A Mistake To Avoid During Relocation Interviews

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A Mistake To Avoid During Relocation Interviews<br>If you’re interviewing for a job to relocate, you should be thoughtful about what you center on.

Andrew Stetsenko<br>Jul 07, 2026

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I want to start with the core idea, because everything in this guide comes back to it:<br>If relocation is the only reason you want a job abroad, do not expect the company to be excited about hiring you.<br>That sounds harsh, and I know how it lands, because the desire to move is one of the most genuine and personal things a person can carry. I’ve spent years working with engineers who want to relocate, and I understand this drive.<br>But during an interview, that same desire can quietly work against you, and I want to make sure that does not happen to you.

This is the kind of impression you should avoid giving to recruiters!<br>The most common mistake, and please do not beat yourself up if you made it

After working so many years with people who want to relocate, I have watched the same thing happen again and again. Which is...<br>In interviews, candidates focus so hard on the idea of moving that they forget the person across the table is looking for someone who cares about what the company does, what the team is building, and where the product is going.<br>It is obvious why this happens, and it is honest. Most people answer relocation questions by talking almost exclusively about wanting to move abroad, seeking a better quality of life, higher salaries paid in a hard currency, and getting away from a difficult situation in their home country. Occasionally, there is the extra detail of a neighbor who claimed a Spanish passport and went to live abroad, while you have no second nationality to fall back on. All of that is true, in the sense that, I get it: it’s a massive motivator. Any recruiter who opened a search from Singapore, from the Netherlands, or from the Basque Country in Spain already knows it and already assumes it. So actually, if you think it this way… your wish to relocate is not a surprise to anyone.<br>Here is the problem. When that is the whole answer, you create the wrong impression of what you want and of whether you will be a good hire. You give the recruiter three quiet worries:<br>You sound more interested in someone sponsoring your visa and spending money on you than in the company itself.

If a company solves your paperwork, you might be the kind of person who uses that to settle in and then leaves. That is close to the worst message you can send.

You sound like you would accept almost any offer that gets you out, which means you would also leave for the next slightly better one, or quit the day you decide the new country does not have enough sunny days.

Recruiters buy security. I have said this across my articles, and it stays true. They want to know the hire will perform, will do good work, will stay, and will settle into the company. When you tell a long life story about why you have to leave, two things go wrong at once. First, you sound exactly like the candidate before you and the one after you. Second, you are not telling the buyer what they came to buy.<br>Think of it as a meeting between a buyer and a seller. You are selling your services, and you cannot sell the buyer something they did not ask for. Your buyer knows precisely what they want. This is the opposite of a cold sales call. They posted a job ad, and your job is to rise to it and answer it. Relocation can be your engine, and it probably is the deepest and most genuine reason you are sitting there, prepared and full of enthusiasm. Keep it. It just cannot be your only visible motivation.<br>The Global Move is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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What employers actually want to hear

Companies want motivated, engaged people who are genuinely glad to join their team.<br>So when the conversation turns to motivation, set aside the picture of U-Bahn rides, a quick train to Munich, or a rental car down the Autobahn with no speed limit through the Black Forest. Step onto something more tangible: the work itself.<br>These are the points worth preparing months before the interview, and I do not exaggerate when I say months. In my recent piece on how to write a cover letter that works, I showed a letter where six months passed between the letter and the interview, and the research in it still paid off. That same research feeds your interview answers.<br>Here is what to bring instead:<br>Interest in the product. Research it and look at the latest news. When I wrote the profile of Picnic in the Netherlands, you could feel how much the team cared about their product. Any candidate who pays attention to that walks in with half a foot inside the door, simply because they noticed how much the company loves building what it builds.

Interest in the mission, with explicit lines. Something like “Your mission speaks to...