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?
[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
10 Ways to Stay on Top of Job Searching during COVID-19 (and the Trump Administration)
Dear Coach Kwan, I’m an international student who recently graduated in the class of 2020 from a notable university. However, I have limited work experience and minimal connections, but I’m looking for a job in the United States. I know it can be hard for international students to stand out among a crowd, and the pandemic is making me really worried about landing a job. It seems like job markets are failing and I’m anxious I won’t get anything on time, as my OPT is about to start soon and I’m on a very tight timeline. I am looking for some help. What advice can you give about staying strong during COVID-19? Sincerely,An international 2020 graduate Without any crisis, an average job opening attracts 250 resumes and only 2 percent of those applicants will be called for an interview. And since the COVID-19 crisis, U.S. internship hiring has been cut in half and the estimates for the 2019-2020 academic year indicate a total of 3,898,000 college graduates in the United States. That’s the challenge every new graduate in the U.S. faces. For international students, your challenges will double if you go through traditional career search – waiting for the job to be open, applying online, waiting for an interview opportunity. When you receive the first phone call, the recruiter will ask about your immigration status and they may say, “We don’t have a policy to sponsor international students.” This is a kind of situation that many talented international students usually stumble through and lose their chances to present their skills in front of the hiring managers. 3 Ways of Thinking about the Job Market Right Now My heart goes out to all of you who just graduated without a job offer in place. With all of the pandemic challenges and the limitation of OPT timeline and unemployment allowance, we are all in a racing mode when searching for jobs. During this pandemic and an ongoing attempt from the Trump administration to impose new restrictions on students who want to work in the United States after graduation on Optional Practical Training (OPT), you are a race car driving on a track where the conditions are more challenging than ever. To win this race, you need to stay: Strategic, Resilient and Mindful. In this article, I’d like to provide you with ten ways to help you achieve these three ways of thinking. Being Strategic 1) Monitor the job market. Monitor the job market on a weekly basis. Look at which industries are hiring and in which parts of the country. Gear toward the industries that are hiring, and stay tuned to our Facebook page as we will share job posting movements by industries every Monday. 2) Know who you need to talk to. According to Payscale.com, there could be as much as 80 percent of new jobs that are never listed but are instead filled internally or via networking. So stop spending so much time on online job applications–it won’t work! Jobs that are posted at this time might not be hiring. Spend 90 percent of your time finding the right people to connect and build meaningful connections with. Don’t ask for a referral right away; it is the biggest turn off if you want someone to advocate for you during your job search. Be patient, but do it right. Use friendly yet concise messages, and show interest in the person you want to connect with. 3) Use a calendar for time management. As I’ve been coaching a lot of students, I see that not many young talents have learned how to use their calendar effectively. During your job search, you need to have a clear work plan. For example, which day and time during the week you should look for new job postings: don’t waste time on ones that were posted over a week ago, as jobless numbers have been skyrocketing. Be mindful of when the best time to apply for a job is, and when the best time to connect with people is. Use your calendar wisely. 4) Find a stepping stone. Many students just focus on big tech firms or consulting firms in their job search. There are lots of companies that are hiring, and many people don’t know about them. Those are the companies you can target. Once you have built your expertise and compelling stories from working in a smaller company, you will have higher chances of getting into those Fortune 500 companies. Some smaller companies also serve well-known clients. This is a golden opportunity for you to build brands working with those top clients as well, in turn building your resume. Being Resilient 5) Move on after you did your best. All you need is one win. Never spend days wondering why you didn’t get a result from your interview last week yet, or trying to predict an interviewer’s behavior (for example, thinking they haven’t called because they don’t like you). You are wasting your time putting yourself through that mindset. Do your best in each interview. Send personalized and memorable thank you notes. Then, move onto the next job interview. Job application is not a numbers game (read about that here), but job interviews are. You need to get weekly job interviews; if not, there’s something you need to fix. Each job interview will help you grow and become better at each round. For many of us international students, English is not our mother tongue. The more interviews you get, the better communicator you will be. You will become at ease about interviewing, and when the right job comes at the right time, it will be yours. 6) Take a small break in between, and know when to do that. Know your limit, and don’t sweat it if you need to take a break. We can compare the job process to a race car track. In motorsports, a pit stop is a pause for refueling, new tires, repairs, and mechanical adjustments. Just like in
Introducing the ICAway Talent Platform
Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to coach some amazing ICAway students. I could see them land their dream jobs, for which I feel truly grateful. Through this experience, I have seen the common mistakes that international students make when searching for jobs in the U.S.. And have discovered the three key challenges that they face: Not being able to find employers who want to hire international students Not knowing how to market themselves to American employers Coming in with no connections for job referrals There are two main job search skills that international students need to have in order to overcome these challenges. These skills will help find American employers who value their capabilities more than their visa status. ICAway Talent Platform From my personal job search experience which led me to my first job in the U.S. at Deloitte with a six-figure salary, to my consequent experience as an HR professional, to a career coach for international students, I have gathered valuable insights and skills that I have transferred into this career coaching service called “ICAway Talent Platform”. This complete career coaching solution was not built within a span of months. Rather, it took YEARS, with multiple rounds of testing and participation of approximately 100 students around the U.S. With great support from my talented team, we have worked with me to lay out the learning roadmap and curriculum, produce coaching videos and learning content, design attractive training materials to enhance user experience, and so much more. We have successfully perfected our platform and are confident that it’s ready to support international students with their career search. If you enroll to our platform and become an ICAway student, I will be fully committed to supporting you through this journey. You can ask questions and receive a response within 24 hours. You will have access to tools that will be crucial for your career search. I provide downloadable templates that you can customize and later submit to our team for review. The platform is an interactive experience that I have designed to simulate a learning experience of the students that I have successfully coached on a one-on-one basis. Why do I call this a “complete career coaching solution”? Searching for jobs as an international student is a unique experience. You need comprehensive support to acquire the right skills, build your career brand, understand your work visa options, and gain opportunities to meet with potential employers. For this reason, as a member of the ICAway Talent Platform, you will be eligible for immigration consultation with a skilled immigration law firm. If you have any questions about a career search in the U.S. or about our ICAway Talent Platform, please feel free to leave comments below or contact us at icawayteam@outlook.com I hope to see you on the ICAway Talent Platform! Sign up for the ICAway Talent Platform to get an effective job search strategy to help you land your dream job! About Coach Kwan: Kwan is a certified Senior Professional HR by HRCI, the U.S. premier credentialing organization for the human resources profession. She has over 15 years of professional work experience with top organizations like BMW, Accenture, and Deloitte. With her human-capital knowledge and multicultural awareness, Kwan has designed a customized training program. It equips international students with the skills for their career search, encourages them to break through cultural barriers, and prepares them to enter the U.S. professional world. As the Founder and CEO of ICAway, Kwan is determined to build ICAway as an empowering community for international students that lights the way for them to find jobs in the U.S.