A new online resource featuring tips and advice submitted by expats has been launched by HSBC.
You can read countless books and guides about moving abroad, but they rarely prepare you for the reality of expat life. Advice and tips from expats ‘on the ground’ can provide valuable information about life as an expatriate, warts and all.
HSBC Expat, home of the annual Expat Explorer Survey, has released an interactive online platform designed to provide expats with just this type of information. This huge resource has over 800 snippets of advice aimed at people about to move or already living abroad.
Dean Blackburn, head of HSBC Expat said, “Considering a move abroad can be a daunting prospect, often involving a huge amount of research. By making the hints and tips highly interactive – and allowing the results to be tailored to each individual’s unique situation – we hope that expats will find this a useful resource that they will personally benefit from, whilst also sharing with other people they know who are living abroad.”
The tips, taken from 20,000 comments made by expats in the annual Expat Explorer Survey and from expat bloggers, can be browsed and filtered according to country, topic or expat life stage. The interactive format makes it easy to search the tips for something specific or just dip into ones which particularly interest you.
The “top 5 tips” lists are an interesting feature which organises tips according to a wide range of expat related topics. These include, “Things you wished you knew before moving to Moscow” to “Tips for building a successful international career”. Written by a mix of expat bloggers, collected from comments made in the Expat Explorer Survey or from relocation professionals, the lists are not only very useful, but also interesting, even for seasoned expats.
HSBC Expat Hints & Tips will be populated with new content as expats add their own tips or create handy lists of “top five tips”, enabling them to share the knowledge and insights they wish they had known before embarking on a move abroad with other expats from around the world.
The appeal of this crowdsourcing platform is not only does it give current expats ideas and an insight into expat life in other countries, it also gives people thinking about moving a concrete source of reliable information.
Dean Blackburn went on to say, “With this launch, we are continuing with our commitment to provide valuable and trusted insights into life as an expat around the world, in turn helping expats make the most of every new opportunity available to them.”