What Nobody Tells You About Finding Jobs as International Student

[Music] welcome back to my channel this is William and today I wanted to talk about something very important it's something that I wish I knew about before coming and studying in America it's something that all International students pretty much experience and I don't feel like it's getting addressed too much so I decided I'm going to make a video and just be as brutally honest about this specific issue as possible so let's get started as you know my story I came from South Africa to America in 2013 and when I got here I actually started out at a community college where I got my associates degree then I went to a university a four-year private school where I got my bachelor's degree and then later on I even got my Master's Degree now throughout this process there's actually being a big elephant in the room when I graduated with my bachelor's degree in economics I thought I would get a job really easily I thought that hey I just got a Bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester back then it was a top 30 School in the nation its economics program was absolutely phenomenal it was in Upstate New York so really close to New York City I thought that I would be able to get a job really really fast nonetheless I also had a very good GPA so it wasn't like my GPA was bad or anything however I didn't get a job as fast as I thought I would in fact it took me hundreds and hundreds of applications before I even got a job interview yet alone a job now why did that happen well the truth is there is a question that companies are going to ask you when you apply to them and this question is will you now or in the future require Visa sponsorship this is the dreaded dreaded question that a lot of international students have to answer because if you say yes then a company would need to sponsor you in the future in order for you to continue employment with them so what does that actually mean it means that they know for a fact that within the next 3 years you're either going to have to leave the country or they're going to have to spend thousands of dollars on sponsoring you now why would a company want to spend thousands of dollars on sponsoring you if they can just get an American another question why would the company want to risk the fact that you only have 3 years to be at the company here before even if they try and sponsor you if that fails you have to leave the country but there's something else I said 3 years but that's only for people who have the stem extension so when it comes to the opt you only have one year in America then only if you studied stem or have a degree in a stem field only then you can apply for a further 2-year extension with the government and that will allow you to stay in the country legally for 3 years so if you don't have a stem degree then you only here for one year and that makes it even harder for a company to hire you so let's go over this one more time we have two situations here let's say you're an international student who graduated with a business administration degree so that business degree is only going to allow you to work legally in America for one year you are not going to be eligible for the stem extension so if you are now applying to companies with this bachelor's degree in Business Administration you're going and telling them that hey I only have one year to actually work in America hire me what is the benefit to hire you for that company it's really really low because there's not really that much of a benefit because they're going to have to train you it's going to take probably 3 months 4 months or 5 months and then you're only going to be able to work for them for another 6 months or so then they have to sponsor you which can be very challenging and often times it doesn't really work right so if that's the case then you'd have to leave America so if they hired you today over an American there's a lot of risk involved scenario number two is you get a stem degree so you're eligible to a 2-year extension on that one-year opt now what happens with that is again a company hires you and they're going to train you up as a software engineer or whatever you're going to be doing right it's going to take them probably 6 months in order to train you up and then you're only going to be able to work for them for 2 and 1/2 years or so before you have to leave but this is a little bit of a better deal for companies because they can actually have you for 3 years of employment which if you look around the average amount of time people stay at their jobs nowadays is like 2 to three years so they're willing to take a risk there but it's still very difficult it's still a harder sell so what does that mean in general as an international student what it means is that there's a lot of companies who will will not hire International students so when they put that question there will you now or in the future require sponsorship if you say yes to that question then they most likely won't even look at your resume they're just going to toss it aside because they don't want to deal with all the uncertainties of hiring an international student now today is even a little bit worse than what it was in 2018 when I graduated with my bachelor's degree because in 2018 it was more of an employee Market where people wanted to hire as many people as possible now it's an employers Market where employers are very picky on who they want to hire so today is even more challenging for international students to find jobs and this is something that I wish I knew when I came to America if you are an international student in America then while you're in college you have to try and secure a job as soon as possible you should be getting internships you should make sure that you get these internships that are going to allow you to step your foot into the door of these companies because once you get an internship then it's easier for you to get a return offer so trust me I wish I knew this a little bit earlier I wasn't as serious about internships as I should have been but if you're not serious about internships when you get to your senior year and you start applying to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of jobs and nobody wants you take that risk on you then you'll see that it's better for you to get an internship I'm hoping that this Insight is going to allow you to plan a little bit better and for you to start strategizing when it comes to figuring out what major you're going to be doing and what career you want to pursue because you have to look at that opt and understand that there's a oneyear period for people who are non stem Majors so I hope you got some insight from this video if you liked it definitely like And subscribe to my channel as that's going to allow me to know that these are the type of videos that you want so thank you so much and I'll be seeing you in the next video