I wonder, for those of you that have worked in Taiwan in fields such as marketing and sales, how did you find job hunting when returning to the UK? I have never worked in the UK and all my professional experience is in China and Taiwan (albeit < 5 years).
How did UK employers view your experience abroad?
Was it seen as a negative?
Did employers have concerns about how you would fit into a UK company?
How is the employment process different in the UK than to Taiwan?
It depends on the interviewer. My instincts would suggest it’d be considered an advantage, for recruiters that you want to work for anyway.
Are you British?
Fixed for you 
Yeah
I’ve interviewed with some before although not British. Your domain experience is key, and you may well have to step down a role to get local experience if you want to work with UK or European market.
Honestly, would be better to have UK or European experience and languages but of course some employers will like to target asian market …smaller portion.
Plenty of jobs and recruiters (reed.co.uk put your resume there) out there though agsin salary expectations might need to be adjusted . Higher positions very competitive, multiple interviews, interviewing process can be very slow.
If you know how to market and sell, why setup with an employer? Just go into ecom and market your own stuff.
Maybe he needs money lol or likes to work in his own industry.
The employers didn’t have open concerns about fitting in. It didn’t come up and I’m not even British.
The recruiters and employers like to tick boxes though and that’s when not having recent local experience in UK/European market doesn’t help. And to be fair if they want somebody who understands the UK market right now its pribably not you. And if they want an English /German speaker mightnot he you either. But ypu could become a team leader instead.
depends what you do though…for lower to mid range jobs I reckon they dont give much of a shit as long as you accept their salary, able to project confidence and look competent. Theres a lot of LOW paid jobs in the UK. Obviously London is where the high paid jobs are usually.
As i said for the top jobs its very different hiring process that the local admin, field guy. STILL always anticipate it will take longer than you planned.
Then I don’t think you’ll need to worry about fitting in when you guys watch the kings coronation sipping on some tea.
I don’t know enough about your industry to comment much. But the UK employment process is one of the more tedious and more difficult ones. Top firms often have assessments and assessment centers you go to.
I don’t work in the fields you mentioned, but I remember struggling to find work in the tech industry when I returned to the UK and wondering if it was because all my relevant experience up to that point was from Taiwan. I can never know if that was the reason or not, but after getting just one year’s experience in the UK on top of my Taiwan experience, I was suddenly highly in demand.
Yep, I can tell how it works in Germany, we always low ball foreigner devolper, when he doesn’t have German experience. One reason is cause we often get away with it. People don’t really research local salary packages, laws and generally have a bit poor command of language, so this gives company upper hand.
But our recruitment process is fast. 3 weeks grom received CV to first day in office. Time is money. Is still good deal for them.
To OP, you are British, but expect no one will give a flying f. about your abroad experience. Chinese is not really needed and market has tone of Mandarin native speakers anyway. There is half a million surplus in population. yearly. A lot of competition. Everyone speak your language - although not that good, but this is irrelevant to cheap (majority) companies.
Contact HR consultants firms, and send 300 CV. Don’t lose time, take first job, which isn’t total garbage. After 8 months of working start searching for better job. Target American corporations, they pay the best in London. But you need local experiences and local job first. Otherwise they don’t take you seriously. This is how game is played
I can’t speak to the specifics of sales and marketing as I don’t work in that area, but experience working abroad is seen as a positive at my company provided it’s in a relevant area. Being British I doubt you’d have trouble fitting in from a cultural perspective. My wife is Taiwanese and she’s had no problems here.
The recruitment process with us depends on seniority of the position. We have large numbers of applicants for lower level jobs and the hiring process is quite quick. For more senior positions with fewer applicants the process is much longer as it’s important to get the right people in those roles. Probably going to be the case in most places.
From my experience in the UK, I never felt like an outsider due to my racial or cultural background. I think Brits are used to working with people from different backgrounds, especially in places like London.
The Brits seem to have their own class system that doesn’t necessarily tie into race. I actually feel you’re more out of place as a Brit if you spoke with some accents than being a foreigner.
I think it will be difficult, I was talking to a recuiter a few months pre-covid but post brexit - i.e. when things were better. He had around 100 people on his books looking to move back to UK from HK, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore etc.
He told me the same thing he said he was telling them, I was very unlikely to be even interviewed until I moved back to the UK first. Move first and then search, searching while living outside the UK was pretty much hopeless as companies had a wealth of people inside the UK already and some positions were even being limited to people who had lived in the UK for the previous 5 years.
That was a kicker, there were a few postions I really could have moved into but the applications insisted on people having lived there for 5 yrs previously, so even moving back and applying for many would be a waste of time. I’m still here.
What sort of roles are these? I thought they had a massive labour shortage, as Brexit continues to push people away.
It’s about right to be honest.
Most recruiters and employers value local experience, local names and market, and it takes time to network and find the best opportunities…It can take so long its probably a good idea to take any low ball offers to get started back again.
Yes you will get 10x more interviews when you move back first.
You NEED a UK or European phone numner or just forget about it. They need to understand you are back permanently. It’s practically impossible to get hired from overseas.
List your cv on Reed.co.uk apy for a few jobs。 the recruiters will be after you in no time.。You must have an address in UK so you are on their search profile.
I checked into jobs , had loads of interviews but I didn’t make the jump, almost all the offers were significantly lower than what I getnow,and you add in tax and cost of living the difference was pretty horrendous for me in terms of take home. Was not ready to pull that trigger.