Since I am an international student who likes to travel the writing choice was easy, and I chose to write about the country where I would like to go to work outside the U.S.
I have a lot of international experiences under my belt, however, I have never visited Israel. Therefore, the country I would go to work in would be Israel. I have a good friend from there and I always wanted to learn more about that country. Israel has a culture that is similar to Serbia (where I am from originally), the people are friendly, hospitality is important for them, the language is Hebrew, the currency they use is called Shekel (which is weaker than the dollar so I would prefer to keep my salary to be in dollars if possible) and there are many religious rules that are followed strictly.
Based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, Israel is a blend between individualism and collectivism, they are a blend between masculinity and femininity as well (in religious parts of the country it tends to be more masculine culture), the country is consider to have small power distance, they have strong uncertainty avoidance as they prefer rules over anarchy, and Israel has long-term orientation when it comes to the understanding of immediate vs future benefits. Therefore, Israel is different than the U.S. based on their uncertainty avoidance as the U.S. people would handle the uncertainty better than people in Israel and by the fact that the U.S. is short term oriented culture.
The factors that I would consider when taking on this opportunity would be the language barrier (hard to learn Hebrew), the fact that Israel is high context culture in contrast to the U.S. (I really like that), the fact that I would prefer the long term orientation over the short term, and the other differences such as food (that is great in Israel based on my friend’s experience) and religion (that is very strict in certain regions).
