(FORTUNE Magazine) – UNLESS YOU'VE BEEN on a cruise down the Amazon for the past couple of years, you're already well aware of the brouhaha over offshoring American jobs, particularly of high-tech and call-center employees. But what does it mean for folks trying to map out a management career? While an overseas stint used to be a ticket to oblivion, now if you want to rise far in almost any big U.S. corporation, you can't afford to ignore the new global order. A study from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and Archstone Consulting says that American companies with offshore operations (of which 69% are in India, so far) plan to ship out 81% more research jobs, 55% more in engineering, and 75% in human resources. Who'll be managing these people? Maybe you. Further blurring the borders, it seems that foreign companies, many of them Indian, are increasingly on the lookout for seasoned American managers to go abroad and run things. "Right now we're doing four searches on behalf of Indian companies that want to import C-level executives, meaning CFOs, CIOs, and COOs," says Alister Wellesley, chairman of recruiting firm Morgan Howard Worldwide. "And we can't be the only ones." While uprooting a family and moving thousands of miles away to an unfamiliar country can be tough, it has certain advantages. "Overseas companies understand they have to pay competitively," Wellesley says. "If you're living in India on a salary of $200,000 or $300,000, you live like a maharajah. It's a fantastic lifestyle."

Two tips on going global: Learn at least one foreign language. And be prepared to spot cultural differences, some of them startlingly subtle, that can trip up the unwary. On the first point, recruiters Korn/ Ferry International found in a recent survey that nine out of ten headhunters worldwide--including 85% in North America, 88% in Asia, and 95% in Europe--say that candidates who speak only one language will be less and less marketable in the years ahead. English has long been the lingua franca of business, but the way things are going, assuming that it's all you'll need is starting to smack of smugness.

As for cultural differences, it helps to listen to the locals. Consider what happened at Convergys, a Cincinnati-based call-center company that's doubled its Indian operations annually since 1999 and now has 13,000 employees there. Dennis Ross, general manager of offshore operations, works closely with Indian VP Jaswinder Ghumman. When Convergys was building its company cafeteria in Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi, Ghumman was obliged to point out that "Indian food is served hot. Unless we build cafeterias that recognize this, we'll have delays in meal service and dissatisfied employees." He adds, "We also had to educate managers visiting from the U.S. who sometimes suggested a cold sandwich as a meal for their Indian teams." Who'd have thought tuna on rye could be such a stumbling block? Says Ross: "We've succeeded by fostering open communications with our people there--and taking nothing for granted."