The Book
The fully revised and updated 4th edition is filled with
- Over 20 hands-on exercises and checklists
- Real-life stories, advice and tips
- Job-hunting tips and techniques
and inspiration to
- Nurture your professional identity
- Discover your strengths
- Find your passion
- Design your perfect portable career
- Use networking to make it happen
- Work for yourself and win
Written by expats for expats this book is the career catalyst you have been waiting for…
Workshops & Webinars
Frequent relocations, career gaps, and changing job markets can make professional growth feel uncertain. In these tailored interactive workshops or webinars participants build a flexible, fulfilling career strategy that moves with them—whether the move is abroad or returning home.
The book is inspiring, practical and full of exercises to clarify and advice to guide.
Work through it with a group of friends!
A great place to get ideas, explore your options and work at your own pace.
"I left feeling hopefully resilient with next steps to explore to take my career in a new direction!"
"I have practical tools, actionable techniques and the confidence to use them no matter where we go next.”
Buy the book!
Kindle – Nook – e-pub – Kobo – iBook
Explore your options
Schedule a 30 minute discovery call to explore coaching, a workshop or webinar with Colleen
Jo Parfitt
founder, author and publisher
When professional writer Jo Parfitt joined her new husband in Dubai and received a stamp in her passport that read ‘Not Permitted to Take up Employment’ she was devastated. Since then she has let nothing prevent her from maintaining a professional identity regardless of regular intercontinental moves and the responsibilities of her family. Jo went on to create and sustain a shifting portfolio of portable careers, ranging from writing a cookbook called Dates in Oman through being a successful journalist in Dubai to running seminars and workshops worldwide during her time repatriated to the UK and the following decade in the Netherlands. In 2002 she began to focus on helping expats to get published. In 2013 she was again on assignment with her husband in Kuala Lumpur and still running Summertime Publishing Ltd, which is registered in the UK where, after another short stint in the Netherlands, she has recently repatriated. Back in 1998 she wrote a book that would inspire and empower others to develop their own career just as she did. 2013 saw the launch of the fourth edition of Career in Your Suitcase®, this time in collaboration with Colleen. With a permanently evolving portable career to keep her busy, Jo has run Summertime Publishing since 1997 and now has 100’s of books in her stable, most of which are by or for other people living abroad. In 2012 she launched www.ExpatBookshop.com to enable her to promote them.
Find out more about Jo, her workshops, her consultancy and what makes her heart sing, through her blog at www.JoParfitt.com or via www.SummertimePublishing.com.
Colleen Reichrath-Smith
co-author, coach and workshop facilitator
Colleen believes the skills people need to make the most of their career journey – to make personally meaningful choices for their career – are essential life skills and has dedicated her career to teaching people these skills. Colleen made an international transition in 2005 when she moved from Canada to the Netherlands for love after almost ten years as a career consultant. Seeing it as the ultimate chance to apply the career development principles she teaches others, within two years she had learned the language and was again delivering career development training. This time in Dutch. After meeting Jo Parfitt at a networking event, Colleen decided to follow her intuition and discuss her wild idea of writing a book with Jo. This led to A Career in Your Suitcase® 4 ed. which incorporates lessons learned and the career development principles needed for today’s mobile career adventurer.
To learn more about Colleen’s work, visit www.ColleenReichrath.com.