By Niloofar Mohammadi Moazed, Associate at Supertrends Institute
How do I benefit from “Working from Anywhere” to elude my geographical remoteness and prove my talents to the bigger world?
Contributing to the bigger world, and adding value to this blue planet, is what my heart has always desired. However, growing up as a young woman in Tehran, I had to overcome many challenges to pursue my vision, to establish my talents and skills in the international job market, and to build a recognized professional brand image for my professional life. Then the pandemic arrives, remote working trends surge, and I seize the opportunity to follow a brand-new strategy for my future professional journey. I go with the flow and become part of the international remote working and remote talents community.
My Desire of Growing my talent
Ever since I was just a little girl, I have loved communicating and collaborating with global society. Sitting on the floor of my father’s office and bombarding him with questions about his business trips to China, Europe, Brazil, Turkey, and UAE and dreaming about the future when I’d do the same. YET the world is not always as serene and untroubled as a kid would dream. When I turned into a young female post-graduate professional in Tehran, I had to face many pressures preventing me from applying my talent to its potential. I will skip the longer story about the social and cultural difficulties women are struggling with here. The internet is filled with those sorts of articles. I’ll jump right to the first solution I came up with: Moving Abroad to Work as a Skilled Worker.
Immigration, though, will always come with a price. You have to say a sad farewell to your family, your friends, to the country and the people you have always admired, to your culture, traditions, and language.
Then the Magic Happens …
And the reality of “Working from Anywhere” accelerates due to the pandemic. This movement was already shaping within knowledge-work organizations before 2020, but the pandemic hastened the rise of remote working and put an end to many concerns about it. Companies begin to embrace this new shift and I willingly seize this alternative opportunity to start working as a remote talent in the international job market where I could capture numerous upsides including:
Portraying a novel perspective of working from anywhere
For many the term “Working from Anywhere” will carve out a fancy image of a woman relaxing in Canadian wilderness working on her latest project, or a young man sitting in beach in Spain having a video conference – A great simultaneous scene of adventure, freedom, and work. Giving people the chance to work where they work best, wherever that may be. Being enabled to seamlessly create and collaborate from remote corners of the world. My perspective, however, is far away from these clichés – As a person who is already living in a remote corner of world and seeking her voice to be heard, working from anywhere is more about being capable of stepping out of this involuntary isolation, creating a global network, being able to build a successful career, having the chance to apply my talents in a larger scope, and adding value to the bigger world.
Work Where Your Talents Add Most Value While Living Where You Are Most Comfortable
Now following my dreams and being in the comfort of my home and are no longer two opposite sides of a coin. I don’t have to forfeit my personal life and abandon the people whom I love most in order to be a part of the bigger world. I can achieve my moonshots while remaining close to my dear ones which further improves my overall creativity, productivity, and happiness.
Sharpening an Adaptable Mindset
Personal and corporate technologies and digital connectivity have advanced so far. I can today enjoy how my teammates and I collaborate simultaneously on the same file in SharePoint or uploading documents in Dropbox where other team members can modify it, knowing that they will build on my comments and reply to my questions as soon as the workday starts in their time zone. Having a strategy workshop on Miro or holding our daily scrum meetings via Slack – Where all this is working effectively. I am now adapted to this new working approach where I can work with other people without sharing a same office. I learned that we don’t need to be co-located as colleagues on site to do a productive and creative teamwork. In other words, I am making my talents and skills available where they may create most value across the world.
Making New Talents Available Where They Are Needed the Most
What happened in 2020 accelerated a particular opportunity for employers and employees alike: “Talent from Anywhere”. The pandemic transformed what was once a perk for just some professionals in developed countries into a new opportunity for corporations to tap into and employ talents from anywhere. Never before have so many companies performed business outside the walls of their traditional office spaces. This accelerated trend has enabled companies to hire undiscovered talents anywhere in the world more quickly, more compliantly, and more easily. You might be sitting in any corner of the world, Tibet, Baghdad, Cape Town, Rio, or in my case, Tehran, being worried about your limited local job market and its boundaries and wondering when it is your time contribute where you can add most value. Now, thanks to the genuine opportunity brought by pandemic, you just need to raise your voice in the cyber world and reach out to any company that is visionary enough to embrace this and start building your most desired future.
This article is written by Niloofar Mohammadi Moazed, Member Care Specialist at Supertrends Institute – A Switzerland based company fueled by talents from anywhere in the world.