I’ve dont the difficult bit and convinced her indoors that there is more to life than South East England and she’s now quite keen to move to North Yorkshire. But the conversation last nigth turned to more exotic places, well with better mountainbiking and occasional sunshine anyway.

Does anyone have any experience of applying for jobs in places like Cannada, the USA or NZ (or anywhere else in the english speeking world, neither of us have done any languages since A-levels)? How do companies usualy conduct the interviews? Or is upping sticks and moving, then starting the job hunting the best way, or is that going to cause issues with visa’s in most countries? Assume for the sake of argument that I’d pass any imigration criteria.

Just a pipe dream at the moment and wondering if it’s going to be tripped up by having to fly out for several interviews and end up skint before we even start.

When I applied I got interviewed in central London, which was great as I was working there at the time.

To be fair though, I was applying with Brit companies for jobs that were based overseas.

One thing a guy I know did was go to New York and knock on doors of places he wanted to work, just to see what happened.

When I got my current job in Germany, I had a phone interview first, then they flew me out for a proper interview.

Plenty of English speaking jobs in Europe if you look around, and saves on any visa issues.

When I got my job in the Netherlands I had a telephone interview first followed by Skype then I flew over for a face to face which was more for my benefit than anything because I’d already been offered the job.

USA & Canada (and possibly NZ, although less experience there) are pretty strict on who can work there. Depends whether you either have the qualifications / earnings etc to go direct for a visa and apply direct, or whether you can find a job with an international company who are recruiting internationally and will do the visa work for you and help move you out there. Either way, you need decent / niche qualifications to do this sort of thing. Europe totally different.

I’ve worked abroad quite a bit, generally you do research and apply for the jobs from the UK, attend an interview or two (with expenses paid for by company) then the company applies for the visa etc for you. This is much the easiest way. For the US in particular it’s basically the only way. Canada is a little easier and Australian and NZ will consider you relocating there without work.

As Too Tall says the benefit of the EU membership is you can move freely and look for work.

In my working career (25 years) I’d say one of my regrets is not having worked abroad more, FWIW I’m currently considering another move abroad. I find it’s very enlightening and really helps to re-energise you.

I know someone who got a job offer in Australia based on a video conference

Early this year my wife and I made a similar decision. We were looking at the Alps or Vancouver. I had a few telephone interviews in Europe and 1 in Canada. The 1 face to face interview I had was in Austria and they paid all expenses. And I have now been in Villach, Austria for 6 months and loving it.

As mentioned above it is easy being in the EU because everything fell into place. My new job is an English speaking role and we speak English all day. I didn’t speak a word of German but I’m learning and the company has paid for lessons during work time. This helps around the area but to be honest most people still have more English than I have German.

Also the other benefits have been great mountain biking, beautiful scenery and the weather has been better than I could have imagined. I have also been snowboarding for 3 days so far this season on the local Glacier.