Working overseas

A big [challenge] is legal safety. There's a lot of uncertainty on being a displaced person and despite having a piece of paper that tells you you're allowed here to stay - you have the right to work because if a person has a refugee stages, they can work - but people feel very insecure. They feel this can be taken away from me at any time. ‘If I don't find a job, if I don't integrate, it's going to be taken away,’ so this uncertainty on the legality of being in the place, it puts people in a very uncertain territory.

The other one is isolation. The lack of connection. People come here and they don't know anyone and they don't belong to circles. They don't connect with others especially outside their ethnic group. They might know other people, they might come to the UK, they try to make it here because they have a few people they might know, but outside that, there's nothing else. So that lack of connection, again, makes such a huge difference in the lack of reference, lack of encouragement, motivation, inspiration, guidance. They don't have any of this.

Whereas for people that have been here or people from here, there's always there's always someone that acts as a connector, at least as some sort of reference. That's a big one. Then there is the cultural one because of that lack of integration, lack of connection: reading a culture or giving the right signals, these unspoken cues are a big barrier for people for sure. They will not know exactly how to apply for a role, what are the right things that you have to say, how you have to behave, what protocols are expected? And people think a lot about the interview stage and yes, of course that's an important element, but it's like getting to the interview is already a big challenge. You need to follow a lot of procedures in order to do that.

I come from Italy, a culture that values the permanent job. So as soon as you find a job that's going to give you like a permanent contract, you take it for life. So that's it. It doesn't matter the growth. It doesn't matter if you're happy with your job. It doesn't matter if your colleagues are fine. All of those things do not matter because what matters is having security.

I think it has helped me challenge the status quo in a way. And also to me, it feels like to do your best work you have to consider different perspectives. You shouldn't really be convinced that your own opinion is always the best. And I believe that having lived in many different countries really taught me to be very open to perspectives, having discussions with people from different backgrounds and reaching the way you see the world by bringing different opinions and people that might not have the same views as you, but listening to them, understanding their point of view, empathising with what they might feel and think, so that it also helps you gain a better understanding of the world and therefore do better work because you can approach a problem from many different angles and say, 'Oh, well, right now I think this because X or Y.'

But if I tackle the problem from another angle, then I might find a better solution or just an alternative solution that might be equally as good. But I think that's really good. For me that's one thing that I value in people, and also I try to foster that skill in myself: to never be too narrow minded. And I think having lived and still living in different cultures helps with that sort of thing.

One of the thing is that I've been exposed to through my wife, because she is Chinese so she knows how those things work. In China, especially in places like Shanghai, the speed of things is very high. So one big difference would be that there is this so-called 996 culture from nine to nine, six days per week. And the thing is that when people look for job, they very much want to get responses fast and those who hire want to get responses fast.

Maybe in the Western part of the world, America or from France, England, you have Glassdoor and some other sites that can tell you exactly what's going on inside the company, but in Romania, we do not use those sites very often. And you have no clue. You have to go to the company or maybe know someone from the company to really tell how well will your period there be.