“OPPORTUNITY comes but once” has transcended idiomatic relevance — especially for intending migrants.
Unless you have risen to the top of your endeavor or occupation as an athlete, artist/entertainer, a member of a political or business dynasty — the most viable opportunities for work/career progression and a better future at home may be found in the following sectors: technology, finance, health care, engineering and construction. Then there is the BPO outsourcing component.
While technology and digital innovation show the fastest growth, it also poses uncertainty and obsolescence as artificial intelligence creeps past and faster in the entry-level jobs of the industry.
BPOs/outsourcing provides a structured career pathway up to the level of management positions.
Finance and accounting careers offer growth potential mainly in the corporate and multinational sectors.
Health care and nursing occupations are much needed, but compensation and career stagnancy at home spur the push toward overseas employment.
Engineering and construction have opportunities mainly for licensed professionals in the industry. Otherwise, skilled workers — carpenters, masons, plumbers, electricians — can see their careers cemented into one or several employers, advancing to foremen or supervisory levels, at most.
In all these sectors, moving up the career ladder takes time, unless you have the right connections.
Where do expiration dates come into play as you move up the career ladder in any of the industry/sectors above? And which of them are beyond your control?
Factors from within
First, the internal factors, starting with age. Even if you are a Benjamin Button, you cannot stop time and aging — forwards or backwards.
Moving on to another employer in the same industry is logical if opportunities for advancement in the current worksite have vanished.
How long would a skilled worker stay in the same job with the same or a different employer before moving up to the next step in the career ladder?
HR practitioners put it this way:
– 20s–30s: The best time to take risks, accept challenges and experiment, as failures are easier to recover from.
– 40s and beyond: Career changes to find meaning and greater purpose, both of which require higher levels of emotional intelligence and professional experience. When you reach this age, chances are new industries have emerged.
Second is qualifications/academic credentials.
Promotion from a bookkeeper to a certified public accountant requires completing the required course/s, examination and licensure for advancement to the next level.
Same goes for the IT industry. Transitioning from data entry helpdesk to software to IT specialist and on to systems administrator, infrastructure engineer needs completion of specific course, training and certification.
Which brings us back to the time needed to complete the requirements to advance — adding to the age factor.
From the inside, looking out
The external factors would involve the desire or need to progress faster elsewhere when local opportunities seem to have stagnated and reappeared in the overseas horizons of the Five DestiNations: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US.
Each factor presents its own set of expiration dates for the corresponding country.
Notes
– Visa/occupations US — Schedule A occupations include registered nurses, physical therapists
– Assessing authorities for Australia — https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/skills-assessment
– Ecctis — credential evaluation, benchmarking, mapping and tailored consultancy to help governments, businesses and institutions. (https://ecctis.com/)
– Processing times — Upon receipt of a completed application online, identity and other documents.
In-demand occupations and demand for changes
Health care jobs continued to fuel labor market growth in all five countries owing to aging baby boomers, retirement of those in the labor force and low birthrates.
The same is true with agriculture, agri-foods, transportation and warehousing, as well as social assistance and services occupations.
With the crush of migrants admitted before — and the rush to fill up the affected jobs by the pandemic — all five countries are expected to pursue their goal to radically reduce immigration intakes, especially under the surge of anti-incumbent waves forcing changes in migration policies.
Rightist parties have emerged stronger, bolder and noisier, including Nigel Farage’s Reform, which has retained its eight seats in the Parliament while gaining more than 600 seats in the just-concluded local council elections.
Farage is a chief architect of Brexit and an ally of US President Donald Trump. The Starmer government and the Conservative party, the “duopoly that has dominated British politics for more than a century,” lost 750 local seats.
CNN and the UK’s Guardian newspaper reported that “once all of the 5,000 contested council seats in England are declared, the ruling Labour Party could find itself having suffered more than 1,200 net losses.”
About 9,500 miles across the world (in the continent where Britain sent its convicts to set up a penal colony, with the First Fleet landing at Botany Bay/Sydney Cove on Jan. 26, 1788), voting in Farrer — a large federal electoral division in southwestern New South Wales — is ongoing.
The results will clarify if Australian voters have soured on the Coalition in Australia — a longstanding alliance between the Liberal Party of Australia and the Nationals, the single opposition unit against the ruling Labor government.
We’ll see what’s up Down Under and which expiration dates are coming soon.
Next week: Undoing the damage from hereon and how elections will shape policy shifts