When moving to another country there is an interesting shift in your identity. From being a pure native, know-it-all person you become the new kid in the neighbourhood and immerse yourself in the dynamics of a 3 year old. Everything is so new, so surprising, so incomprehensive that you spend your day asking why and how. And what do you do then? You mingle with some more people in the same situation: expats transferred to the country by their multinational companies.
While this is a very comforting strategy, especially when you have just arrived and need support even to get it right in the underground, mingling with the natives will provide you with some competitive advantage:
v Language skills: If you are not a native speaker, you will expose yourself to the real street language. Most expats work in multinationals where at least 50% of the staff is non native. It results on poor language skills improvement. True that your work colleagues will understand you anyway, but outside work the story may be different.
v Information sharing: They will share with you the knowledge about the system. As you lose most of your knowledge about how the country works, how businesses work, where the opportunities are, etc. when you move countries, it will take you a while to find what you are looking for. Good news, your native networking pals already have that information and they will volunteer it without knowing.
v Contact Sharing: Their network tends to be larger and more stable. Since they have gone to school, university and postgraduate business school within the country, they have been nurturing those relationships for years. Most of your expats mates will be sent back in 12 to 24 months. Your networking pals will stay though and they will share with you their contacts happily once you have established your trust relationship.
v Cultural immersion: They will teach you the real culture of the country: what they like doing and what they value most. That is very valuable information to truly connect with them, to build relationships and even to invest in property. As an example, coming from Madrid, which has river with no water, there is no way I would have realised flats in the UK are more expensive the closer they are to any river if I had stated with my multinational network.
v Finance planning: Your finances will really appreciate it. Because most foreigners and expats consider their stay in the country as temporal, even if they have been in there for over 10 years, they tend not to have financial goals and live in the most expensive neighbourhoods splashing fortunes in rents. Mingling with people who are stable in the country means they have clear financial goals, they live in very nice and not so pricey areas, they own properties and they do investments which may encourage you to follow that path.
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| Social networking can help you integrate outside your multinational circle |
There are many other advantages I won’t list down on this post in an effort to keep my audience awake.
However, even if you reckon the upsides, some countries may prove themselves as difficult places to network with natives outside work. How can we remove this little barrier?
v Decide if you want business or leisure networking.
v Commit a certain amount of time per week or month to meet and follow up.
v Choose whether you will go for regular meet ups with the same people or one-offs with different people.
v Define the times of the day when you do your best: all day long networking, breakfast, lunch or evenings.
v Choose a topic: book club, SME, running club, young entrepreneurs, leisure visits.
v Do some research: google up topics and talk to other people to find the right groups for you.
v Brand yourself: how are you going to introduce yourself, what do you want people to remember about you?
v Be opened: you are supposed to introduce yourself to new people.
v Carry your contact details: either in business cards or as part of a on the spot email from your iphone you want to keep in touch with (at least some) of the people you have just met.
Smile and enjoy!
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