Category: International Students

LinkedIn for International Students

by Gerald Parloiu, WH & CAS ’15

International students can have a harder time finding jobs in the U.S. especially because not all the companies can hire international students. If you are a freshman or a sophomore, firms might be reluctant to go through the complicated issue of sponsoring Visas, as they tend to look to hire juniors to whom they can extend full time offers at the end of their junior internship. However, OCR is not the only way of finding an internship!

inMails on LinkedIn
Coming from an Eastern European country and interested in returning and working in the area for the summer, LinkedIn proved a very helpful resource in my job search. After creating a profile and adding my experiences I received an email with an offer for a 2-month free LinkedIn Gold upgrade. I immediately signed up and received 10 free inMail credits. With these credits I was able to contact anyone on LinkedIn. The way it works is that you go on the person’s profile (HR, Associate, MD, Partner, anyone you’d like to contact) and you can write them a message. I used this function for job inquiries and it always proved successful as the messages sent through inMail go directly to the E-mail address the person used when they signed up for LinkedIn. Given this, you can rest assured that the person you are trying to contact will read your email. If for some reason they don’t answer to you in 7 days LinkedIn will give you another free inMail credit for the message you did not get a response back!

Whom to look for?
LinkedIn messages proved a very helpful tool as a lot of the people I contacted got back to me. In order to find out what companies to contact I did  preliminary research on the companies in banking and consulting in my country. It also helped to join different professional groups on LinkedIn – this gave me access to hundreds of different people who I could potentially contact. This might not work that well for contacting people in the United States or other countries that have a strong economy, as these countries tend to have a very formal recruiting process and the people you contact will most likely direct you to the company’s website or to HR.

Overall, I think LinkedIn is a great resource for international students looking for a job back home! And remember, most students find their job in April or May, there is no need to become anxious if you didn’t secure an internship in January. Start your search today by signing up and contacting people in the industry you are interested in!

To learn more about LinkedIn, visit Career Services’ LinkedIn resource page and come by for a LinkedIn profile critique!

Gerald_1Gerald is a sophomore studying in the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business. Besides his Romanian and Hungarian skills he is fluent in Spanish and is now studying Portuguese. He is the Academic Relations VP for Wharton Europe, is part of the CURF Student Advisory Board and also serves on the Career Services Advisory Board.

U.S. Job Search Resources for International Students

By Sharon Fleshman

If you are an international student seeking to find employment in the United States, it is important to be proactive and plan ahead.  Here is a list of strategies that you will want to utilize as part of your job search.

Make sure that you are familiar with your immigration status and visa requirements. Penn’s International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS) is the main resource for this information.

Identify companies which may have sponsored international students in the past. Fortunately, there are ways to track which companies and organizations have petitioned for visas for potential international employees who they want to hire.

  • GoinGlobal has a H1B visa database which lists companies that have filed at least one visa petition over the past year. The Advanced Search function in the H1B resource allows for searching by region, industry or keyword.
  • H1Bvisajobs.com provides a similar resource and Career Services has subscriptions for Penn students interested in Computer Science & IT, and Telecom; Education and Research; Architecture, Engineering, and Surveying; or Occupations in Life Sciences.
  • Uniworld is a resource that lists international companies with offices in the United States, which means that you can identify organizations from your home country that have offices in the  United States as well as American companies with offices in your home country.  Such organizations may be likely to appreciate employees who are familiar with both the United States and the country in which the organization is based.

Career Services subscriptions for GoinGlobal, H1BVisajobs.com and Uniworld are accessible from our Pennkey-protected Online Subscriptions page, which can be accessed from our Career Services library page

Build your network. Building relationships with others in your career(s) of interest is a good way to gather information and insight that can help you in your job search.  Informational interviewing with alumni is a good place to start.

  • QuakerNet is a resource which allows Penn students and alumni to connect with Penn alumni who have volunteered to offer advice by way of informational interviews.
  • LinkedIn is a social media resource for professional networking. If you have a profile, you can join an alumni group to connect with Penn alumni.  There is a main University of Pennsylvania alumni group as well as other groups based on particular career interests or particular schools at Penn.  Once you join a group, you can conduct a search of the members of the group to identify alumni who are in careers of interest to you. There is a possibility that these alumni may be willing to conduct informational interviews with you or send you advice via email.

Although the above resources are very useful, your most important resource is you.  In your resumes, make sure to prominently highlight the experience that is most related to your career focus.  In your cover letters and interviews, you need to communicate your interest in the employer as well as your relevant qualifications and strengths.  Also, as an international student, you should demonstrate how your intercultural and multilingual skills would contribute to the employer.  As you move forward with your job search, remember that Career Services is available to assist you.

An International Student’s Job Search

Once you understand your work permission, have carefully developed a resume and practiced your cover letter writing and interviewing skills, you are ready to engage in the job search – right? But, how do you find jobs not restricted to U.S. Citizens or Permanent Residents? Career Services is here to help!

by  Jamie Grant

Are you an F-1 (international) student, working diligently towards your degree, and find yourself, like many other students, thinking about internships, or your life after Penn?  Perhaps you have already starting “job searching” (aka clicking through PennLink) and are dismayed by the number of job postings that clearly state applications are “limited to U.S. Citizens or Permanent Residents.”  You are confident that you have strong skills, motivation, and could be an excellent worker, if only given the opportunity.  What can you do to be considered, interviewed and hired?

Let’s consider what it really means to be “F-1.”  An F-1 is a student, non-immigrant visa – just one of many visa types offered by the U.S. Government.  Your F-1 visa was offered to you so that you may complete a degree in the U.S.   Your status as an F-1 student requires that you understand the exact rules and restrictions as to what you can and cannot do while in the U.S.  You most likely remember signing an official-looking legal document that required you to state that you will return to your home country after graduation.  So, how can you possibly stay in the U.S. to work?

While it’s certainly not a secret, many F-1 students that I’ve met in my years of career counseling don’t realize that the F-1 visa has significant training benefits attached to it, otherwise known as “work permissions.”  If you don’t know what terms like pre- or post-completion OPT, the STEM extension, or April 1st might mean to you and your career – keep reading!

To fully understand your potential ability to be hired by a U.S. organization, you have several great learning resources.  Your first stop should be to visit with your advisor for International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS) in the International Programs office here on Penn’s campus, or to spend some considerable time studying the ISSS website at http://global.upenn.edu/isss.  Their webpage on F-1 Student Information – http://global.upenn.edu/isss/f1 – has details on just about everything you need to know about your visa and work/training options.  You should become very familiar with your work permissions if you’re serious about applying what you’ve learned and working legally in the U.S.  It is more than likely that you will need be able to clearly explain your permission, either in writing or during an interview, to your potential employer.

Once you understand your work permission, have carefully developed a resume and practiced your cover letter writing and interviewing skills, you are ready to engage in the job search – right?  But, how do you find jobs not restricted to U.S. Citizens or Permanent Residents?  Career Services is here to help!

There are several key resources and events targeted to F-1 job seekers brought to you by the Career Services office.  While you might find your search a bit more challenging than searching and submitting applications through PennLink, as a Penn student you have access to a database of U.S. companies with a history of hiring international candidates – like you – called GoinGlobal.  By researching in GoinGlobal, and cross-referencing your findings with PennLink, company career websites and other job posting resources, you are more than likely to find opportunities in which you have great interest, and for which you may very well be a top candidate.

In addition, each year Career Services hosts a presentation by representatives from the legal firm McCandlish Holton, designed to help you understand all the rules, regulations, requirements, and best strategies to successfully manage your search and career.  http://www.lawmh.com/practice_areas/immigration.htm.  Handouts from their program held throughout the years are available in Career Services for your review.

Other resources maintained by Career Services and accessible through the Career Services Online Library include The H-1B Online Job Databases for Foreign Students/Postdocs (fairly self-explanatory), and Uniworld. 
Uniworld offers two online directories – one of American organizations with International subsidiaries and one of International organizations with American subsidiaries.  This could be especially helpful, much like using GoinGlobal, in guiding you to identify organizations more amenable to hiring international candidates.  In addition, should you not be able to secure a job in the U.S. after graduation, using Uniworld will help you to identify American companies operating in your country of origin – companies that may highly value the educational and cultural experience you have gained by studying in the U.S. and may perhaps consider you for a U.S. post in future years.

You can easily access the resources and directories mentioned here through the Career Services Library On Line Subscription Database:  http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/library/  – look for “Online Subscriptions…”

Also, consider types of employing organizations that have greater capacity to hire foreign graduates, such as universities, non-profit organizations affiliated with universities (such as research facilities or hospitals), non-profit research organizations engaged primarily in basic or applied research, and governmental research organizations.  These types of organizations are not subject to the same restrictions on the numbers of foreign graduates for whom they can obtain authorization to hire with H1-B visas, and as such are some of the more common employers of F-1 students.