Successes in your career in the Philippines

Hello, I have been an expat for over 11 years. Living and working at different countries. Recently we have decided to move back to my wife’s home country.
Being a pilot, I was always invited to come and work at a new country to help and establish the citizen pilots acquire necessary experience.

Now that we are moving to a country I am not a native of and find that the aviation professionals do not need my experience, however I would like to become gainfully employed with such a fine group of aviators.

The trouble is that usually a company hired, moved me and made arrangement to facilitate the licensing issues. Now that I am on my own I find it difficult to navigate the many offices required. First on the agenda is to apply for ACR, then apply for the CAAP livening for both my ICAO and FAA Helicopter and Fixed Wing ATPL’s.

In the meantime I will make myself busy at our Quezon farm setting up feed/fertilizer and LPG bulk sales and starting a fish farm as well as poultry.
This is very farm from my profession, yet that is the beauty of the Philippines. We are able to venture into the different aspects that would not be available in Canada.

I started my first formal job in the Philippines as a multilingual practitioner a few months before graduating from my masters degree. I spoke only three languages back then. After 3 years of working, now I ended up with four languages! Language skill is definitely one of things that you gain from living in different country while staying stiff in your comfort zone and not learning the local language would be something that you need to avoid when living as an expat.

Finding job is a challenge itself in the philippines, so indeed it will be a success if you do find and achieve a career.

However, in all my times in Philippines, i could say the only way to have success in a career is if you have a career path alined in customer services. I have been to a few countries and jobs that you find in philippines are mostly in line to customer services and BPO's. Not to say there are no other jobs. There are but it won't be easy to have as an expat, not unless you are working for your government or you were transferred by your company to the branch here in Manila.

Success will also be achieved if you understand that the salary here won't be the same you were receiving in your previous job before entering Philippines. There is cheap Labour here, so your NO is someone's happily big YES.

Then Again, a successful Career in the philippines will also entail you being able to speak 2 or more languages. Being multilingual opens a lot of doors for you to build a career in customer services or BPOS.

So in all. To have a successful career in philippines you must be well informed about the job opportunities here before making a go at it. Cause you might be a successful engineer with a good amount of experience, but might have to settle for something way out of line from engineering.

I wonder if genuine career "success"---if measured purely by a financial benchmark and not an ambiguous measure such as "happiness"---is even possible for most expats of Western origin?

Why would a dentist from Chicago want to practice as a dentist in Cebu?
Why would a lawyer from New York want to work in Manila?
Why would a CPA from Toronto seek a job in Davao?

Yes, all three are possible scenarios but almost certainly not motivated by career "success".