Career Growth as an Expat: From Job Search Struggles to a Promotion

A year ago, I was still refreshing my inbox, hoping someone would finally reply to one of my job applications. Today, I am promoted. Looking back, this first year of career growth as an expat has taught me far more than I expected about starting over, building confidence, and balancing work with family life abroad.

Finding a Job in the US Was Harder Than I Expected

When we moved to the United States, I knew finding a job would take time. I didn’t expect it to be quite so frustrating.

I had years of experience, a strong resume, and a proven track record. Yet application after application seemed to disappear into a black hole. Sometimes I never heard back. Sometimes I received a rejection weeks later. Other times there was simply silence.

As an expat, it was difficult to know what employers were looking for. Did my international experience translate? Was my background relevant? Did they understand what I had done in previous roles? The longer the search lasted, the more doubts started creeping in. I shared more about that experience in my blog about job hunting in the US as a foreigner.

Eventually, someone gave me a chance. And then a completely different challenge started.

Starting a New Job While Building a Life Abroad

A new job is always exciting. It’s also slightly terrifying.

Every company has its own culture, expectations, and unwritten rules. You spend the first few months trying to understand how things work, who makes decisions, and whether you’re actually doing as well as everyone says you are.

Imposter syndrome loves a fresh start. Adding expat life into the mix creates another layer.

You’re not only learning a new role. You’re learning how people communicate, collaborate, and build relationships in a different country. Some days that felt energizing. Other days it felt like everyone else had received a handbook that somehow never arrived in my inbox.

Many of the challenges I described in my blog about working as an expat abroad followed me into the workplace too. Not sharing the same cultural references. Building a network from scratch. Constantly switching between two worlds.

The Flexibility I Knew I Needed

At the same time, work was only one part of the equation.

We had recently welcomed our daughter. My husband works in sales and travels regularly. Our family is in the Netherlands. There is no grandparent ten minutes away when daycare calls. There is no backup plan sitting around the corner.

As much as I wanted to restart my career, I also knew I needed flexibility. Before accepting the role, I had practical questions.

• Would I be able to work remotely when we needed to spend time in the Netherlands?
• What would happen if one of the kids got sick?
• Could I realistically balance a growing career with family life abroad?

Those questions mattered just as much as salary or title. Fortunately, my employer understood that from day one. That flexibility gave me something incredibly valuable: trust.

And trust made it possible to focus on delivering results instead of constantly worrying about whether I looked productive enough.

The Reality of Working Full Time With Young Kids

If you have young children, you already know this. The logistics never stop.There are daycare pickups, doctor appointments, school events, forgotten water bottles, and the endless mental load that somehow follows mothers everywhere.

There were also periods when my husband was traveling and I was effectively solo parenting while working full time. Those weeks often felt like a carefully balanced Jenga tower. One sick child and the whole thing could collapse.

I wrote about that reality in my blog on solo parenting while working full time, because it remains one of the hardest parts of raising children abroad. Not because it is impossible. Because it requires constant coordination. And honestly, a decent amount of coffee.

So How Did I Get Promoted So Quickly?

The truth is much less exciting than some LinkedIn success story.

• I did not work eighty hour weeks
• I did not sacrifice every evening and weekend
• I did not suddenly become a productivity guru

What I did do was focus on impact.

• I worked efficiently
• I prioritized what mattered
• When something important needed to be done, I showed up

Sometimes that meant asking for extra help. Sometimes that meant working after bedtime. Sometimes it meant accepting that support is not a luxury when you’re raising a family abroad. It’s part of the infrastructure that makes everything else possible.

Most importantly, I stopped believing that flexibility and ambition are opposites.

For a long time, I unconsciously treated them that way. As if wanting flexibility automatically meant lowering my career ambitions. As if motherhood and career growth belonged on opposite sides of a scale. But they can absolutely exist together.

What This Promotion Really Means

The promotion matters, of course. I’m proud of it. But what it represents feels bigger.

A year ago, I was wondering whether I would ever find the right opportunity in the US job market. Today, I’m stepping into a larger role at a company that trusted me from the beginning.

For me, that’s the real lesson. Starting over in a new country doesn’t mean starting from zero.

• You still bring your experience with you
• You still bring your skills
• You still bring everything you’ve learned along the way

Sometimes it just takes a little longer before someone else sees it too.

What Career Growth as an Expat Really Looks Like

When people think about career growth as an expat, they often focus on promotions, salaries, or job titles. For me, it was also about rebuilding confidence after moving countries and proving to myself that I could succeed in a completely new environment.