I just posted this on a different thread but I thought I"d do it here too.
I've seen a lot of these kinds of questions on this forum and elsewhere: "how do I get a job", "how do I launch a career", "how do I build a professional network", "how do I get a good job with no relevant work experience."
I used this exact method for years to continue getting job offers in China, Korea, and the US. Check it out. If you need help or advice, let me know.
CAREER LEAPFROGGING BY YMG:
1. DESTINATION - Choose your city/destination abroad - preferably where you speak the local language and/or have some friends, but if not that is fine too
2. VISAS/LOGISTICS - Depending on your budget, sign up for the cheapest long term language classes you can OR find a gig teaching English (not as easy as it sounds). This will provide you a long term visa so that you don't have to worry about going in and out of the country.
GOALS OF THIS STAGE:
-Secure long term visa
-Either improve language skills or make income from teaching
3. INTERNSHIP PHASE -
Over the course of 3-6 months while you are in this city, simultaneously study/teach while interning part time for free at a company you are interested in. The fact that you are an English speaking foreigner with a BA will often be enough to get you that position, although probably not a full time job (yet).
This is important - while interning there, propose to carry out an independent project for them. The problem with many internships is that you do bullshit grunt work and dont get to update your CV in a way that will provide you with relevant job experience to market to your next employer. Thus, if the next position you want to get into is marketing and sales, propose that you will design and carry out a marketing and sales presentation independently. This way, you have control over the specific "bullet points" you will update your CV with. Since they aren't paying you anything they really have nothing to lose.
While I was in Seoul, I independently carried out two feasibility analyses for an energy consultancy and did a range of stuff - business development, budgeting, planning, research, sales, presentations....by the end of my six months I had a wide range of "real job experiences" that have enabled me to get six interview offers from Shanghai and Hong Kong.
When you update your CV by the end of this internship, you will be able to engineer the exact work experiences that you carried out during your independent project. In addition to this, you can call yourself an "Intern Project Manager" instead of just "Intern", which demonstrates the ability to work independently and management experience.
GOALS OF THIS STAGE:
BUILD WORK EXPERIENCE IN DESTINATION COUNTRY
BUILD PRECISE RESUME BUILDERS THAT EMPLOYERS WILL SEEK
IMPROVE LANGUAGE SKILLS
GROW PROFESSIONAL NETWORK
4. NETWORKING WHILE INTERNING -
This stage occurs DURING the internship phase of your career leapfrogging plan.
You should assume that the company you are interning for will not give you a full time job offer. If they do, that's great. But don't rely on it - make a list of important events happening in your city, compiled from resources such as internations.org, craigslist.org, the US embassy website, the US chamber of commerce website, and other business association events. Your alumni network is a good resource too.
Develop your "elevator pitch", which you will be implementing over and over again. This is a 20-30 second summary of who you are, what you are doing in that city, and what you hope to do in the near future. Make business cards for yourself - unless the company you are working for are jackasses they will likely give you a biz card with your name on it, with the title "project intern" or something. This is important for a couple of reasons.
-It gives you a face and larger organization to associate yourself with
-People will subconsciously take you more seriously for some reason when you are associated with a company and have a card - sad but true
-People with hiring power that you meet generally prefer to "steal" someone from a different company rather than taking some fresh unemployed kid off the street
Network like crazy at all these functions and follow up on your contacts. Make plans to meet at later dates, whether for other functions or to even go out and have cocktails or coffee. ALWAYS ADD VALUE TO INTERACTIONS. Don't set up a rendezvous with someone "just to chat" - send them an article or PDF that you know they would find interesting, then tell them you're interested in an "informational interview" about their company. They'll understand what you want and will likely agree to set it up.
GOALS OF THIS STAGE
Rapidly and strategically expand professional network
Secure job interviews
5. INTERVIEW PHASE
From all the contacts you've made, you should be able to set up 3-5 interviews MINIMUM. Don't stop until you've achieved that. Update your CV and cover letter with your new internship experience. They probably won't give a shit about the grunt work that you were assigned. The entire purpose of the "independent project" that I spoke about earlier is so that you can engineer a CV that is tailored to the exact work experiences they are looking for in a candidate.
During your interview make sure you know your shit about the company. Backwards and forwards. Tell them how working there will fit into your larger career plans and describe the independent project you did for your previous employer.
It is highly likely that you will need fluency in the local language. However, in my case, I was able to demonstrate to my employers that I had gained work experience that was valuable enough to offset my lack of fluency. This is your goal in your independent internship - to carry out a range of work experiences that prove that your skills will offset any language deficiencies.
Once you get an offer, your company will take care of other shit like work visas and salary.
I've used this method on three different occasions throughout undergrad and right now. I've been able to hack my way through internships and into full time job offers in the US, South Korea, and China with this exact blueprint.
If you're a jobless and disillusioned twenty-something, you should consider this. If you need help with it, don't hesitate to ask me. I take active pleasure in helping people entirely bypass human resources jackasses and find back doors into the jobs of their dreams.
This method has enabled my friends to get into the following postions:
-Project Manager and Head of Business Development at Natural Gas Consultancy, Shanghai
-Head of China Marketing, Well-Known Social Media Company
-Junior Project Manager of Marketing, PepsiCo
-Senior Analyst, Beijing US Chamber of Commerce
-Brand Specialist, Prominent Branding and Advertising Company in Shanghai
All of the people with these positions came to China with nothing to their name and hustled their way to these project manager level positions within 2-3 years. Most people who have these titles in the US are in their mid thirties.
Don't sit around and hope that someone hands you success - you are not entitled to success in life. At the same time, if you've experienced nothing but failure in life up to this point, you are also not entitled to failure in life.
Decision is yours. This is certainly not a riskless move. But pretty much every twenty-something friend I have in China has followed a path like this and have job positions and responsibilities that make thirty-somethings in NYC green with envy.
I've seen a lot of these kinds of questions on this forum and elsewhere: "how do I get a job", "how do I launch a career", "how do I build a professional network", "how do I get a good job with no relevant work experience."
I used this exact method for years to continue getting job offers in China, Korea, and the US. Check it out. If you need help or advice, let me know.
CAREER LEAPFROGGING BY YMG:
1. DESTINATION - Choose your city/destination abroad - preferably where you speak the local language and/or have some friends, but if not that is fine too
2. VISAS/LOGISTICS - Depending on your budget, sign up for the cheapest long term language classes you can OR find a gig teaching English (not as easy as it sounds). This will provide you a long term visa so that you don't have to worry about going in and out of the country.
GOALS OF THIS STAGE:
-Secure long term visa
-Either improve language skills or make income from teaching
3. INTERNSHIP PHASE -
Over the course of 3-6 months while you are in this city, simultaneously study/teach while interning part time for free at a company you are interested in. The fact that you are an English speaking foreigner with a BA will often be enough to get you that position, although probably not a full time job (yet).
This is important - while interning there, propose to carry out an independent project for them. The problem with many internships is that you do bullshit grunt work and dont get to update your CV in a way that will provide you with relevant job experience to market to your next employer. Thus, if the next position you want to get into is marketing and sales, propose that you will design and carry out a marketing and sales presentation independently. This way, you have control over the specific "bullet points" you will update your CV with. Since they aren't paying you anything they really have nothing to lose.
While I was in Seoul, I independently carried out two feasibility analyses for an energy consultancy and did a range of stuff - business development, budgeting, planning, research, sales, presentations....by the end of my six months I had a wide range of "real job experiences" that have enabled me to get six interview offers from Shanghai and Hong Kong.
When you update your CV by the end of this internship, you will be able to engineer the exact work experiences that you carried out during your independent project. In addition to this, you can call yourself an "Intern Project Manager" instead of just "Intern", which demonstrates the ability to work independently and management experience.
GOALS OF THIS STAGE:
BUILD WORK EXPERIENCE IN DESTINATION COUNTRY
BUILD PRECISE RESUME BUILDERS THAT EMPLOYERS WILL SEEK
IMPROVE LANGUAGE SKILLS
GROW PROFESSIONAL NETWORK
4. NETWORKING WHILE INTERNING -
This stage occurs DURING the internship phase of your career leapfrogging plan.
You should assume that the company you are interning for will not give you a full time job offer. If they do, that's great. But don't rely on it - make a list of important events happening in your city, compiled from resources such as internations.org, craigslist.org, the US embassy website, the US chamber of commerce website, and other business association events. Your alumni network is a good resource too.
Develop your "elevator pitch", which you will be implementing over and over again. This is a 20-30 second summary of who you are, what you are doing in that city, and what you hope to do in the near future. Make business cards for yourself - unless the company you are working for are jackasses they will likely give you a biz card with your name on it, with the title "project intern" or something. This is important for a couple of reasons.
-It gives you a face and larger organization to associate yourself with
-People will subconsciously take you more seriously for some reason when you are associated with a company and have a card - sad but true
-People with hiring power that you meet generally prefer to "steal" someone from a different company rather than taking some fresh unemployed kid off the street
Network like crazy at all these functions and follow up on your contacts. Make plans to meet at later dates, whether for other functions or to even go out and have cocktails or coffee. ALWAYS ADD VALUE TO INTERACTIONS. Don't set up a rendezvous with someone "just to chat" - send them an article or PDF that you know they would find interesting, then tell them you're interested in an "informational interview" about their company. They'll understand what you want and will likely agree to set it up.
GOALS OF THIS STAGE
Rapidly and strategically expand professional network
Secure job interviews
5. INTERVIEW PHASE
From all the contacts you've made, you should be able to set up 3-5 interviews MINIMUM. Don't stop until you've achieved that. Update your CV and cover letter with your new internship experience. They probably won't give a shit about the grunt work that you were assigned. The entire purpose of the "independent project" that I spoke about earlier is so that you can engineer a CV that is tailored to the exact work experiences they are looking for in a candidate.
During your interview make sure you know your shit about the company. Backwards and forwards. Tell them how working there will fit into your larger career plans and describe the independent project you did for your previous employer.
It is highly likely that you will need fluency in the local language. However, in my case, I was able to demonstrate to my employers that I had gained work experience that was valuable enough to offset my lack of fluency. This is your goal in your independent internship - to carry out a range of work experiences that prove that your skills will offset any language deficiencies.
Once you get an offer, your company will take care of other shit like work visas and salary.
I've used this method on three different occasions throughout undergrad and right now. I've been able to hack my way through internships and into full time job offers in the US, South Korea, and China with this exact blueprint.
If you're a jobless and disillusioned twenty-something, you should consider this. If you need help with it, don't hesitate to ask me. I take active pleasure in helping people entirely bypass human resources jackasses and find back doors into the jobs of their dreams.
This method has enabled my friends to get into the following postions:
-Project Manager and Head of Business Development at Natural Gas Consultancy, Shanghai
-Head of China Marketing, Well-Known Social Media Company
-Junior Project Manager of Marketing, PepsiCo
-Senior Analyst, Beijing US Chamber of Commerce
-Brand Specialist, Prominent Branding and Advertising Company in Shanghai
All of the people with these positions came to China with nothing to their name and hustled their way to these project manager level positions within 2-3 years. Most people who have these titles in the US are in their mid thirties.
Don't sit around and hope that someone hands you success - you are not entitled to success in life. At the same time, if you've experienced nothing but failure in life up to this point, you are also not entitled to failure in life.
Decision is yours. This is certainly not a riskless move. But pretty much every twenty-something friend I have in China has followed a path like this and have job positions and responsibilities that make thirty-somethings in NYC green with envy.