Insights from Head of Coaching

Dear Students,
 

How frequently do aspiring professionals (yes, you!) pepper our coaches with questions about how to tweak your resume to be more ATS-friendly? How many hours per week – or minutes per day – do you spend hitting “Apply” to roles on Indeed, LinkedIn, Dice, etc.? How much time have you spent recrafting resume or cover letter templates produced by LLMs like ChatGPT?
 

Surprise! What’s old is new again, and networking is re-emerging (as if it had ever gone away) as a powerful – if not the most powerful – tool for ambitious international students like you and your peers to carve out an internship or first professional role in the global marketplace.
 

As coaches, we often hear your hesitation about (aka: resistance to) contacting strangers, conducting informational interviews and actually “building a relationship” with Western executives (and not those with Chinese last names). Yet, the reality is, networking is still the most potent way to “get in the door” and potentially stand out amongst the masses applying to the same roster of published, or “Open Job Market” positions.
 

The good news is that candidates like you can master all of the skills required to be effective networkers through our coaching. For example,
 

And many more…
 

So, we encourage the students under our watch (like you) to get out there and network this weekend, to use the summer to meet people casually and build trust and ongoing interest, and to undertake new activities, where you may meet like-minded new contacts (who just might hire a new grad like you next year)!
 

Remember the old saying, “it’s not what you know, but who you know?” There’s still some truth in that, right?
 

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/networking-job-search-c6f06b0c?st=ap0x7do5ictrde4&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Enjoy the people you know this weekend – and meet some you don’t know yet, too!
 

Best,
 

Amy-Louise