Careers Network information on Visas & Free Immigration Solicitor’s Advice

As part of the International Students section on the Careers Network website, there is a section covering Visa and Immigration. This has several documents and summaries, including:

Free Immigration Solicitor’s Advice

International students can access free legal advice from a leading solicitors firm specialising in immigration law.  Appointments are available for students, researchers and employers to discuss job related immigration queries.  More details can be found here.

Midlands International Group Career Webinar Series

The Midlands International Group (MIG) consists of representatives from Careers Services at 16 universities across the midlands of the UK, all with a specific focus on working with International Students. Their website contains information about the group, including a  blog, plus links to previous and future events and resources.

The MIG Group recently ran a series of career webinars for international students, topics:

  • Launching your International Career: Decide, Plan, Compete!
  • Post-Study Working Visas
  • Working as an Entrepreneur in the UK – Tier 1
  • Launching your Global Finance Career in China (link to come)
  • Preparing to Work in your Home Country…Looking for Work in China
  • International Students: get the edge in your graduate job market back home – and across the globe
  • Preparing to work in your Home Country…Advice for global job hunting (link to come)
  • Global CVs and Personal Branding
  • Working in the UK after Graduation – Tips for Tier 2 Success

If you would like information about any of these, then contact midlandsinternationalgroup@gmail.com.

How to use your internationalisation to stand out to UK employers

The common denominator when applying for graduate-level jobs is that everyone has a degree, so being able to articulate what makes you stand out from other candidates will give you a large advantage.

The advice and prompts below will help you reflect on and articulate the advantages of being an international student to employers.

1) Check sponsorship if you are a Non-EEA student

This also includes making sure that the companies you want to apply to can sponsor visas. If you are applying to a smaller company that has never sponsored an international student before on a Tier 2 visa, you can speak to them about doing a few months work experience after you graduate using the Tier 5 scheme. However, to later apply for a Tier 2 visa you would have to leave the country and do this from home. You can also arrange an appointment with immigration solicitors Paragon for employment related queries.

2) Identify the skills you have developed

You can use the questions below as prompts if you are unsure what unique skills or experience you can offer as an international student.

  • Why did you decide to study in the UK?
  • How was your education system and prior experience different to UK students?
  • What were you hoping to gain or develop out of this experience that couldn’t be achieved by studying in your home country?
  • How are you a different person now compared to how you were before you started your studies in the UK? How might you communicate this to someone new?
  • What surprised you most about moving to the UK?
  • How might you share your knowledge of both your home country and the UK through your own lived experience with an interviewer?
  • What are some of the experiences that you’ve had, both at home and in the UK, that have shaped your cultural and global perspectives?
  • Looking at the skills you’ve developed, how and when have you used these?
  • How might you use your international background to re-imagine a problem or see something in a new way?
  • How has being an international student further developed skills you already have?

Answering these questions will help you start to identify skills, attributes and experiences beyond the obvious. For example, you may realise that not only are your English skills improved, but you are more confident and assertive using them in group settings to resolve problems and achieve objectives; or you may have adapted to work proficiency in a different culture or previously studied topics/subjects that other people have not.

3) Identify any concerns/worries you have that might hold you back

You may still feel there are things as an international student that will hold you back in the recruitment process, for example comparing your English skills against home students or that your qualifications and experience from your home country won’t be valued by employers.  It’s important to address these thoughts as they could be holding you back from applying for jobs with confidence, which will be covered in the next few steps.

4) Read our Marketing yourself effectively to UK employers PDF

This can be found on the Careers Network website and by clicking here. This outlines what employers in the UK generally are looking for.

5) Try understand an employer’s perspective

The first thing here is to consider what the employer you are currently applying to will be looking for in a candidate. This is a simple but effective way of improving your applications. The most common ways to do this is are to look at the job description and person specification on a job advert and researching the company to find out what they are currently doing and (if possible) their future plans and aspirations.

Some questions you could consider include:

  • What would the employer be looking for in my CV?
  • What kinds of qualifications/experience would most impress?
  • If I was recruiting for this post and had a large pile of CVs, what would make one stand out?
  • What is it about my last job(s) that the employer would find most interesting?
  • What is it about the answers to questions in section 2 (“Identify the skills you have developed”) that the employer would find most interesting? Why?

To really stand out (and if you have time), you could also do some extra work to find out what would interest the employer beyond what’s on the job description, for example, understanding what additional skills would add value. Ways you can find this information out include:

Once you have done this, you can start to think about how your skills and experience as an international student will help the employer now and in the near future. For example, the ICAEW identified the need for accountants who are skilled working with clients and colleagues from different departments in potentially different countries and time zones. In addition, according to a survey by the Intelligence Unit at The Economist, 90% of executives in 68 countries say cross-cultural management is their biggest challenge.

The second part of seeing things from an employer’s perspective is addressing the concerns you identified in section 3 (“Identify any concerns/worries you have that might hold you back”). Thinking about each concern from the employer’s perspective, how much is this an issue? Why might this be or not be? Our in other words, what might an employer’s worry be or would they not have an worries about it?

6) Impact

The next  step is to think about impact, i.e. putting it all together in a way that will impress the employer. When describing the value you would bring as an international student, try to be as specific as possible to the employer’s needs.

For example, it’s easy to say ‘as an international student, I have experience of working in different cultures’ but this sentence on it’s own might be easily missed. A better way is to explicitly link to what the employer is looking for:

Your job advert highlights teamwork as a key requirement. As can be seen from my attached CV I have demonstrated this skill in my previous job, and through recent group projects as an international student have gained further experience successfully leading teams of people from different cultures. From researching your company, I believe this skill is especially relevant to your increasing emphasis of developing the business outside the UK. 

Now think about your concerns – having looked at these from an employers’ perspective, do you still feel they are issues? If so, how could you address these in a way that would impress them? As an example, if you worried your applications will be rejected because you have no work experience in the UK and are applying for a job that requires a lot of customer service, you might think:

  1. I have excellent customer service experience in my home country, but this was in a different language and although I’m confident in my skills an employer still might be unsure that I can translate these into working with UK customers.
  2. I can write on my cover letter that I have excellent customer service experience and then emphasise that I am skilled at using my English skills in a professional environment by highlighting all the relevant activities I’ve completed, such as leading group discussions and projects, getting involved in extra-curricular activities, customer facing volunteering or part-time work, and so on. By doing these things I can also highlight that am I a motivated, self-reliant individual who takes ownership of my own development rather than someone who might need a lot of help getting used to working in a new culture.

In other words, do not focus on any negatives but instead think about turning your concern into a positive. This can be done by focusing on all the things you have done to work on the concern, as seen in the example above. Employers are not expecting you to be perfect and often will be impressed if you show the right attitude and attributes to do well.

7) Bridge the gap

You may still find that there is a gap in your skills or experience which is holding you back from getting to the job you want. After all, employers want to employ the best candidate. In these instances, it’s essential to make a plan to ‘bridge the gap’. This can include doing professional courses (such as Lynda.com) or getting work experience. If you decide to gain temporary work experience, set relevant goals of what you want to achieve during your time there and review these regularly, for example:

  • Use your language skills in a professional setting as you’ve never done this before
  • Share good practise from the sector in your home country to help your department develop new ideas, so you can understand the value your previous international employment can bring companies in the UK
  • Learn a new computer system that is used in the UK that you have never used before
  • Meet the managers from every other department so you can better understand how organisations in the sector work together, and thereby demonstrate to future employers you understand the different ways of working and where you can add value to them

There are lots of different goals you can set, and even if some are very small (for example, “speak to 5 customers”) they can help you move nearer to your career goals.

8) Get help from the Careers Network

You can access careers help from the Careers Network to help with any stage of this process, from deciding which types of jobs you would to apply for, completing CVs, cover letters and applications, preparing for interviews and so on. Even if you are not on campus, you can still access the service for support.

– Christian Jameson-Warren

How to find a job in another country if you don’t have much time

Trying to find a good job in a different country can be difficult, especially if you have limits on your time and energy due to studying commitments. The following steps will help you focus on the most important actions in an organised way.

1) Be clear about what sort of job you want

Without a clear criteria of what you want in a job, it’s difficult to focus your efforts effectively. However, having a too narrow focus will limit your options so you may not find enough opportunities – instead of thinking purely about your first job after graduation, think about where you want to be in your personal and professional life in 5 – 10 years’ time, and consider what skills, experience and connections you need to achieve that. Use this as part of a criteria for deciding what sorts of jobs you wish to apply for now.

2) Understand the recruitment expectations and procedures of different countries

You can use the same resources on our Work Abroad page to become more familiar with recruitment processes and requirements in a different country if you are not already familiar with them, for example how CVs are formatted, etiquette at interviews. Speaking to people from that country can also help with us.

It’s essential to do this, as potentially you may waste time on applications that are being rejected because of small things you could change. You can also read our Marketing yourself to employers in your home country PDF.

3) Understand the labour market

You can visit Goinglobal to find out about employment trends in different countries by reading their Career Guides (you’ll need to log into the Careers Toolkit using your normal university login details, but won’t need to set up a private account on Going Global). This will help you understand what jobs and skills are most in demand and if there are likely to be many opportunities in your chosen field, all of which will help you make informed decisions about what opportunities to spend your time pursuing.

4) From the above information, identify potential employers

This will help you be more focused in your activities. You can use resources like Goinglobal and others from our Working Abroad page, as well as search engines (e.g. Google) to find companies that might interest you. You can also search  In his book The 2-Hour Job Search, author Steve Dalton recommends making a list of 40 companies as this will encourage you to think creatively and widen your options to a suitable number beyond what is merely convenient. Put these into an Excel table. If you are focused, you can do this in a few minutes.

5) Rank the employers in terms of preference

Dalton also recommends putting all the employers in a table so you can rank them in order of preference for working at – LAMP:

L – List, completed in previous step

A – Alumni – quickly using LinkedIn.com/alumni (or for Lboro students, using Lboro Connect too), are there any alumni that work there? i.e. other people who have an Lboro connection that you could contact about working there (see (6) below). Dalton also includes anyone who would be sympathetic to your job search (e.g. someone you know already), even if they are not a literal alum of Lboro. At this you are simply writing ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, rather than alum details as doing so at this stage will slow you down.

M – Motivation – give a score of 1 – 5 how much you want to work there, based on what you currently know (don’t spend time doing extra research at this stage, as will add extra time unnecessarily).

P Posting – are there any opportunities available right now? Use www.indeed.co.uk to search (don’t click on job posting at this stage), and give each a score as follows:

Employer & Keyword (job title) – 3

Employer & No Keyword – 2

No Match – 1

You can vary this according to your circumstances, e.g. Employer & Keyword & Internship – 4

The key is to go through this as quickly as possible, working down ‘Alumni’ column, then ‘Motivation’, and then ‘Posting’, instead of working across doing A, M, P for one employer, then doing the same for the next. Dalton compares this process to how Henry Ford massively increased production in his car factories through introducing assembly lines, i.e. reducing a complex process to “individual, simple tasks increases efficiency and reduces the mental effort required. Focusing on a repetitive tasks may certainly be boring, but it gets tedious tasks competed quickly, effectively, and with minimal effort.”

Once you have prioritised your list, you can select which employers to focus your time on. Dalton recommends using the ‘Sort’ tool on Excel (under ‘Data’ tab) to order the list, based on a) top priority – Motivation b) second priority – posting c) third priority – alumni. When reviewing this list, if any companies are advertising at the moment and it makes you more motivated to apply for them, you can increase the motivation score. In addition, if any companies score lowly under Motivation but have postings or alumni you can spend a few minutes researching them (one minute maximum per employer) to see if they would potentially interest you – these employers may have low brand recognition, and so be more open to direct approaches from you.

6) Get contacting people

In line with the approach Dalton advocates, the organisation 80,000 Hours conducted extensive research into the most effective ways of finding jobs. Some companies (especially large ones) have standardised recruitment processes that everyone must follow, so you need to just follow these.

However, thinking about the recruitment process from an employer’s point of view, many people are more likely to recruit someone they know or has been recommended by someone they know. 

Taken from “What Color is your Parachute?” 2015 edition.

This means that rather than contacting people at companies directly to ask if they have any jobs, it’s more effective to build relationships with them. An effective way to do this is called informational interviewing, and involves you contacting people to ask for a few minutes of their time to find out more about working in that company/industry. If you are able to find Lboro graduates, often they are often more open to helping.

80,000 Hours have put together a series of email scripts that can be adapted to reach out to people at companies that interest you. You can send people personalised LinkedIn connections are do some research and find their email address.

If a company is currently advertising a vacancy you wish to apply for, if you have time you can adapt an email to someone at the company for their insight to help with your application. An adapted example from Dalton:

Subject: Loughborough Uni MBA student seeking your advice.

Dear Mr Jones,

My name is [….]. I am an Loughborough University MBA student who found your information on LinkedIn loughborough alumni page. May I set up a phone call with you to discuss your experience with [company]? Your insights would be greatly appreciated, as I am now in the process of applying for an open [job vacancy] position there.

I recognise that this may be a busy time for you, so if we are unable to connect by email I’ll try to reach you next week to see whether this is more convenient.

Thank you for your time

[Name]

Not everyone you reach out to will respond, but you can schedule 15-20 minute phone/Skype (or email) conversations with people at times that fit in with your schedule. Our Networking for career planning and job search pdf can help you with knowing what to say in this appointments.

Spending time building relationships so that people know you and potentially recommend you for opportunities will speed up your job search efforts and save you time in the longer-term.

 

Finally, you can book an appointment to get help with any of the above, should you so need it.

– Christian Jameson-Warren