American job-seeking journey sharing & job-seeking tips

Depart for America

In August 2019, I flew to Chicago alone, and then took the bus to UIUC. It was already two years ago, but it was still vivid in my mind.

At that time, I thought that my master's program only had three semesters, that is, I would face the pressure of finding a job after a year . At that time, I was not even enrolled, so I was thinking about finding a job (I am a very nervous person, I like be fully prepared before going on).

in school

In the first few weeks of school, the school had a QUAD DAY event, that is, various student organizations and clubs would come out to set up stalls to promote the new students (and all kinds of free stuff and free food) , and I saw some leadership at that time. Societies related to consultants, and later also went to the briefing sessions of those clubs.

I was thinking that although the first semester was very heavy, I still hoped to accumulate some practical experience. In addition, I was relatively introverted and did not talk much, so I told myself to accept some new attempts and get out of my comfort zone . Therefore, in the first semester, I joined the ICON club (consultant club), and in the second semester, I applied through two stages and participated in Illinois Business Consulting (IBC), in order to have more diverse exchanges with students from other departments. Understand how everyone does things, after all, this is very different from the students in the original stratosphere.

Facing graduation....

In April 2020, there are only four months left for graduation, and I start to feel more and more uneasy , worried that I will not find a job, and then I have to pack it back to Taiwan and so on . Start focusing on finding a job, not your schoolwork.

Find professional help to revise the cover letter from the writing center, find someone in the career center to help revise the resume, participate in various social activities, listen to the career sharing of the seniors and sisters who have graduated, and so on. In this process, I often get full of rejection letters, feel very discouraged, and seriously doubt my worth . Of course, there are also some interview opportunities. Sometimes in the interview conversation, you probably know that there is no drama, or you feel that the conversation is not bad, but after a while, there is still no follow-up, and the layers of frustration and loss continue to accumulate. Keep telling yourself that you will find a job (Law of Attraction)

I remember one afternoon, when I was taking a graduation photo with my classmates on campus, I suddenly received a call and got a verbal offer! Finally, on the eve of graduation, I successfully found my first full-time job in the United States. So far, I have been doing this job for more than a year :)

The above is my small journey, and then I want to share some tips for finding a job :

• During school, participate in clubs that you are interested in, add some experience or contacts, remember when participating in clubs, also think about what you can learn in clubs? What was the result? (You can write to cover letter or Linkedin later)
• Take good care of school resources and participate in more activities held by the career center. In the career center, some of them are PhD/Master students majoring in HR. You can ask more about their suggestions, and don’t be shy to make more mock interviews. If you don't take the initiative to practice more, you will be really nervous in the formal interview. Of course, you can also find your classmates to practice together and find out the strengths and weaknesses of each other.
• When looking for a job, even if it is Haitou, you should focus on recording your job search process (I use a spreadsheet to record). After the data is collected, you can observe some patterns, such as: a certain industry is currently short of people, A vacancy name is often used, or some common keywords are found, and then added to resume to increase the accept rate of the resume, etc.
• Begin and end: No matter what the attitude of the company or HR is, remember to politely reply to HR within one day after the interview.

This is a small opening remark. I want to write more details or share different aspects in the future.

Welcome to communicate with each other, I wish you a smooth job search!