In a recent survey by Windham International, the US National Foreign Trade Council and the Society for Human Resource Management Global Forum, 96 percent of respondents said partner satisfaction is the biggest issue that can make or break international assignments, followed closely by family concerns at 93 percent. More traditional factors such as candidate selection, job expectations and job performance all received lower ratings.

DJ Nordquist, vice president of the Washington, DC-based Employment Policy Foundation, and a former expatriate spouse, says her experience was typical. A public-relations expert working on Capitol Hill at the time of her husband's transfer to Bangkok, Nordquist wanted to support him without losing career momentum. "I represent the new generation of expats," she says. "We have careers and want to keep them up."

Jeri Hawthorne, living in Denmark, tells a similar story. Hawthorne quit her job as an international human-resource manager for Lockheed Martin to accompany her husband on his reassignment to the Copenhagen offices of Nordea, a financial services firm. Protective of her own career aspirations, Hawthorne says, "I knew working was something I was going to want to do. I didn't want to step out of the workforce."

Finding a job as an accompanying spouse requires more than a desire to work. It requires initiative, persistence and resourcefulness. Few companies provide significant job-search help to accompanying spouses; less than one-quarter of the international companies participating in the Windham survey say they assist spouses in finding employment. Even fewer help with career planning or pay job-search expenses.

Other obstacles to accompanying spouse employment include complicated work-permit requirements, high work-permit fees, laws preventing employment of expatriate spouses, cultural differences and language barriers.

Despite these challenges, many accompanying spouses like Nordquist and Hawthorne are refusing to accept the traditional dictum that expatriate spouses can't or shouldn't work. Finding employment at their own initiative, these spouses are proving that their professional careers don't have to take a back seat to those of international assignees.

What's the best way to secure employment if you're an expatriate spouse? Following these six suggestions can help you get started:

1. Begin your search immediately

Nordquist wasted no time launching her job search. "As soon as we found out about the assignment, I started researching companies in Thailand to figure out where my skill set would fit in," she says.

Quickly narrowing down the list to four companies, Nordquist approached them for positions before she left the US.

"I had two responses. One company asked me to call them after I arrived in Bangkok, the other brought me in to the Washington, DC, office for an interview," says Nordquist. The second company, one of the largest public-relations firms in the world, offered her a position in its Bangkok office soon after her interview.

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