At most of my presentations, students ask me how they can find contacts in order to put the Power Ties system into practice and find a U.S. job.  I tell everyone to start with their school’s alumni directory – particularly if they can find alumni who were international students themselves and went through a similar U.S. job search.  The alumni directory is the warmest place to start, but what if you’ve exhausted it?  Here is a quick internet techniques to use in find people to reach out to.

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Whenever I give a presentation on my book, I mention at the beginning that not all international students will be willing to follow the system that I outline.  The system involves reaching out to people you don’t know, taking some risks and stepping outside of your comfort zone.  The system works, but most people looking for H-1B sponsorship would prefer to sit at home and apply to jobs online – a low effort/low success effort.  This is good news for those who are serious about finding a job in the US because it means less competition. Continue reading

I had a chat with a former international student last night about his successful path to getting H-1B sponsorship.  Like many international students in the U.S. he graduated from his degree program without a full time job offer and had to quickly find employment before the 90 day limit on his F-1 visa.  Because of the difficulty in finding paid employment, he decided to volunteer at an organization aligned with his career ambitions. 

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I’m frequently asked whether it’s ok to have an informational interview with someone by phone.  It’s always best to have a face to face meeting; that’s what’s going to help you build a relationship with someone.  But if you can’t secure one (and often times it’s just not practical to meet someone in person), then a phone call is fine.  Just know that you’ll probably need to put in a little extra work to be remembered.  And keep in mind that being remembered is most easily accomplished by being helpful.  Spend some time during your phone call trying to understand what the person you’re connecting with might need.

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“Why won’t career services get out there and bring more companies to campus?”  or “Why doesn’t career services convince more companies to sponsor H-1B visas?”  Sound familiar?  International students (particularly international MBA students) around the country ask these questions en masse each year.  They’re all wondering where all the employers are and why career services isn’t providing the jobs they’re expecting.  Continue reading

I’m going to begin this post by saying (as I probably too often do), that I’m not a lawyer.  Everyone in the U.S. is afraid of being sued, and I’m no exception!  So none of this is legal advice.  But ever since I went through the immigration process with my wife (who is from Spain), I discovered that there are quite a few things related to immigration that the average person can do on his or her own.  My wife and I worked through both the J-1 visa (when we were dating) and the K-3 visa (when we were married) and never used an attorney. 

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Applying to jobs online is not a good use of time for a serious job seeker.  One of the reasons for this is because the information contained in a job posting is generally unreliable.  For some details on why, see my blog entry on why you never hear back from the company after applying to a job online. But one particularly useless piece of information in a job posting is the application deadline. 

Most people think that recruiters collect applications online up until the application deadline, and then begin to evaluate who the best candidate is.  Not true.  Continue reading

This post is written for all of the people coming to the US to study this coming Fall.  This entry contains some reasons why, if you want to work in the US after graduation, you should set your job search as an early priority.  If you’ve just graduated and you’re still looking for a job, you’re not alone.  Every year a large number of international students either wait too long to start their job search (amazingly, sometimes even until after spring break), or waste a great deal of time doing the wrong things.  In The International Students Guide to Finding a Job in the United States, I address at length the common mistakes that international students make in their US job search.  Perhaps the biggest mistake is waiting.

International students, particularly MBA students, understan Continue reading

International students get very excited about lists of companies who have sponsored H-1B visas in the past.  Advertised as lists of ‘H1-B sponsors,” these lists are readily available on the Internet (usually for a fee), and are compiled from public information gathered by the US Department of Labor.  They usually show the title of the position sponsored, the salary paid, and the name of the company sponsoring the visa.  It’s useful for international students to review these lists from time to time in order to remember that there are, in fact, many companies who sponsor H-1B’s each year.  However, these lists are far less valuable than you may think.  Here’s why:

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International students always want to know when the best time is to reveal that they require sponsorship.  The most important thing to remember is that you should always be up front when someone asks you directly what your work status is.  If you don’t have full time U.S. work authorization, don’t tell a recruiter that you do simply because you have OPT.  It’s mis-leading and I speak more about this issue in my OPT to H-1B blog entry.  Being clear about your work status when asked about it is critical to establishing trust.  So if someone asks, tell them you require sponsorship for full-time employment. Continue reading