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Working abroad

A career in engineering opens many doors. This includes the chance to take your career overseas, temporarily or permanently. Working in another country and gaining new experiences is both personally and professionally rewarding.

Advantages of working abroad

You’ll be able to gain international experience, giving you a competitive edge. Most employers value international experience because its impact is two-fold:

Personal development

  • Improve your communication skills
  • Build on your confidence and independence
  • Expand your cultural awareness
  • Learn a new language.

Professional advancement

  • Colour your CV and stand out from the crowd
  • Gain new qualifications and professional skills
  • Impress employers with your initiative and flexibility

Still not sure? We’ve put together the things you should consider before digging out your passport...

Dealing with cultural differences

Cultural sensitivity is a very useful personal and business skill. Before you head off, spend some time researching the country and its restrictions, you wouldn’t want to find yourself unknowingly breaking the law!

Go to Cultural differences

Understanding your international qualifications

If you’ve decided to take your talents to new territories, you need to find out which qualifications are recognised internationally.

Go to International qualifications

The practicalities of working abroad

It’s not all fun and games, if you’ve decided to work abroad there are some important preparations to make.

Go to Practicalities of working abroad

We’re upgrading our systems, and this includes changes to our customer and member account log in, MyIET. It’s part of our big picture plan to deliver a great experience for you and our wider engineering community.

Whilst most of our websites remain available for browsing, it will not be possible to log in to purchase products or access services from Thursday, 17 April to Wednesday, 30 April 2025. Our Member Relations team is here to help and for many of our services, including processing payments or orders, we’ll be able to support you over the phone on +44 (0)1438 765678 or email via membership@theiet.org.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your understanding.

For further information related to specific products and services, please visit our FAQs webpage.

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