Tuesday, April 08, 2008

An Inside Look at International Assignments

Ever wonder what it’s like to do a temporary overseas assignment? Chicago Business recently ran a feature detailing the experiences of a handful of KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants who took short-term international assignments.

KPMG’s Mark Brusius says he’d traveled a lot before he accepted a temporary posting to Kochi, India, but still worried about all sorts of things. "My concerns were around normal, day-to-day things — food, health care, transportation," he told the paper. He went anyway, figuring "good or bad, it is only three months.”

A KPMG middle manager shares his take on Amsterdam (his family worries about legalized drugs and prostitution), while a PwC senior associate talks about working in Sydney, Australia (her mother worries she’ll like it and stay).

Our conclusion: Parents of accountants worry too much, so don’t listen when they tell you it’s dangerous to work outside the U.S. An overseas assignment is a great career development tool.

1 comment:

Francine McKenna said...

I agree! Working in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina for KPMG Consulting/Bearing POint changed my life. It's not only professionally enriching but personally enriching. But, I never told my parents about the bulletproof Mercedes that used to pick me up from the airport whenever I visited Bogota, Colombia.