More firms help spouses trailing transferred executives find jobs

More men are following their wives as they relocate to further their careers and they are receiving help to find employment.

John Van Lonkhuyzen relocated to Maine with his wife Nicola Morris when she was offered a senior executive role.

Behind many managerial women stands a trailing husband. He pulls up stakes and relocates when his partner gets a better role in a different locale.

John Van Lonkhuyzen has done this three times since 1995, the year after he and Nicola ­Morris were engaged. As his wife advanced in her career, the veteran lawyer moved to Washington, DC; Westfield, New Jersey; and, recently, Yarmouth, Maine. Their latest relocation was the first time Morris’s employer ­offered to help him job hunt.

More female executives are moving ahead in their careers through geographic moves. And, increasingly, their employers lend a hand so their husbands can find work.

Women accounted for a record 23 per cent on average of moves by North American ­employers in 2016 — up from 17 per cent in 2009, according to surveys by Atlas Van Lines. About 62 per cent of employers provided job-hunting aid for partners of transferred staff members last year, compared with 33 per cent in 2007, Atlas data shows.

“Companies consider such help a critical aspect of getting more women into leadership,” says Lauren Herring, chief executive of Impact Group, a career and leadership development firm with job-hunting services for relocated spouses and partners.

Morris left an executive role with Verizon Communications in New Jersey to become a senior vice-president of WEX in South Portland, Maine. While recruiting Morris, chief executive Melissa Smith offered to introduce Van Lonkhuyzen to law firms near the corporate payments services company. Smith says she wanted to show she cared about supporting “both partners in their careers when they make a move”.

Van Lonkhuyzen, a former lawyer for the US Justice Department, didn’t need the proposed ­introductions. He landed a partnership with Verrill, a Portland law firm, at the same time his wife joined WEX in 2014.

American Express has helped partners of relocated staff members look for work since 2012. With women now nearly half of its transferees, many men accompanying them use these career services, says a spokeswoman.

AmEx’s global program, ­expanded in 2016, includes career coaches, job leads, resume writing, office space and advice about negotiating job offers or starting a business. Most participating spouses and domestic partners find positions, the company says.

But international relocation can create challenges. The most common reason for a rejected foreign assignment is a partner’s ­unwillingness to move because of their career. That is especially true for potential female transferees, concludes a new study by Ernst & Young and NetExpat, a coaching and training firm.

Six years ago, AmEx gave middle manager Corrina Davison a chance to leave her native Australia for a New York executive role. “It was our dream to work overseas,” she remembers.

Her husband, Duncan Dav­ison, an Australian student-teacher supervisor, says he hoped to launch a US version of his University of Sydney pilot project that helped elite teen swimmers handle competitive setbacks.

The executive trainer at an ­acculturation workshop for AmEx accompanying partners introduced Davison to a possible investor for his athlete project, though Davison dropped the idea after the United Nations International School hired him to teach physical education part-time.

He soon advanced to director of athletics. He says he would move again for his wife’s career because he believes he has become more employable globally.

Other men fear relocating for their wives will disrupt their ­career trajectories. Consider Joshua Kim, whose wife Julie is an oncologist and associate professor at Dartmouth’s medical school in Hanover, New Hampshire. He faced the difficult decision of quitting a job he loved in 2006 — he helped launch and run Quinnipiac University’s online education unit — so she could take the Dartmouth post. He had followed her twice before.

Kim consulted for two years before joining Dartmouth’s learning centre and becoming head of digital learning initiatives there in 2014. “That kind of patience for a career move is a challenge,” he says. “As a trailing husband, you have to be more creative and ­inventive.”

Morris and Van Lonkhuyzen struggled with the same issue after her Verizon promotion brought them to New Jersey from Washington in 2007. He fruit­lessly sought jobs in corporate legal departments and government before getting a temporary Justice ­Department gig in Newark. Van Lonkhuyzen obtained a permanent New York DOJ spot in 2009.

That relocation “was hard for us”, Morris says. But WEX “was a great fit for what I was looking for”, she says, especially since both she and her husband grew up in Maine.

WALL STREET JOURNAL