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The résumé checklist
Ten basic checks, in the order they decide your file. Plus the truth about two columns, which is not what you have been told.
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The six-second scan
What is read first, and how to put it there.
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LinkedIn: the 14 fields that decide whether you show up
Search, not scrolling: the fields recruiters filter on.
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The 30-day job search plan
Week by week, with daily numbers.
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Interview answers that work anywhere
Eleven questions, with India, Gulf, UK and US notes.
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Salary negotiation, India and abroad
CTC and in-hand, base and bonus, notice buyout, scripts.
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Getting a job in India, 2026
On 21 November 2025 India brought four labour codes into force and replaced 29 central labour laws in one day, and most people working under them still do not know it happened. On 17 September 2026 the provident fund wage ceiling rose from ₹15,000 to ₹25,000, the first change since 2014, and it is not the ₹21,000 figure being reported. Written for two readers at once: an Indian professional who wants their own market described accurately, and anyone moving into India to work.
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Getting a job in Canada, 2026
Permits, Express Entry cut-offs, what a Canadian résumé looks like, the paperwork, and what actually works in 2026. Official sources only.
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Getting a job in the United States, 2026
The visa routes that exist, the cap exempt employers most candidates never look for, the weighted lottery that now favours higher salaries, the honest picture of the India green card backlog, and what a US résumé must not contain.
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Getting a job in the United Kingdom, 2026
The Skilled Worker thresholds after the 2025 and 2026 changes, two shortage lists that expire on 31 December 2026, the three routes that need no sponsor, the settlement question nobody can answer yet, and what the regulators actually require.
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Getting a job in the United Arab Emirates, 2026
The law says the employer pays for all of it, and that single fact changes how you negotiate. The nine skill levels everything else depends on, the permit sequence, what mainland and free zone really means for you, gratuity under the 2022 law, the salary thresholds for green and golden residence, and the attestation chain for an Indian degree with what each step costs.
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Getting a job in Australia, 2026
Australia has tilted decisively toward employer sponsorship: fourteen thousand more sponsored places, regional cut by more than half, New South Wales closed. The thresholds after 1 July 2026, the rule change that resets your permanent residence clock if you switch jobs, the full points table band by band, every assessing authority's fees, and why registration beats the visa for doctors and nurses.
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Getting a job in Singapore, 2026
The salary floor rises on 1 January 2027 and Singapore has already published the numbers. The two stage Employment Pass test, COMPASS scored criterion by criterion, the 32 occupations that carry a 20 point bonus, the portal you are not allowed to use, and what the Employment Act actually gives a pass holder.
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Getting a job in Germany, 2026
Germany's salary thresholds are percentages of a ceiling that is reset every January, so a 2025 offer may not clear the 2026 line. The Blue Card at €50,700 and €45,934, the ICT route with no degree at all, the Opportunity Card points table in full, the recognition fork that traps most applicants, and the three week deadline nobody tells you about.
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Getting a job in Ireland, 2026
Every salary threshold rose on 1 March 2026 and the roadmap now runs to 2030. The €40,904 Critical Skills line, the two graduate rates that exist for the first time, why the list you are on decides between 21 months and 57 to settled status, the needs test in exact detail, and the regulated professions with their real timelines.
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Getting a job in New Zealand, 2026
One number runs almost everything: the median wage at NZD $35.00 an hour. It stopped being a pay requirement in 2025 but still sets the Green List floors, the five year stay, the advertising exemptions and the residence points. The three steps of the work visa and why two are not yours, the Green List in both tiers, the residence rebuild of 24 August 2026, and the trial period clause that should not be in your contract.
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Getting a job in Qatar, 2026
Qatar abolished the No Objection Certificate in 2020, so you can change employer on notice alone, and almost everything written online about needing your boss's permission is out of date. What an employer may charge you to recruit you is nothing. Inside: the permit sequence and the ninety day rule, the QAR 1,800 wage floor, notice periods, gratuity, the engineer and healthcare licences, attesting an Indian degree, family thresholds, and the September 2026 wage payment change.
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Getting a job in the Netherlands, 2026
On 1 January 2026 the €262,000 ceiling on the 30 per cent ruling began applying to everyone, including people who arrived before 2023 and had been exempt. The scheme is still 30 per cent this year and drops to 27 next, but not for everybody. Here are the 2026 salary thresholds, why only an IND recognised sponsor can hire you, and the arithmetic that stops most graduates on the reduced criterion from getting the tax break at all.
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Getting a job in Japan, 2026
Japan's main white collar work visa asks for no Japanese and sets no salary figure, only that your degree subject matches the job, which is what sinks most applications. Meanwhile the bottom half of the system is being rebuilt: on 1 April 2027 the Technical Intern Training Programme is abolished and replaced by Employment for Skill Development. Here is the points table in full, the Certificate of Eligibility process, and why the rirekisho is a form and not a CV.
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Getting a job in Hong Kong, 2026
Three of Hong Kong's five skilled admission routes let you arrive with no job offer at all, and the largest of them approved 31,508 people in 2025. This guide covers the Top Talent Pass category by category, the university list and what was cut from it on 1 January 2026, the seven year clock to permanent residence, the one shot rule on taking your provident fund out of the country, and the employment law definition that changed on 18 January 2026.
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Getting a job in Malaysia, 2026
On 1 June 2026 Malaysia raised every Employment Pass salary band and abolished the route below RM5,000, so the pass that existed at RM3,000 last year no longer exists at all. Two recent changes quietly cut what reaches your account: EPF became compulsory for foreign employees from the October 2025 wage month, and a non resident is taxed at a flat 30 per cent with no reliefs until the 182 day test is met. Here is the whole system, with every figure sourced.
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Getting a job in Saudi Arabia, 2026
The no objection certificate is gone for a contract that has run its term, and the law puts the entire cost of hiring you on the employer. What replaced the old sponsorship controls is quieter and harder to see: a per company Saudisation band that decides whether you can be hired at all, a skill label now stamped on every work permit, and a personal professional licence that stops engineers and health workers at the border of a start date.
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Getting a job in South Korea, 2026
On Korea's points based residence visa, your salary is worth 60 of the 80 points you need to pass, while a doctorate is worth 25 and fluent Korean 20. Here is that points table in full, the E-7 route that gets you there, and the one clause in a 2011 treaty that decides whether you ever see your pension contributions again.
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Getting a job in France, 2026
The grander sounding permit has the higher bar: France's Talent card for a qualified employee asks €39,582 a year, the EU Blue Card asks €59,373, and both let a spouse work from day one, which an ordinary salarié card does not for 18 months. Every threshold is a multiple of the SMIC or of a reference average salary, so they all moved on 1 January. And since 1 January 2026 a first multi-year card also needs A2 French and 32 correct answers out of 40 on a new civic exam, which most skilled workers turn out to be exempt from.
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Getting a job in Switzerland, 2026
Switzerland gives the entire non-EU world 8,500 work permits a year, and 3,250 of the 4,500 residence permits in that pot are never handed to the cantons at all: they sit in a federal reserve a canton has to apply for. The quota in full, the four admission conditions your employer has to clear, the shortage occupation list that waives the hardest one, and what happens to your second pillar pension when you leave.
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Getting a job in Sweden, 2026
Sweden's work permit salary floor moved twice in a fortnight this year, from 80 per cent of the median wage to 90 per cent on 1 June 2026, then up again on 16 June when Statistics Sweden revised the median. The figure in force today is SEK 34,470 a month, and a named list of occupations plus anyone at a startup under five years old gets in at SEK 28,725. Here is what is actually law, what is only proposed, and why your permit is tested against a collective agreement rather than a minimum wage act.
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Getting a job in Turkey, 2026
Before a Turkish employer can hire you, it has to already employ five Turkish citizens for every foreigner it wants on the payroll, and pay you a fixed multiple of the national minimum wage that resets every January. A provision that came into force on 3 August 2026 switches both of those off for anyone who has spent one of the last three years lawfully in Turkey, which makes a year of legal presence the most valuable thing on your record. Turkey also publishes, in full, the list of professions that are closed to you by statute.
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Getting a job in Kuwait, 2026
Since 1 July 2025 a private sector expatriate in Kuwait needs the employer's approval to leave the country, applied for on a government app no later than 24 hours before departure. Before that, a computer at the Public Authority for Manpower checks your degree, your field of study and your university's accreditation against Ministry of Higher Education records, and since May 2025 you cannot correct a wrong qualification without leaving Kuwait. Inside: the Article 18 permit sequence, the attestation chain and what we could not verify of it, the one year transfer rule and the five ways round it, the KD 800 family threshold, the December 2025 fee schedule, the licensed professions, and why 96.4 per cent of private sector workers are not Kuwaiti.
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Getting a job in Oman, 2026
Oman has a statutory minimum wage and it applies to Omani nationals only, so as a foreign worker there is no legal floor under your pay at all. More than 200 job titles are closed to expatriates and the list is still being extended on a published timetable: computer programmer closed on 1 January 2026, website designer closes on 1 January 2027. Inside: labour clearance before the visa, the profession code that decides everything, the 24 month permit clock, Omanisation pricing, engineer and finance certification, gratuity, and what Omani officialdom actually says about a CV, which is nothing.
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Getting a job in Bahrain, 2026
Bahrain's Flexi Permit, the self-sponsorship route that made the country unusual in the Gulf, was cancelled by government order on 5 October 2022, but self-sponsorship itself survived it as the LMRA's Registered Worker Permit, which you can only get from inside Bahrain with a terminated permit. Bahrain is also the Gulf state where your right to change employer without the current one's consent sits in the statute that created the regulator, and where, once you have passed twelve months on your permit, your employer's silence counts as approval. Inside: the twelve month transfer rule and the three month trap at the end of a permit, the monthly levy your employer pays for you, Bahrainisation by activity code, the 4.2 per cent gratuity scheme, family income thresholds, the five year engineering licence floor, and why nobody official will tell you whether to put a photograph on your CV.
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Getting a job in Egypt, 2026
An Egyptian employer may not fill more than roughly one job in ten with a foreigner, and if you are hired as an expert or a technician the same decree obliges the company to appoint two Egyptians to shadow you and file progress reports on how well you are training them. The permit itself is cheap, EGP 6,000 for the first year, so the quota, not the fee, is what decides whether an offer can exist at all. The other thing that decides your year is the currency: the pound traded between 48.81 and 54.69 to the dollar in the six months to 20 September 2026, which makes whether your salary is written in pounds or in dollars matter more than the number in it.
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Getting a job in Nigeria, 2026
Nigeria's official unemployment rate is 4.3 per cent, which is neither a typo nor good news: the National Bureau of Statistics moved to the international definition, under which one hour of paid work a week makes you employed, and 93 per cent of Nigerian jobs are informal. If you are moving here to work, the gate is not the visa, it is the Expatriate Quota your employer holds from the Ministry of Interior, and the position it covers has a seven year localisation clock on it. Inside: quota mechanics and fees, the USD 2,000 CERPAC, exactly where the Expatriate Employment Levy stands, the tax acts that took effect in January 2026, pension and NYSC, and whether state of origin belongs on a CV.
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Getting a job in Indonesia, 2026
In Indonesia you cannot apply for your own work permit, because no such document exists. What exists is your employer's foreign worker utilisation plan, the RPTKA, and until the Ministry of Manpower ratifies it you are not a candidate for anything. On top of that your employer owes the state USD 100 a month for every month you hold the job, seventeen named positions are closed to foreign nationals outright, and the entire labour code is being rewritten under a Constitutional Court order with an October 2026 deadline that has not yet been met.
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Getting a job in the Philippines, 2026
The practice of regulated professions in the Philippines is reserved to Filipino citizens by the Constitution, and even where a law opens a profession, Republic Act 5181 requires reciprocity plus three years of permanent residence before a foreign national may sit the licensure examination, which no work permit can deliver. This guide is written for two readers at once: the foreign professional coming in, who needs a DOLE permit and a separate immigration visa, and the Filipino going out, for whom the POEA was abolished in 2021 and replaced by a cabinet department. Every figure carries its source and the date we checked it.
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Getting a job in Luxembourg, 2026
Luxembourg has one EU Blue Card salary line for every sector, €65,652 since March 2026, and an ADEM certificate that decides every other work permit. Which door you can use, why accountants and controllers lost their fast track this year, what your family may do on arrival, and what the minimum wage and a rising jobless count say about your odds.
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