Excel Your Career With Our Top 5 Holiday Networking Tips
Dear Coach Kwan,
This is my first year in the States after the pandemic and I will be graduating soon. I know networking is important, and I heard the holiday season could be a great time to network. How can I optimize this holiday seasons in the US for networking post-pandemic?
Find a Summer Internship in 60 Days as an International Student
As an international student studying in the United States, you are likely looking for ways to gain experience, build your resume, and make connections in your field. One great way to achieve all of these goals is through a summer internship. However, finding the right internship can be a challenge, especially for international students who face unique obstacles.
What To Do When Your 90-Day OPT Unemployment Is Running Out
Five Steps To Take If You Are Unemployed Under Optional Practical Training (OPT) I get a lot of messages from international students such as the one above as their 90-day OPT unemployment allowance period comes to an end. Many new graduates hoped that three months would be enough time to secure a job offer. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible in reality. The job market is tough to crack, and it is even more challenging to find jobs as an international student. If you are in this situation, please take a deep breath and follow the 5 steps below: 1) Start being specific about your career goal Employers will hire you because you have the right skills to solve their business problems and you are passionate about helping them achieve their business goals. Don’t just blindly apply. You need to narrow down your job search. Be more specific about the jobs you are applying for and which industries you are applying to. For instance, if you are an MBA international student, your career paths and job opportunities for MBA graduates can be various such as Management Consultant, Marketing Manager, Sales Manager, etc. If you have been distributing your resume to multiple companies in different roles, please pause and think about your specific skill sets and past experience. Find your selling points for your job applications. If you are open to any job, you will not be a strong candidate. 2) Target a stepping stone for your OPT Since you have a limited amount of time, larger companies may not be the right target as there are multiple layers to the hiring process. Look for small to medium-sized companies that have been around for more than 5 years with sustainable revenue. Those companies can be flexible with their hiring policy and might not have a vast talent pool like large global companies. Many of them are willing to hire international students if they are short of manpower and urgently need skilled candidates. After you have built your profile and expanded your knowledge in the industry with these companies, you will become a more desirable candidate and become ready to jump into bigger companies. Most large companies select to sponsor experienced hires over entry-level candidates. 3) Spend only 10% of your time on online job application On average, only 2% of online applicants are called in for interviews. For international students, the odds are even tougher. It is sad that not all jobs posted online clearly indicate whether or not they hire international students. You need to use other methods. Spend 90% of your time connecting with your target professionals. Use your connections and really put yourself out there. You might hear about great opportunities from the most unlikely sources. Remember: if you don’t put yourself out there, people won’t know you exist and are available. 4) Develop a Plan B for Your OPT Find options that allow you to stay past the 90 days period. The term “employed” is not as specific as you might think. Find a job that is related to your course of study. Paid or unpaid job doesn’t matter. It will help stop the 90-day unemployment allowance clock. Please always contact your International Student Services Office at your college or university. Your DSO is the person who can approve if the job is compatible with your OPT. In a normal situation, the OPT job needs to require at least 20 hours a week. However, duration the COVID-19 emergency, SEVP considers students who are working in their OPT opportunities fewer than 20 hours a week as engaged in OPT. See this announcement, Find other options, such as temporary jobs or volunteering positions, that will allow you to remain in the country. Please contact your International Student Services at your school to ensure eligibility. If you are not familiar with the job market and specific industries, it is tough for students to find jobs within 3 months. If you don’t have connections, your search time will augment to an average of 5 to 6 months. Maintain your status with your plan B and continue your full-time job searching! 5) Find a Community to Support You Join a community that helps you move forward. You can build your professional skills and connect with professionals via many professional affiliations. For example; joining Ascend Leadership will give you the opportunity to learn from so many inspiring Asian leaders in the US. At ICAway, we also have a WhatsApp group for International Students so please make sure that you check this out today and request to join our group! Do you want to get more tips on this topic? Check out these resources:
International Students’ Stories: Career Fair Strategy
Even before coming to the U.S., I asked myself: what is in store for me beyond graduation? If I graduate and then go back home to work, will what I have learned academically in the U.S. be applicable at all?
3 Steps to Getting Referrals from Your Connections
For international students, when the traditional job search process starts to yield worse results than before, you need to find people who can advocate your abilities to your target employers. You want to get your foot in the door without stumbling through immigration question hurdles, right?
🤖 Break into Tech with a Non-Tech Background
Get Help Finding Your Dream Job in the U.S. Today: JOIN NOW Do you feel that in order for you to land a job at top tech companies in the U.S. as an international student, you need to have a degree in computer science engineering? Let me ask another question: Do you feel that you’re not good enough because you come from a non-technical background? If you are from a non-technical background but you dream of joining a top tech company like Microsoft, let’s listen to Serah’s Story about how she overcame her barriers as an international student, built her profile, and got noticed by a recruiter at Microsoft without having a tech background or an engineering degree. Follow Serah’s work on Instagram: CareerWomin (@careerwomin) • Instagram photos and videos— Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/icaway/support
Introducing “Lift as We Climb”: Mentorship for Our Community
Nobody achieves success alone. We all need communities of people to support, and who support us, to build each other up and provide unique and helpful insight. In this way, anyone can succeed. ICAway aims to support a community of international students, immigrants, and leaders who want to pay it forward.
“Lift as We Climb” Mentorship program seeks to help build students’ ability to create mentor/mentee relationships.
True Stories: Turning Job [Rejections] Into Job [Offers]
Hear the journeys of three international job candidates who overcame barriers and landed their dream jobs in the US. By Amanda Rosenberg There is a clear disparity that international students and immigrants in the US face when finding jobs. From lacking knowledge on the US job system to work permits (CPT/OPT/H-1B) to not having professional connections, international job candidates often find that these barriers prevent them from getting jobs in the US. We are looking to bridge that disparity for international students by providing them with the tools and job search skill training they need to land a job in the US. Since 2017, ICAway has had a 100% success rate with the one-on-one 90-day intensive program and over 90% of students who joined the ICAway Talent Platform landed jobs in the US. Here are just a few stories of students who used ICAway to achieve their dreams. Trang Vu – “I was uncertain about my post-graduation outcome” Dr. Trang Vu studied chemistry at Pennsylvania State University before receiving her PHD of cosmetic science at University of Cincinnati. Vu is a self proclaimed “skin care junkie” and has always dreamed of working with cosmetics. She is now the R&D scientist at Unilever. Naisargi Dave – “I wanted to change my job while I was on OPT” Dave received a civil engineering degree in India from the Gujarat Technical University, then received a masters in environmental engineering from the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Now, she works as an Environmental Scientist with a private company called EA Engineering. Mario Aguilar Méndez – “I didn’t have a degree and connections in the US” After graduating from Private University of Bolivia in electromechanical engineering, Aguilar Méndez received a Masters in automation and robotics in Spain at Universitat Ramon Llull. Aguilar Méndez now works at Deloitte as an Oracle Business Analyst. Challenges and Barriers Finding a job is always challenging, but there are unique barriers that many international students have to overcome. Our three students each struggled to overcome one specific barrier in applying for jobs. Trang Vu’s biggest barrier was ensuring a job post-graduation. According to Vu, “Finding a job as an international student has always been a challenge. So, I started my job search early on” Despite her early start, Vu “continued to apply for jobs for months and only received rejections for a very long time”. Vu’s challenge would be to ensure a job after graduation. Naisargi Dave struggled with her career future when she decided to change jobs. She recalls, “when I graduated, this research job came along, however a few years into the job, I realized that it’s not where my heart is at. I still like my work in environmental engineering and science. I made the decision to change jobs right on my OPT.” Keeping this in mind, Dave said, “I had to convince my employer that this was a work permit that would expire at some point.” Dave’s challenge was to find an opportunity to switch jobs without it affecting her OPT and future H-1B. Mario Lacking connections in your new country can be really influential on job searches as well. Aguilar Méndez said, “I didn’t have a clear vision of what I wanted…I was trying to apply everywhere. I didn’t know how to sell myself in the network of the United States.” Aguilar Méndez’s challenge was a lack of knowledge on the US job market. Overcoming Difficulties No challenge is overcome without some difficulties along the way. All three of our students experienced this for themselves, when issues arose that affected their job searches. Trang Vu recounted her roadblock, saying “When I got a job offer and I told them I would need a sponsorship, they took back the offer.” Although Vu had the qualifications to work the jobs she wanted, she got rejected due to her immigration status. Naisargi Dave struggled with selling herself to employers, causing networking connections to falter. She said, “After I joined ICAway, my outlook completely changed. I started looking at it as a two-way-street and tried to make networking a lot more meaningful. Then I was really confident when I was giving my answers in interviews.” Mario Not having knowledge of the US job market makes it difficult to decipher the correct job-achieving strategies. Aguilar Méndez recalled, “I only connected with one or two people, but that was it. I had no clue how to get an interview or make connections.” By overcoming this barrier, Aguilar Méndez says his “transformation has been huge…I got different skills and approaches to networking…and achieved a job offer with your gameplan and your coaching.” Becoming Success Stories What brings together our three students is their stories and journey to success. After dealing with their individual struggles, each student joined ICAway. Through this, they were able to overcome all barriers and launch their dream careers. Trang Vu excitedly remembers, “Eventually I landed the job of my dreams…I got connected to people who are very high ranking on Linkedin, like the CEO and VP of R&D…I got connected to Unilever, a week after I talked with them, I received a job offer.” Having had set up connections for herself, Vu was able to find a job that she loved. Naisargi Dave was able to change jobs as she had hoped. She explained, “Everything worked out, I joined ICAway, I met a lot of people going through the same thing, and I thought ‘oh, it’s no big deal,’ it sort of gave me the strength to go through that process…I definitely network a lot more after joining ICAway.” Dave also gained perspective since her journey. She said, “By being from a different culture, by being from a different country, having studied in this country, graduating in the middle of a pandemic, you already bring a lot more to the team and to the work than usual. Even though you feel like you have no experience, you have really good resilience, which is very
[Five Tips] to Convert an Internship to a [Full-time Job]
Dear Coach Kwan, I’ve recently started an internship at a company that I really like and I love working with this team! I was hoping you could provide some tips on how to improve my chances of landing a full-time position after this internship. Can you help? Sincerely, A highly determined international student Creating Your Game Plan to Successfully Convert Internships to Full-Time Jobs First, congratulations on this internship opportunity! This is a milestone that you should be very proud of. I am also happy to hear that you like the company and the team you’re working with! That’s a great start. To anticipate if this role will turn into a full-time position or not, let us look at these general factors: Is their business doing well? Do they have consistent revenue or funding with no risk from the pandemic? Is your position a core function of the business? Will you have access to senior management level or key decision-making of hiring? Once you have evaluated these factors and you said yes to all of the above, let us move on to a checklist that will help you turn this opportunity into a full-time position. 1. Be a good operator The first thing is very simple. Be at your best on what you are here for. Whatever role you got hired for, ensure that you meet all the requirements of your current assignments with minimal to no errors. Be very detail-oriented and ask questions if you don’t understand. Show your supervisor that you are committed to excellence, and poor quality work is not your style. 2. Be a great communicator Just delivering quality assignments is not enough. It is important that you communicate consistently with your team and team manager on the progress of your work or any issues you encounter. Sometimes things don’t go your way, and some young students tend to drop the ball instead of carrying on the task until it reaches its goal. When working in a team, you don’t need to be perfect, but you need to be responsible and communicate well so that everyone knows where you’re at. 3. Socialize with people All after-work events are great when everything is reopened! During this pandemic, due to ongoing social distancing, you may ask to set up a 1:1 meeting (when the timing is right) with key people in each team you are collaborating with or wish to collaborate with. Again, this is not part of the job, but it will help you build a relationship and a sense of camaraderie with your coworkers. Ask about their background, share your stories, and find some commonalities, and ask them how you can help them. Also, ask what their expectations are from you and your team. 4. Go beyond your role Don’t just stay within your assignment. Think holistically like you’re the leader of the company or department. Ask yourself, what are some things that the team can do more to add value or solve the problem, or things that need to be more simplified? When you make a suggestion and gain buy-in from the leader, offer your time to work on it, and solve the problem. 5. Speak in the meetings For any international students, sometimes, due to the culture that we grew up in, we tend to avoid speaking at meetings when we are not sure or we don’t want to interrupt others when they are speaking or if you are not asked to speak. However, in the US, if you don’t speak, it can indicate so many negative thoughts such as you don’t care or you don’t understand. Show up and speak up in the meetings. Make a commitment to that. Always say something in each meeting and share your ideas. If you feel unsure about the wordings you can use. Check these 100 most useful phrases for business meetings. The next step is to ask to present in the meeting. Make sure that key decision-makers recognize your name and your contributions to the company. This is a red carpet for a full-time offer! I hope these checklist items are easy to follow! Again, job performance is important but cultural fit is a deal-breaker! Please follow the above checklist and move your way up to a full-time position in your company! Free Three-Week Career Strategy Series In this 3-week strategy, you’ll find some great examples like… How to plan your career strategy based on your situation How to create an effective networking game plan to turn your new connections into your mentors and job referrals in the future How to build your brand on a resume, LinkedIn profile, and much more to draw recruiters to you Please tell us about yourself and I’ll send your personalized tips to your inbox! Let’s listen to Andrew – How he converted his temporary job to a full-time job. https://youtu.be/Y6zXWtfVxYI Learn more about ICAway Talent Platform, Click Here About Coach Kwan Kwan is an experienced human-capital consultant. Her past corporate experience includes global organizations like Deloitte, Accenture, and BMW. Kwan moved to the U.S. in 2014, earned her Senior Professional HR certification from HRIC, and joined one of the world’s most prestigious consulting firms as a Senior Consultant of Human Capital Consulting Practice and managed multiple projects for Fortune 500 clients. Today, Kwan is the CEO and Founder of ICAway, an educational consulting firm based out of Chicago. Our mission is to be an empowering community for international students and light the way for students to find jobs in the U.S. Connect with Coach Kwan on LinkedIn
International Students’ Dream Job ? How to Stand Out as a Data Professional?
Dear Coach Kwan, I am an incoming international student who is trying to decide what career path to take. A lot of my friends are going down the track of “data professional”, and they claim that this is a sure way for them to land a job after graduation. Is this true? Should I pursue this path as well? Sincerely, An undecided-and-soon-to-be freshman Having a career as a “Data Professional” is highly desired by a large number of international students. One of the reasons behind this is that demand is high. According to a study titled “Workforce Overview: Data Professionals” conducted by Bellevue University, there are about 8,000 job openings annually. However, as the demand increases, so does the supply. In fact, according to the same study, from 2013 to 2017, the number of people working as data professionals grew by 8.6% and that number is still growing. This means that just the degree will not hand you the job. You need to stand out within this consistently growing pool of people. There are key competencies required from data professionals, and this includes not only technical skills but soft skills as well. Follow these 3 steps to position yourself as the right talent—the talent the hiring manager is looking for. 1) Enhance your communication skills 56% of Data Professional recruiters are looking for candidates who have strong communications skills, according to the study by Bellevue University. You can start working on this by socializing with people to practice your language skills with on a daily basis. Next is to not be afraid to venture outside your comfort zone. Take advantage of every opportunity to introduce yourself to someone new, to break the ice with a complete stranger, and engaged in as many meetings as possible, be it over the phone, over coffee or during a committee meeting. Do not hesitate to share your own thoughts and never be afraid to ask questions when you don’t understand something. Do not worry about having an accent – your accent can be an attractive quality! Plus, what you say matters more. You can also join clubs that help you improve your communication skills, such as Toastmasters. Remember: practice makes perfect. Keep on trying, and you will become a master communicator! 2) Participate in challenging projects and practice other desirable skills On your resume and during a job interview, if you can present yourself as a reliable team member, a problem solver, and as someone with amazing teamwork skills, this data professional job of your dreams will be closer to you! Following communication skills, the most desired skills are self-management, problem solving and collaboration. While in school, there are plenty of opportunities for you to practice these skills. The possibilities to find a project are endless. Courses, school or business competitions, internships, co-ops, experiential learning opportunities and volunteering roles. Take advantage of these options and you will be one step closer to becoming the perfect candidate for the perfect job. 3) Build your network of data professionals in the field that you love There are a lot of both local and national professional associations out there. You can start exploring by inviting your Data Analytics professor for a cup of coffee and ask for their advice on which professional associations you should join. Find out if there are any upcoming conferences in your area. Participating in professional associations will not only help you build your job referral pipeline for the future, but will also provide you with opportunities to learn new skills and technologies from real cases. Furthermore, you will be inspired by many successful professionals in the field! From our latest survey with 31 students from 8 institutions around the U.S., we found that the number one reason that international students choose to avoid attending local or national conferences and be a part of professional affiliations is that they felt that they could not afford a membership or conference fee. I understand that being on a budget presents new challenges. However, if you cannot afford certain options due to financial reasons, explore free opportunities or organizations that partner with your school. Sometimes they give free tickets or discounts exclusive to students from partner institutions. Don’t stop dreaming and exploring just because you don’t think you can afford it! When there is a will, there is a way! Data Professionals As the demand for data professionals rises, so does the supply. Amongst that rising number of candidates, you need to ensure that you stand out. Brush up on not only the technical skills required but also the soft skills that the recruiters are looking for. Work at being a better communicator, better team player and better networker and the ideal opportunities will present themselves to you! Join the ICAway Talent Platform to learn how to build your new network in the U.S. and build a career brand that draws recruiters to you About Coach Kwan Kwan is an experienced human-capital consultant. Her past corporate experience includes global organizations like Deloitte, Accenture, and BMW. Kwan moved to the U.S. in 2014, earned her Senior Professional HR certification from HRIC. She joined one of the world’s most prestigious consulting firms as a Senior Consultant of Human Capital Consulting Practice and managed multiple projects for Fortune 500 clients. Today, Kwan is the CEO and Founder of ICAway, an educational consulting firm based out of Chicago. Our mission is to be an empowering community for international students and light the way for students to find jobs in the U.S.