Social work and transition to an international career.

As I share with you, my search for job opportunities in Italy, and the challenges of being an international professional.

Today I bring up a little bit of my decision to dedicate myself more to the society I chose to live in until I find a job that has to do with my experiences and my values as a person. Which indeed is not an easy task!

So, depending on how you organize yourself financially and mentally for this, volunteer work in another country really ends up being a beautiful gateway to understanding society and still exercising your personal/professional skills in practice.

For example, I always liked to connect with people, and in Brazil, the foreign trade area always pushed me to do this work.

A job that not only connects goods and raw materials but firstly creates relationships of trust. Therefore, it was not only bureaucratic import and export work, but it also led me to make good commercial connections/relationships.

I always had with me the importance of relationships, and over time I studied and exercised more and more about it. And in this sense, the sale was a lasting relationship, and accompanying the client's process, after closing a negotiation was as important as selling for me.

My priority in gaining customer loyalty was to gain confidence that I was always on the lookout, with early solutions for anything that might go wrong, with maximum transparency in information.

But what does this have to do with volunteer work?

The decision of volunteering was precisely to bring this care that I already had in me in my day-to-day work, to act as a volunteer.

That's because, most of the time, you can't act directly in your area of expertise, right in the first job, when you decide to transfer country. Therefore, it is necessary to be prepared for this scenario and have long-term growth plans.

With this opportunity to be a volunteer in a hospital in Italy, I feel that I have the chance to put all my commercial expertise into practice, serving an incredibly diverse and needy public.

In transactional phases, when people are on a big learning curve, (as explained in my last article), it is essential to gain back trust and remember the professional and the experiences you had before. It's practically the feeling of getting your identity back.

The volunteering experience has been bringing everything I love most! The connection with people, the feeling of helping someone, giving attention, solving problems, listening, giving information transparently, and creating trusting relationships.

The most interesting thing is that many times, inside the hospital, I came across foreigners who did not know how to speak Italian. With my commercial experience, my master's, and language learning that I've been investing in and acquiring over time, for example, I was able to communicate with most of them in a much more empathetic way. This has been bringing me a good state of satisfaction and enormous confidence in my human and professional capacity!

This is because the experience of having been vulnerable one day (like the foreigner who arrives at the hospital, not speaking the language) and remaining open in wanting to understand people and their needs, puts you in a very special place, of no longer just supporting of society, rather than the beginning of a leading role.

Therefore, to become a desirable professional in the market and internationalized, the stages of evolution and growth within society are unlikely to be broken.

Otherwise, just being very fluent in languages and being transferred through a multinational company, for example, to quickly reach a desirable position. Besides that, the social and professional space must be well planned and conquered. Feeling part of society is extremely important for a job replacement in the area where you want to work and have experience.

In this context, volunteer work can be an excellent initial alternative for career and social transitions, bringing a lot of satisfaction to follow in a prosperous process of professional replacement, giving you space to put into practice your skills that can be stored for a long time, until you manage to gain your social and professional space.

#workabroad #liveabroad #internationalcareer #volunteer