A Disturbing Trend? By Bill Frech, CandidAdvisors Founding Partner

Outsourcing is here to stay whether it be onshore or offshore. Companies are in business to make a profit so they will always strive to have lower costs in parts of their business when they can. Today this may mean moving some work offshore to lower labor cost areas.

However, I have heard an idea expressed by a couple of people who were job hunting that is concerning. Given it is only two people it cannot be called a trend, but if I have stumbled on two people thinking this way there must be others.

Both these people expressed the thought that since they had lost there jobs and they have heard that jobs were moving to India that they should move to India to pursue their career. These were both people who had never been to India and sounded as though they had not done much traveling outside of the US.

One of the individuals was on a talk show phone in with the CEO of an Indian company. The CEO was basically explaining about the cost differential between US salaries and Indian salaries. He said that the Indian salaries although lower than the US salaries allowed the Indian employees to live at a comparable standard to how they would live in the US.

What concerns me is these two people, these two data points, seem to believe that living in India would be like living in the US. They have no understanding of the cultural differences, the differences in the standard of living for the majority of people in India, and/or what it would be like relocating to a foreign country.

Moving to India to find a job is not the solution for the vast majority of people. Maybe it would be a nice adventure if you are young, unmarried and have a desire to see the world and different cultures, but having lived overseas it is not a good solution for the average person, especially if they are venturing forth on their own with no safety net.