spoken English — especially if you are planning to work as a content creator or a social media representative.

Keep on correcting yourself using tools such as Grammarly, edit and rewrite every professional text with a fresh eye before sending it out for evaluation. You will soon observe progress in your command of English. Sticking with it is one of the more overlooked personal growth strategies for professionals working internationally. It is definitely an investment worth taking and the sooner you start, the better for you.

Learn About Work Culture In Other Countries.

Are you willing to work for a company in the Western culture? Well, it would be good to learn about the working culture in their country — to know what the expectations are. There are major differences in mentality between countries.

For instance, Germans and Swiss are known for their principled attitude to deadlines and hierarchy. When the boss tells you that the report has to be on their desk on Friday noon, it has to be there on Friday noon, not at 1 pm.

The Dutch leave their employees more autonomy, which sometimes means no guidance. And yet, they still expect the work to be done on time.

Americans are known for the attention they pay to following the rules — especially the rules related to safety and to team diversity. If you don’t follow procedures strictly enough, you will be on your way out. On the contrary, Mediterranean nations are known for the loose attitude to both deadlines and rules, which can result in chaos.

Overall, before you work with a client in a distant part of the world, it is good to browse and read about the local work culture, and if possible, also the culture of this specific company. If you are not sure about specific rules and expectations, just ask!

Many professionals representing developing countries are not asking enough questions. Asking questions is perfectly fine as it is a sign of team spirit.

Learn The Art of Selling Yourself in the Recruitment Process.

There is a difference between being a strong professional, and appearing like so in the recruitment process. To get good gigs or get hired, you need to learn how to make the best impression on clients and recruiters.

To learn more about passing interviews with flying colors, please check our other articles “7 Magic Spells: How To Enchant the Recruiter at the Job Interview,” “Before a Job Interview: How To Conduct an Informational Interview,” and “Don’t Blow Job Interviews! Red-flags In Recruiters’ Eyes.”

To get a comprehensive knowledge on how to land jobs and contracts, please check also Natalia Bielczyk’s book “How to Navigate in the Job Market and Shine in the Job Interviews.”

Don’t Fall Into the “Easy Money” Trap.

Many professionals based in developing countries have a wrong imagination about life in developed countries. They believe that life here is easy, and people live on a good standard without doing much. Well, thesis not true.

Although the purchasing power is higher here, we still need to put in lots of effort to stand out and secure a good quality life for ourselves and our families. The truth is, we all need to pedal really hard to get somewhere in life. There is no such thing as easy money — regardless of what your favorite YouTubers and other influencers might say!

So, while looking for a better life, don’t fall into the “easy money” trap. You might encounter lots of scam online, promising you big gains without work. Blockchain scam, financial pyramids, trading bots… There will be lots of temptation, so keep your eyes on your prize and focus on gaining real craft and building a real career.

Invest In Your Future.

This article is all about investing in yourself and developing skills necessary to start. Getting jobs in developed countries. However, next to investing in yourself, it is also worth investing in assets such as real estate.

We live in a global village now — in the next few decades, the prices of soil and real estate are likely to equalize across the globe. If you live in a developing country, you can profit from that!

Mind that your income will not grow linearly, but rather, exponentially. At first, you will need to acquire a minimum viable set of skills necessary to do the projects.

Then, you will slowly polish your skillset towards proficiency. But your income will start growing exponentially only when you become and expert and develop a personal brand around your skills.