NEW JOB HUNTING SKILLS FOR "SEASONED PROFESSIONALS" |
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Ticket to Ride
Jumpstart your career and triple your salary by breaking through the glass border.
By Judith Potwora
As corporations go multinational, so do careers. More than ever, women are taking a bigger share of global postings. A respected survey shows the number of women expatriates is at an all-time high. These women find themselves in good company as women worldwide begin to reach senior corporate ranks.
"Women are thriving," says Emma Sabin, a director at Catalyst, a New York-based research firm that surveyed more than 1,000 American women and men working overseas. "Our feedback said that the vast majority would do it again."
It's an open secret among women eyeing the executive suite: Go global. Many of corporate America's top women to watch are leading – or have led – major foreign divisions. And American multinationals aren't the only contenders: Foreign corporations are putting women in charge in locales like China, Egypt and Italy.
Successful global assignments can jumpstart careers. Take Mary Minnick, for example. After four years heading Coca-Cola Asia, which accounts for 26 percent of Coca-Cola's operating income, this spring Minnick rose to the level of executive vice president. That makes her the highest-ranking woman at Coke. At GE, Anne Abaya rose to the post of senior vice president after a stint in Japan. In fact, look at the résumés of top-tier managers at most global firms and "you typically see they have one posting, or several, in global locations as part of their broadening," says Cathy Anterasian, a Spencer Stuart consultant who conducts international executive searches.
Simply put, as the world becomes smaller and corporations become bigger, women are taking a growing share of global jobs, often leading to even more lucrative jobs back home. Top foreign jobs also have perks to alleviate the stress of foreign living, travel and childcare arrangements. But foreign assignments don't guarantee success. Experts caution women to be smart about which jobs they take and, most importantly, what job they'll have when they return to the United States.
"There used to be this prevailing myth that women were loath to travel because of family commitments," says Irene Natividad, co-chair of Corporate Women Directors International. "That theory has been blown aside by the women executives themselves."
For Katie Bayne, who had her first baby during her four-year stint in Australia with Coca-Cola, international experience gave her some of the most valuable learning in her career. Working overseas with an entirely new staff, "you start over again," says Bayne, who is now senior vice president for Coca-Cola Trademark Brands. "You are forced to review your basic assumptions about everything, and you become sharper the second time through." When she went to Australia in 1996, Bayne was a retail marketing manager working on consumer strategy for the soft drink giant. She says she took the Australia job because it provided opportunities to develop new areas of competence – like retail marketing and revenue growth management – and put her marketing skills to work in a more hands-on way.
She dug in with gusto, designing a plan to install a new merchandising system for national rollout, when near-disaster hit: An Australian dock strike stranded the marketing materials at sea. It was up to her to partner closely with her bottler and come up with a plan to rush installation of the displays to make up for the dock delay, while working through possible government channels to find other methods to get the materials. In the end, the marketing plan worked out. "It turned things up a notch, demanding more creativity and teamwork," Bayne says.
WOMEN IN HIGH PLACES
More than ever, American women are augmenting their careers with overseas assignments. Eighteen percent of all expatriates are women, according to the Global Relocation Trends Survey, which shows the number of women expatriates growing gradually since 1993. The annual study is sponsored by GMAC Global Relocation Services, the National Foreign Trade Council and the Global Forum of the Society for Human Resources Management.
While the relocation trend data doesn't tell whether these women expatriates are high-level executives, there are a lot of American women in high places: Nancy McKinstry, CEO of Dutch publishing firm Wolters Kluwer; Linda Cook, executive director of Shell Gas and Power in the Netherlands; Rose Marie Bravo, CEO at the British apparel manufacturer Burberry; and Dawn Robertson, managing director at Australia's Coles Myer Ltd., to name a few.
"You may be surprised at the number of women at the helm of major corporations around the globe," says Natividad. Iman Hill runs Shell Egypt. Lien Siaou-Sze heads HP Technology Solutions in Singapore. Moraleda Shelter Martinez leads IBM Spain and Portugal.
"These women should show the way," Natividad says.
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