Category: SP2

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.

Proposition I: Creating Your Own Internship

by Sharon Fleshman

So there’s this great organization doing work that really inspires and excites you.  You’d love to intern there, but there are no internships offered.  It just may be that you should propose your own.   If you seek this pioneering path, here are some ways to get started.

Identify areas where your experience, skills and interests align with the needs and mission of the employer.  Are there potential short-term projects that would help establish a new initiative or program?  Is there an opportunity for research that may inform ways to enhance existing services?  Clues can be found on the organization’s website as well as news articles that are written about the organization.

Email the employer with a concise message outlining your interest in the organization, a concrete idea or two for an internship, and proposed next steps.  As you offer your ideas, be sure to leave room for the employer to consider where you might be the best fit.  You don’t want to inundate the employer with too much information at first, so you can start with attaching a resume that provides an overview of your background.  Possible next steps would be to submit a proposed internship description or to set up a preliminary interview.  Human Resources tends to be an initial point of contact, but it is also fine to call to confirm who should get the email.

Be proactive and consider potential resource constraints ahead of time.  It could be that some organizations don’t offer internships because of a lack of staffing.  Therefore, it is important to demonstrate that you are a motivated self-starter and team player who can utilize the time of supervisors or managers wisely. Funding an internship may be challenge for non-profits in particular.  Are you able to volunteer or locate other funding sources?  Civic House has Public Interest Internship funds for Penn undergraduate students to apply to internships at a variety of types of non-profit organizations.    Penn students who have work-study funds can check with the Student Employment office about applying them to non-profit or government internships.

At the very least, adding this strategy to your internship search would allow you to make some fruitful connections.  If you are successful in proposing and obtaining the internship, you will not only gain valuable exposure and experience, but may also pave the way for others to follow in your footsteps.

PennLink and You: New Online Tutorials

New Year’s Resolution season creates a sense of urgency to search PennLink and hope to find a job or internship.  As a result, there are many new users, or users who haven’t logged in for a long time and need a refresher on how to navigate the system.  Well, I’m excited to announce there’s a new line of help for all of you PennLink job seekers – old and new.  There is now a PennLink channel on our Vimeo video site – PennLink FAQs for Job Seekers!

These videos walk you through step by step, screen by screen, mouse click by mouse click to answer all your questions about navigating PennLink.  New videos will be added frequently, so keep checking back.  If you have any questions or issues with the system, email me at pennlink@pobox.upenn.edu or leave a comment here.  

 

 

 

Social Media Update

by Shannon Kelly

It’s been a busy semester here at Career Services.  As a result, we knew it was critical to get creative and look for some new tools to add to our social media presence.  We’re always looking on ways to keep our resources up-to-date and help you get the information you need in a way that meets your busy schedule.

New Tool #1: Pinterest – http://pinterest.com/penncareerserv/.  What is it? According to their website, “Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.” We took this in a new direction and are treating it as a visual bookmarking tool to share career resources we come across while surfing the web.  Yes, we have our website that has a TON of useful content.  But, there is so many helpful resources out there that we can’t pass up, and we know these resources are critical to your career and internship search.  We’re creating boards (or categories) organically, so as we find a new resource – we’ll create a board.  I think the most fun boards we have are What To Wear – Men, What To Wear – Women and our Words of Wisdom.  Do you have outfits/words of wisdom/resources to share? Let us know!

New Tool #2: Storify – http://storify.com/PennCareerServ. What is it?  “Storify helps its users tell stories by curating social media”, this was taken from the startup’s About section.   We realize we have lots of social media channels, and that we share a lot of information on them.  Not to mention there are even more resources out there that aren’t created by us on LinkedIn, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, online news outlets, etc.  Phew, that is overwhelming!  Well, our Storify account will help aggregate that information and put it in one place.  This means, if you missed our alum post on @PennCareerDay or didn’t realize we had a week dedicated to Careers in Design resources on our social media platforms – you can access this information after-the-fact.

Stay tuned when you get back after winter break (or over it) for even more from us.  We’re excited to have our brand new Social Media Advisory Board, comprised of undergraduate and graduate students, to help us roll out new tools and enhance our existing ones.

 

 

After the Exhale: Making the Most of Your Winter Break

By Sharon Fleshman

Winter break is drawing near.  Hold on… you’re almost there! In a couple of weeks, if not sooner, you’ll have handed in that last paper or exam and the busyness of the fall semester will be over.  And then you will have a moment to sit and simply breathe.  Inhale. Exhale.

Though I offer suggestions on how you can use some of your downtime for career planning, I hope that one of your priorities is to get some rest. Therefore, the following tips should be seen as less like a “checklist” to complete and more like a “menu”, where you choose what is most useful for you to accomplish during your time off.

Reflect: 
Think about your experiences at Penn so far. What have been some of your most energizing projects? Such projects may have taken place in the context of an internship, student club or a class.  Write a quick summary of each project, what you accomplished, and what you enjoyed. Are there any common elements that you see from these projects that point to skills, values, and strengths?   Reflecting on these matters is not only helpful for improving your resumes, cover letters and interviews, but will also allow you to identify careers that may suit you going forward. Career Services has self-assessment resources that can help facilitate this process.

Research:
Winter break is a great time to research careers, industries, employers and job/internship opportunities.  Make sure to peruse the Career Services website for online resources. You may decide to begin with resources on web pages which are more specific to your school or career interest. We also have general Career Exploration resources available. Online versions of newspapers, trade publications and other periodicals are other good sources for industry research. Websites for professional associations and chambers of commerce can also provide helpful career, industry and employer information.

Reach out:
Don’t forget that you already have quite a network which includes family, friends, alumni, current supervisors, and professors.  Don’t be hesitant about reaching out to your network for insight and consider how you can help others in your network as well.  Helpful resources for this include the Penn Alumni Career Network, LinkedIn and professional associations related to your field of interest.

In addition to networking and information interviewing, you can make connections with others while getting direct exposure to a career.  For instance, volunteering is an excellent way to accomplish this with hands-on involvement. Perhaps you can assist someone in a field of interest in a short-term project. Another means of exposure is shadowing, which allows you to accompany someone in a career of interest during the course of a work day.

Regroup:
As you assess your career goals and progress you’ve made so far, you may decide that you need to make some adjustments. To do this, consider an approach with “flexible focus” by determining what is most important concerning your career plans and where you can be more flexible. For instance, you may be committed to a particular industry but may decide to expand your geographical options. Invite family, friends, and mentors to strategize with you.

Once you have revisited your goals, it is time to document your plan of action with concrete, timely and measurable steps. Such a goal could sound something like, “I will conduct informational interviews with at least two people each month after break.”

Finally, the most important tip of all: RELAX!