Meetings with professionals

In both cases weather you are trying to get into new industry you are interested in or you have been made redundant and want to get into your industry – it is a great idea to visit professional meetings and conferences! They can be easily found by simply typing in the search engine “java …country name, or marketing … country name”. The most popular forums or magazines, or communities should pop up – this is basically what you are looking for. Pick up one (not too expensive at the beginning) and go. Here are reasons why:

1) You get to know people, and they get to know you
2) You will get better and inside understanding on what people are doing in their day to day job
3) What are potential employers are there
4) What are industry challenges, trends, opportunities


Here I am straight from one of such meetings. My first impression – I am scared, what to do with all this people, how to talk, what to talk about, else. My second impression – no matter how small this country is marketing people are doing very good job! However my last impression was -being immigrant in the foreign country is hard enough, however, looking for the job in the area of marketing or sales in the foreign country is like 100 times harder. There are reasons for that
1) Language. Being as good or bad as I am in English I still find it difficult to communicate with people. Sometimes for me it is hard to understand what they are saying (simply because there are so many words/expressions that I don’t know and don’t use on everyday basis) and on other times I find it hard to understand what they are talking about (simply because I was born in other country and we haven’t had this or that TV series going on our channels)
2) Culture. In spite of the fact that Irish people as well as Ukrainian people like to drink and also grow potato – strangely enough, we drink different things in different quantities and we grow absolutely different potatoes… What I am trying to say – is that I am scared to talk to people sometime as I don’t know what to say to them. The hardest times comes when trying to make jokes. It is absolutely disaster for most of the times. When I am trying my best to translate this or that joke from my language, which I know is funny – they simply don’t get it. I am not sure here if it is language problem or cultural, or both! I have good friend she is Russian and her boyfriend is English. I clearly see it time to time – when she is saying something, that makes perfect sense to me, however doesn’t ring a bell for him.
3) Business. I don’t have huge experience in business. However, all that I know is not working here. In Ukraine it is highly important to know people! When some initial contact is established conversation regarding job may pop up followed by, probably, job offer or else. Here, when I was trying to approach people the way I would used to – they just scared away and looked at me as if I was speaking marsian.

The only thing that makes me think that finding a job in marketing/sales industry is even ever possible in this country for me is – power of education and knowledge that marketing people of Ireland also inspired by world’s legacies! In spite of the fact that Rugby is not anywhere else popular as it is here and no where any one knows about GAA – it is still one of the sports. Theoretically same rules as to football, tennis… should apply….