How to suck less in the job hunt

Making it harder to get rejected as an international student

Hey everyone, Stuart here! Are you finding it hard to get a job here in the US, such as an internship using CPT or a full-time offer using OPT? Here are a few tips that are going to make this easier for you - making it harder for you to get rejected!

• Ariel used this information to gain an $8,000 monthly internship at a Fortune 100 firm just as summer was starting (her story on Youtube).
• Alvin used what I'm going to be teaching here to get his full-time offer at JP Morgan in New York City, living, living the dream life as it was for him (his story on Youtube)

Tip #1: Stop drawing the wrong conclusion

Concluding that it's too hard to find a job takes you out of the game. Maybe you expected a hard thing to be easy, so you stopped. Let’s say you’ve stopped trying to job hunt at all.  Sometimes stopping to do certain things IS the right move. For example, applying online and hoping to hear back just doesn't work. If you’ve been doing this incessantly without results, you're right to examine the data, conclude that applying and waiting doesn’t work, and stop doing that. That process is very destructive to mental health and just doesn't work. But don’t start pointing the finger at your skills, talents, and abilities. 

A lot of times people spend months applying to hundreds of jobs, getting very few interviews, none with firms they like. Perhaps some interviews come along but the firms are not interesting and still, they don't get an offer. Or they get offers with firms that expect you to earn 100% of your salary via commissioned sales. These are not the right starting points for early career talent. As a result, the job hunter concludes that there's something wrong with them, that there's something that's missing about their experience, ability, or school pedigree. They conclude that it's hard to get a job.  They've made the wrong conclusion. 

The better conclusion to make is that applying online and trying to wait to hear back just doesn't work. So if you've proven that to yourself, GOOD JOB! By applying to hundreds of places, you have data. That data doesn't support the conclusion that there's a problem with you, just the way you're going about the job hunt. That isn't correct. So before you jump to the conclusion that it's too hard to get a job in the United States, let's look for other explanations as well. 

And remember, when just starting anything out: two things are OK: it’s OK to want more for yourself and you’re also allowed to suck when just getting started. 

So, be open to trying something different than just applying online! 

Tip #2: Stop believing that there is a recruiting season. Most companies are hiring all the time

There may be 10, 20, or 100 firms that have a fixed open and close to their recruiting season. These come to campus, leave the campus and leave us to believe that there’s something called a recruiting season that when closed means we’re all screwed if we don’t have a job. Those firms with recruiting starts and stops represent a minority of the firms out there and, even then, they are still looking for talent outside of these windows because life happens and people leave.  

The vast majority of firms are continuing to hire new people throughout the year. Here’s what that means: much of the job hunt is just showing up and allowing the people in these companies to know you exist - at all times. When they conclude that you're a great fit for what they want, then they hire you.

So don't get stuck in the feeling like recruiting is ever over. Just because Handshake seems to have dried up doesn't mean your chances have, too. Most firms are in constant hiring mode. 

Remember, there is such a thing called the Fortune 500 and the Forbes 2000. It’s not just the “Recruiting 50”. Don’t throw out the prospect of working one among 1000s of other top firms in the market by believing recruiting ends at any point. 

Tip 3: Skip to the final round of interviews

Why apply at all? It’s because you want firms to invite you to speak to their senior executives. There's another approved approach: create a list of companies, find the leaders in those companies through LinkedIn, and then message them. Get on a call with a portion of them to speak about your interest in meeting them. In the course of that conversation, get referrals to more people. Those then lead to warm introductions (and interviews and offers). Getting a job is just as simple as setting goals, setting a target, a list of people that you want to contact, and then reaching out. 

Tip #4: Tenacity, not ability, is what matters

Gary Vaynerchuck in his book Twelve and a Half speaks of tenacity as being a key ingredient to success. In other words, don’t require the hard thing to be easy. Don’t expect that this ambitious goal of getting a great job is going to work out right away. Don’t expect every single message we send will result in an interview or an offer. Don’t expect to be good when you start. So, what to do? To accelerate your progress, learn the way to message people that is effective, and then go out and do it. When doing it, now collect data. What is our message-to-call yield on Linkedin? What happens if I email them?  When we start networking, tenacity is what determines success. It’s not about what you are or where you’ve been before. You can have never been tenacious in your life and now start. There are correct ways of networking and there are incorrect ways. If you’re a member of my 12-week Career Accelerator program, you get educated on the correct ways to do things with poise and emotional intelligence and then you apply the wisdom and make it your own. And yes, it’s not an overnight success.

Tenacity here means approaching applying, following up, and networking like you might learn how to ride a bicycle: you fall down a few times, but the payoff is worth it. You permit yourself to suck when starting. If you are looking to learn networking the right way, I have some resources which can help you achieve that.

Hey, has this been helpful to you? What else would be helpful to you in your job hunt? I am gonna be producing more videos, similar to content relating to getting interviews and offers for people without any prior experience. Thanks for stopping by and be sure to subscribe and like my youtube content. 

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Watch the YouTube video here.