A handful of top multinationals are making life easier for their employees' career-oriented trailing spouses. Kirin Kalia reports on an industry-driven dot-com that works.

Well-educated, highly skilled, adventurous, ambitious and eager for a new challenge in a different country. If that sounds like your ideal expatriate, think again — it's the expatriate's trailing spouse.

As numerous surveys have shown, an employee whose partner has a career is less likely to accept an international assignment. The partner does not want to give up their job or put their career on hold for a few years.

An ideal solution to this predicament would be to match up career-minded spouses with large international companies — ones that also send employees abroad — that need to fill posts around the world.

That is precisely the mission of Paris-based Partnerjob.com, which eight multinationals launched in December 2000. They include Air Liquide, Danone, FCI, Hewlett-Packard, Ondeo, Rhodia, Schlumberger and Thales. Since then, Accor, Shell, Norsk Hydro, Renault and TotalFinaElf have become members.

"The idea is very simple, and Partnerjob offers a simple tool," says director Sally Katz. "It's a website where spouses' partners can post their CVs and consult the database of job openings, furnished by member companies and other authorised institutions, for example, schools."

Kathleen van der Wilk, the manager of Shell's Spouse Employment Centre, says she is delighted that Shell has joined Partnerjob.com.

"It's an additional tool in the whole range of support processes for partners," says van der Wilk.

The self-financed, non-profit organisation, located in French energy giant Schlumberger's Paris headquarters, charges its company members an annual fee of EUR 3000 for posting jobs and giving access to trailing spouses of their employees. Local institutions, such as schools and universities, interested in hiring multilingual, well-educated people can post job listings for free.

"We have people looking for jobs in all domains, from engineering to marketing, education, administration and IT," Katz says. "The idea is to build up the network because when we have a huge database of participating companies and candidates, it should be very successful."

Permits Foundation: update While Partnerjob.com helps spouses find jobs, the Permits Foundation works to ensure that spouses can easily obtain work permits anywhere in the world. Over 25 multinationals have joined the foundation, which is based in The Hague and coordinated from Shell's Spouse Employment Centre. Since its launch in June 2001, the Permits Foundation has celebrated changes to the work permit laws in the United States, passed in January 2002 (see article). "We want to build on success that's already happened in the US and extend discussions to other countries," says Kathleen van der Wilk, manager of the Spouse Employment Centre and a Permits Foundation board member. For instance, the foundation wants the EU to be more open to non-EU spouses. Outside Europe, van der Wilk says they are looking at Far Eastern nations such as Malaysia, Singapore and China.

Building up the network means getting more companies to join, of course. Katz says they want to have 30 members by the end of 2002.

Since the launch, 18 spouses have found jobs through Partnerjob.com in countries from Indonesia to Norway; over 230 jobs were on the site on a particular day. As with other online job sites, everyone uses a standard online form and members can update their profiles and peruse new listings at any time.

In fact, Katz, is one of the website's success stories.

"I had posted my CV on the site and was called about this position in early 2001. But I am actually a lawyer," she explains. Her husband is on a four-year assignment for Schlumberger in Paris, and after the children were settled, she was eager to get back to work.

"This is the first time since I've moved that my husband's company offered a concrete tool to help with the job search," Katz says.

Five marketing consultants, all trailing spouses, help raise Partnerjob.com's profile from their respective corners of the world: Houston, Texas; Norway, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Nigeria. They talk to potential member companies and answer questions from HR managers at member companies.

HR managers at member companies have realised that trailing spouses are ideal candidates for projects or short-term assignments.

"Now they are finding that this is a good crop of talent to fill interim posts and posts when people are on maternity leave or other leave, which can be more significant depending on the country," Katz explains.

The idea for Partnerjob.com originally came from Schlumberger's Spouse Association (SSA). One of the spouses in Paris received a request from a British employer who was looking for international candidates there.

He asked if someone in the spouse association could send the job announcement through the company's network.

"Quite a few qualified candidates turned up," says Katz. "He hired somebody but said, 'I wish I could have hired everybody, do you mind if I tell colleagues [about you]?'"

After more requests, the spouse group realised there was a need on both sides.

While Partnerjob.com won't solve all issues related to dual career and mobility issues, it can make life much easier for spouses whose companies are committed to finding solutions.

Katz has fielded her share of calls from spouses who happen to find Partnerjob.com and ask if they can post their CVs.

"I always say I am happy to contact the HR people of their partners company if they send me the coordinates."

July 2002

At the time of writing, Kirin Kalia was the editorial consultant for Expatica HR.