A non-exhaustive list of some of the most typical skilled jobs offered abroad:

➤ Teachers – Teaching English is a common job for travellers, with work available almost anywhere, but particularly in Asia. If you are qualified as a school teacher in your home country, you can likely find work at an international school, see discussion in the English teaching article. Montessori teachers and instructors for universities, technical colleges and corporate training are also in demand in some places.

➤ Experts Supporting Offshore Work – A high-tech company with a development center in India, for example, will send some of its senior employees there and will hire many Indians, but there are still many niches that others might fill. Experienced project managers are hard to find anywhere and there may be a desperate shortage in times of rapid growth, Indian technical writers may need a native English speaker as an editor, and so on.

➤ Specialist certifiers – Some of the best-paid expat jobs involve this kind of work. For example, someone certified to do safety inspections for oil rigs or aircraft, or to train pilots, can make large amounts overseas.

➤ Petroleum Engineers and Technicians – Working on an oil rig can be a tough job, but the pay is generally good. In the more difficult locations, oil industry jobs often include benefits like housing (often limited) and food (usually good) when on-site, and the employer generally provides flights home for the breaks. In an area like the North Sea or Western North America, there may be well-paid jobs for unskilled labor. In lower-income areas the unskilled jobs will be filled by locals but there will be jobs for skilled rig workers to train and supervise the locals, and often for English teachers as well.

➤ Hospitality Professionals – Often international luxury hotels and resorts hire foreign staff to manage the branch and help sell packages to business travelers from overseas or regionally.

➤ Cooks – A skilled cook can find work almost anywhere, and demand for cooks with a particular style is sometimes high. For example, in an area with many American tourists, American or Mexican cooking might be in demand. A job in a hotel, resort or restaurant in a tourist area can let you live in an interesting place either temporarily or long term. However the best pay is usually with companies that employ many expat staff and want to keep them happy with good food, for example oil rigs or overseas construction projects.

➤ Health Professionals – Nurses in particular are in demand in many countries, although a license to practice in a new country may be hard to get. As for cooks, there are some quite well-paid overseas jobs with companies with many expat staff. These companies need to take good care of their staff and, depending on the location and size of project, that may mean they need anything from a lone nurse to a small hospital on-site.

➤ Pilots – Most airlines anywhere will happily hire well-qualified pilots from anywhere else. There is also demand for helicopter pilots, especially from oil or construction companies with large overseas projects. It is fairly common, especially in the Middle East, to find younger pilots flying business jets or the personal planes of local nobility. They need a certain number of hours on twin-engine planes before they can qualify for the larger machines airlines use, and this lets them be well paid while racking up the hours.

➤ Musicians, Actors, Performance Artists – They may be able to find work in many places; though job security is usually non-existent. For example, almost anywhere in East Asia and Southeast Asia many of the bars that cater to tourists or expatriates have Filipino bands.

Also, movie or TV show makers in many countries often need actors or extras of ethnic groups other than the local ones. Except for really major roles in a well-funded production, they will not import foreign actors for these, but they will generally pay foreigners living in the area quite well by local standards.