Enhance Your Career

Using your Study Abroad Experience to Enhance Your Career

How can your study abroad experience help you in becoming a strong candidate for a future internship, job or graduate program? Now is the time to start thinking about it!

Studying abroad is the perfect time to think about what you want to do after you graduate from W&M. In today’s world, possessing global competency is extremely important. Whether you are planning on attending graduate or professional school, or looking for a corporate or NGO job, you should go abroad with goals and strategies to help you learn as much as you can about your host country. Taking advantage of opportunities to engage with the local culture while abroad provides you with desirable skills that might not have been available while on campus.

Here are some tips for how to plan for your career while studying abroad:

Utilize Resources:

  • Check out any career centers/resources that the host university or study abroad provider might be offering, such as internship or employment postings or career fairs, while abroad.

  • Stay in touch with study abroad providers or programs by signing up for their newsletters, social media, etc. to keep up to date on potential job/volunteer opportunities and/or job fairs.

Volunteer:

  • Connect with nonprofit organizations, clubs, and businesses that offer volunteer roles.

  • Idealist.org is a global database of nonprofits you can use to filter organizations and volunteer roles by geographic region and/or issue areas.

  • Skills gained and used in a volunteer role are valuable to your professional development, e.g. working with locals towards a common purpose, completing projects within a multicultural group of people, volunteering at an organization in your field of study, etc.

  • Stay in touch with study abroad providers or programs by signing up for their newsletters, social media, etc. to keep up to date on potential job/volunteer opportunities.

Language Proficiency:

  • If you are interested in a career path that is either global or uses your language skills, future employers will have interest in the fact that you strengthen your proficiency in another country. It will be important when you are applying for a job to show the level of reading, writing, and speaking you acquired while abroad.

Network:

  • By traveling abroad, your network continues to grow!

  • Meet with alumni connections who live and work in the country you’re visiting. If you have the option, you can expand your reach to nearby countries as well.

  • Discuss how they got to where they are, what they like about living in a different country, and what advice they have for you and your path. For more ideas of questions, visit the Office of Career Development & Professional Engagement's Informational Interviewing webpage.

  • Develop relationships with classmates, faculty, and host families, and connect with them on LinkedIn, so you can stay in touch after you return.

Reflect:

  • Find ways to understand the differences in the work environment between the US and your host country.

  • Don’t wait until you get back home to think about what you learned.

  • Journal each day to capture new skills and accomplishments. The daily little things will add up to show growth throughout your time abroad. Tracking these in the moment helps you realize the strengths you’ve developed by the end, e.g. Did you have a struggle that day? How did you overcome it? Did you manage something new with transportation or grocery shopping? What skills do you have now that you didn’t have the day before?

  • Explain how you adjusted to the host culture and reflect in detail the ways you adapted and changed to accommodate the local norms. The more detail you write about, the better you will remember and can re-tell in a job interview.