Marketing your strengths
Opportunities and Strengths
Despite the challenges international students may face, they also posses many advantages that set them apart from thier peers who stayed at home to study.
Despite the challenges international students may face, they also posses many advantages that set them apart from thier peers who stayed at home to study.
Skills international students may have gained though their time abroad
How to Market Your Skills
Take some time to reflect on your time living abroad. Think about challenges you faced, lessons you learned, obstacles you overcame, discoveries about American life or culture that you made, and personal growth you achieved. Here are some topics you might want to think about or discuss during an interview:
- Enhanced cultural awareness and sensitivity to customs and cultural differences
- Foreign language proficiency
- Adaptability
- Ability to identify and achieve goals
- Improvement in communications skills
- Increased confidence and independence
- Greater flexibility and sense of humor
- Awareness of global economic and political issues and realities
- Ability to maintain an open mind and be tolerant of others
- Improved self-awareness
- Demonstrated willingness to travel
- Resource management
- Organization
- Problem solving
- Crisis and stress management
- Patience
- Listening and observation
- Specific professional skills or knowledge base
How to Market Your Skills
Take some time to reflect on your time living abroad. Think about challenges you faced, lessons you learned, obstacles you overcame, discoveries about American life or culture that you made, and personal growth you achieved. Here are some topics you might want to think about or discuss during an interview:
- A time you had to solve a problem or manage a conflict
- Demonstrations of your language proficiency- indicate the level of reading, writing, and speaking skills you acquired
- Any professional experience you had abroad, even if it was not explicitly relevant to your field- an internship, a part-time on campus job, volunteer experience
- A cultural misunderstanding or miscommunication and what you learned from it- frame this to your future employer as highlighting your ability to contrast the work habits of Americans with people in your home country
- Your experience working in groups or as a team with people from different cultures
- Examples of your leadership experience
- A story that demonstrates your adaptability, understanding of American culture, or ability to identify cultural differences and change your behavior to accommodate local norms.
