The Contact Directory 2007
Published by UK-based expatriate organisation Expat Network
 
You already know how it goes, you’ve been on a contract Uzbekistan your time is up and you are heading home to Europe. You will experience many things after years away from your home country a significant culture shock awaits…..
 
After a suitable time of rest and relaxation the inevitability of looking for another contract dawns but as soon as you begin you realise that in the recruitment world people move around a lot. Favourite recruitment agencies close down, new ones open up and often client companies move business around. The contacts list that seemed so efficient and useful when you went away is now abysmally deficient.
 
Starting an overseas job search from the ground up can be a daunting process. Of course we have the internet now so how hard can it be to find the perfect contract in St Lucia, earning £100,000 p.a., two weeks on, four weeks off, with a six-figure bonus at completion. Googling ‘overseas jobs’ will bring up a good few thousand sites – most will be expat outfits advertising potential vacancies – Expat Network will come up in the mix somewhere – so you could do this and make contact with all the companies advertising any overseas work, or just select those that are close to what you do for a living.
 
Spending a few days engrossed in online job sites will create a long list of recruiters for you but at this point you will know little about them – what industries they concentrate on, how long they have been in business, what disciplines they are actually looking for, which clients they might be representing today. Your search and research will have to be extended and your contact list will start shaping up nicely – but you can probably already feel how long this process is going to take. Have you got the time, the money and the energy to take this on? After all you are out of work and your savings will soon diminish.
 
Expat Network have been working on behalf of expats for over twenty years, the nature of the organisation means that the staff interact with expats on many levels, often talking on a one-to-one basis and certainly getting involved in every aspect of a member’s search for a follow-on contract. Armed with this knowledge and an overall understanding of how expatriate contracts and locations work 
 
Expat Network published the first Contact Directory in 1992. The Directory was the brain child of EN’s directors, Linda Taylor, Shona Farrell and Sheila Hare.
“Working closely with expatriates looking for work we could see that half the problem was finding the people who had the work in the industry required,” comments Sheila Hare, Editor of Nexus, expatriate magazine and co-founder of Expat Network. “Half the contacts a member had collected two years previously were out of date and those that were not might have stopped representing that oil and gas company or those construction giants.  A person spent hours and hours re-establishing contact with the right people.”
 
As EN works closely with recruiters and clients too, the job of verifying and updating company details was made easier through firmly established links. A company’s history and reputation was largely known already. Thus began a process EN still use today, thousands of recruitment and client companies are mailed a comprehensive form filled in and signed by an authority within the company (director, manager, consultant). 
 
Under each entry the company indicates the industries they employ for, the countries they mostly recruit in,  what disciplines, how long they have been in business,  affiliated companies, the personnel you address your application to, indeed, whether they welcome speculative enquiries at all. Entries are further referenced with an industry index.
 
….and there’s more
 
The Contact Directory goes further by including a Useful Address section. This comprehensive address book covers almost any eventuality you might encounter in your expatriate lifestyle. From financial institutions to the institutions you might need to change career. You can hire a car, take a plane, complain about an insurance product, buy your partner a rose, store your Rolls Royce. The people you need – embassies, visa consultants, CV writers, they are all represented. And what about leisure and community interests, of course they are in the book too – and that’s the other thing EN know about expats, they have a very peculiar existence and rarely fit in back at home.
 
If you, or someone you know, is working abroad or thinking about taking the plunge into an overseas career - this publication has already helped thousands of people find a contract overseas,  it can help you too.
 
“Thanks Expat Network I’ve just started working in Saudi Arabia on a two year contract, the company was in The Contact Directory last year, I mailed them and two months later this excellent contract was mine – I’ll see you in 2008!”
Arthur Lampton,  Quantity Surveyor
 
The Contact Directory 2007 is available in CD-ROM format as well and is interactive so you can mail companies direct. Expat Network offer the two publications at a discounted rate to members of Expat Network.
 
For more details of Contact Directory 2007 and Expat Network membership, go to:
www.expatnetwork.com
Price: 
ISBN: 9 781902176 19 2
Expat Network
T. 020 8256 0311
E. shona.farrell@expatnetwork.com