The Professional Guide for Traveling Spouses

Contents

The backstory

I’m a “traveling spouse” now. ✌️

And if anything, I’m proud to be one. I take pride in moving with my spouse as she embarks on an (our) exciting new adventure.

But moving to a new country is daunting, and exceptionally so without your network, friends, family, and work. I experienced it first hand when moving from Singapore to Cambridge in October 2021. It’s unnerving facing the prospect of having to do it all from scratch.

So I’m sharing this guide on what helped me, professionally, as a newly minted traveling spouse moving with no “work”. And for a large part of this, I do have my network and peers to thank. Before I left Singapore I was lucky enough to connect with a whole bunch of my network — 15 chats to be exact, most of them over coffee — and formulate a strategy to find fulfilling work. Full disclosure: I haven’t found full-time work yet, but still think there’s enough merit in this strategy to recommend to other traveling spouses.

1. Make networking your priority

Note that this assumes that you’re in a position where financially you don’t need to find work immediately.

For so many of us our immediate instinct is to find full-time work. So, how about this. Make it your full-time job to network.

You want to do this because building your network doesn’t just make it easier to find meaningful work eventually, it’ll create a butterfly effect that helps you in the long run.

For the first 8 weeks, I set an aggressive goal of reaching out to 40 new people and meeting 5 people every week. This was challenging for the first few weeks, so here are some hacks:

• Join professional networks in your vicinity, including meetup communities, co-working spaces, founder matching apps
• Ask your friends back home to connect you to people they know
• Say hi 👋 to your connections on LinkedIn/Facebook in your new country
• When you manage to connect with someone new, ask them to introduce you to 2 more people. This snowballs really quickly.

2. Start before you go

You want to leverage the network that you’re leaving behind. Before you go, reach out to them and tell them that you’re moving. Meet them and tell them about your game plan, your fears, and your concerns. You’ll be surprised by how many of them will help.

In the few weeks before I left Singapore I told my network that I was leaving and packed my calendar with 15 farewell chats. The effort was worth it — not only was it an opportunity to meet people one last time before I moved, but it also brought with it advice, a number of introductions, and three freelance work offers.

3. Accumulate social proof

As your network is light and you’re “untested” in your new market, you need every shred of evidence that you’re a great hire / founder — that you’re a real person, you’re smart, and you know your stuff.

Here’s what you might want to do:

• Update your portfolio or your LinkedIn profile
• Get your recommendations up to scratch
• Write and publish, publicly, on topics that you’re an expert in
• Start building your professional network (so you’re never more than 2° separated from decision makers)

4. Be shameless

Be nice, but be shameless.

This means inserting yourself into conversations, asking people around you for help, speaking up at events — things that may not come naturally or seem brazen. You’ll need to make that extra effort to be noticed, so (again) be shameless.

5. Get out there (not always literally)

Because the last thing you want is inaction and not putting yourself out there.

Do what you need to do to get yourself in the right mindset — whether that’s holding yourself publicly accountable, getting a hot-desk at a co-working space. Whatever it takes.

6. Did you need a sign to try something new?

(You know where this is going)

A new country also means a fresh start. Go try what you’ve wanted to for a long time. Start something, work in a new industry, try a different role.

7. This is hard

Moving to a new place means on boarding to a new country, climate, culture, house, housing rules, taxes, laws, traffic laws… the list goes on.

Some days you’re going to be overwhelmed. Some days you’ll wish you had your old friends back. Some days you’ll wonder if you’ve gotten it all wrong and should have just taken that first job offer. And know that that’s OK.

Bonus: Seek your community

It took me a while to learn that your network is not your community. I thought my networking efforts would land me new friends and communities. That didn’t happen.

You will need to seek out your community and your network, separately.

Your community is your group of people. People that you will grow close to in your time away from home. And usually what you need in your community won’t align with your network. Build your network, and seek your community.

Thanks for reading so far! I hope that this guide can help my fellow Traveling Spouses (TS) gang in some small way ✊

I’m well aware that this guide is ignorant of personal circumstances that fellow TS may face. So, I’d encourage anyone to take this with a pinch of salt and pick and choose the items that make sense for you.

If you know any TS or soon to be TS, please share this with them.

If you have questions or are curious to learn more about my journey as a TS, feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn or Twitter. 👋

You can also follow me or hit subscribe to keep in touch. I write regularly about growth, marketing, and partnerships in tech and fintech.