The Resume Problem

A few days ago I began my resumes for my job search for next January here in Brazil. I need four resumes, I realized: One to teach English at an English school (now that I officially have my English teaching certificate!), and one to work in an international corporation working with international relations. However, in addition to these two in English, I need to have the resumes translated into Portuguese so that my Brazilian employers can see my qualifications even if they cannot read English.

However, in addition to just translation work, I realized there is a lot of other work to do. Things that American employers find relevant, a Brazilian employer might not find relevant. Something that an American employer would hope to find at the bottom of the list, a Brazilian employer might leave for the bottom of a list. And finally, the layout an American finds appealing is not appealing to a Brazilian. For all papers at school, for example, Brazilian professors expect the paper to be aligned on both sides while American professors only like it to be aligned on the left side.

It surprised me that even within capitalistic, “westernized” companies around the world, there are a variety of differences. I can’t market myself in the same way here, I need to find what a BRAZILIAN, not American employer is looking for and what qualifications I have to meet their expectations.

This should be an interesting challenge in the next couple of months. At my visit to Natura the other day, I found that international companies in Brazil don’t yet have a concept of “international relations,” the very thing I study, within the workplace. There are no “international relations” jobs like there are in the U.S. Here, this is a very new concept. The Natura company works in Brazil, France, and Spanish-speaking Latin America and is soon to open the company in the U.S. “How in the world can they operate without the basic job of someone communicating between all the regions, doing the international relations?” I wondered. But they operate in a different way.

As I continue my job search, I’m working to find what I, as an American, can offer a Brazilian company. With my English, Spanish, Portuguese and soon to be French as well as my studies in International Relations, it seems clear to me that an international company (like Natura) that works with the very languages I study and in desperate need to have someone who can work on the relations within all the various companies. I would have thought they would be excited to have me. Now, it seems my task is to figure out how to market myself in a way that they would agree… they need me!