Unhappy at work but unable to find an alternative, Maxim wonders why years of experience in insurance and logistics aren’t helping him land that perfect job.

Experience and skills

Maxim is in his mid-30s. He studied mechanical engineering while he was in college and has a master’s degree in that field. However, he only worked in engineering for a couple of years after having graduated, and he says that his education has nothing at all to do with his current job. He does not intend to find alternate employment in engineering. Our job seeker speaks fluent English and some French. For the past 10 years, he has been working in the multinational insurance business, an industry he chose particularly because he wanted to work in an international environment. In general, he has worked for major foreign companies, but at present he’s a line manager at a Russian insurance company, where he provides customer support and supervises the claims handling process. He also has a large amount of knowledge in the area of the logistics of international freight transport, as much of his work in insurance has involved dealing with companies engaged in this business.

Trouble at work

Maxim has been working for his present Russian employer for several months now and, although it’s steady work with reasonable pay, he says he is not satisfied because the company is not run according to genuine business standards. The real insurance industry in Russia is run by less than 10 Western companies, he says, adding that many of the Russian insurance agencies interact with their clients in a highly unprofessional way and that he has ethical objections to the way they do business.

A way out?

Primarily, Maxim is looking for a job in a Western company. Although his experience is in the areas of insurance and transportation logistics, he is certainly not limiting his search to companies in those fields. He has been looking for 10 months, but has so far achieved poor results. He has had a few offers, but turned them down because he did not like the salaries proposed.

For the most part, he has been going about looking for work using personal contacts, but he has also sent his resume to various recruitment agencies advertised in newspapers. His experiences with recruitment agencies have been largely negative; although he has gotten a few calls back, he is of the opinion that they are not very serious.

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