More people than ever are searching for jobs internationally in the hope of gaining knowledge and experience from around the globe.

Immersing yourself in a new culture, becoming fluent in another language, giving your career a new start… The benefits of international work experience can be huge, but you need to follow the right steps to find and land the right job. Here are six ideas to get you started.

Is the Silicon Valley losing some of its appeal? That’s what we’re hearing through the grapevine. So where are today’s entrepreneurs flocking to? What makes these places so innovative? And are women making the most of these new hubs? 

THE GREAT CONVERSATION GAP

Are you aware of your own conversational style? Do you adapt your way of talking depending on your audience? Do you talk to men differently? Apparently, being aware of your style of communication and becoming more “gender neutral” is key to enhance our communications.

We often hear that “as women we have a harder time being heard in business than as men, even when we are in positions of authority.”

Professor Deborah Tannen of Georgetown University says: “Some of the men I spoke to – and just about every woman – told me of the experience of saying something at a meeting and having it ignored, then hearing the same comment taken up when it is repeated by someone else (nearly always a man).” We’ve all been there!

Business Insider makes the same conclusion. They mention a study conducted by the Yale School of Management  which says that powerful women aren't speaking up as much as their equal-in-rank male colleagues for fear of a backlash from their peers if they come off as too aggressive.

“When men talk a lot and they have power, people want to reward them either by hiring them, voting for them, or just giving them more power and responsibility at work. But when women do it, they are seen as being too domineering, too presumptuous. Women perceive this, and that’s why they temper how much they talk.” says Victoria Brescoll, an assistant professor at Yale.

Here are tips to help women to speak up! The Next Women recommends using your voice and pitch well: a pitch rise at the end of a sentence indicates a question and can indicate uncertainty or that you’re asking for approval. Conversely, a pitch fall indicates finality and certainty. Also be aware of your tone and try to use analogies when explaining something to someone. Finally, building a good rapport is essential, so show the other party that you are actively listening, through gestures, facial expressions etc. 

If there’s someone convinced of the necessity for quotas in Europe it’s definitely Viviane Reding, European commission vice-president for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship. She wants to see more women in top management jobs for 2 reasons. Because as she said, in this challenging economic context, it’s even more important to use all our assets. But Viviane Reding also believes that without quotas, equality in the workplace is still a very long way off:
 
“The progress report I presented on 5 March 2012 on women in Europe’s boardrooms shows a 1.9 percentage point increase from October 2010 to January 2012, compared to a long-term average rise over the last decade of 0.6 percentage points per year. However, France alone accounts for around half the increase in the EU, after having introduced quota legislation in 2011. But overall, change remains very slow. At this rate, it would take another 40 years to even get close to gender balance in boardrooms.”
 

JACK WELCH: “WOMEN AREN’T WORKING HARD ENOUGH”

According to former General Electric chairman Jack Welch, the only thing standing in the way of women getting ahead is performance. Forget about programs promoting diversity, mentorships or coaching, Jack Welch thinks women should just work harder. Gasp.

Mr. Welch is not a first time offender. At a Society for Human Resource Management conference in 2009, he said : “There’s no such thing as work-life balance… We’d love to have more women moving up faster. But they’ve got to make the tough choices and know the consequences of each one.”

Nobody disputes that performance matters. But in his analysis, Welch forgot to acknowledge a few variables  like the "unconscious biases" at play in a work culture shaped by white men; or the fact that women are already doing more both at home and at work than are their male peers; and women are faced with hard choices when juggling kids and a career…

Meanwhile, lots of different studies have shown that women often outperform men. Forbes mentions  a recent study  in the Harvard Business Review of 7,280 business leaders found that women outperformed men in 12 out of 16 competencies that comprise outstanding leadership. Another survey  of 5,000 U.S. workers by workplace research firm theFIT, women work more than men. In fact, 54% of women vs. 41% of men reported working 9 to 11 hours a day.

Forbes columnist Jenna Goudreau sums it up pretty well: “Honestly, I’d question just how well Jack Welch prepared for his performance pep-talk that spectacularly underperformed. Clearly, he hadn’t done his research.”

Europe and the United States have made great strides to encourage women to join the workforce. In Europe, the employment rate for women is 62%, up from 55% in 1997. And women now represent 60% of university graduates.

But most of us are also aware of the statistics on the other side of the glass ceiling. For example the ones that show that women make up only 13.7% of members on company boards.

The use of quotas, forcing companies to hire and promote women, is often critized. What are some of the other solutions? The roadmap is less restrictive, but does it deliver?