Marketing Your International Experience

Whether you have lived, interned, studied, or volunteered abroad, you have demonstrated these skills:

  • Adaptability
  • Appreciation for diversity and other perspectives
  • Community building
  • Conflict and crisis management
  • Creativity
  • Foreign culture and language competency
  • Knowledge of international issues and politics
  • Independence, initiative, and self-reliance
  • Interpersonal communication
  • Motivation, drive, and perseverance
  • Open-mindedness
  • Organization and time management
  • Problem-solving
  • Self-confidence

Be Memorable by Displaying Your International Experience Effectively:

  1. Reflect upon your experience and review the skills you have enhanced.
    • Professional growth
    • Personal development
    • Knowledge gained
  1. Connect this experience to characteristics that employers/graduate schools seek in their candidates.
  2. Utilize these accomplishments in your updated resume/cover letter/elevator pitch.

Be Intentional When Connecting Your International Experiences.

Practice answering interview questions related to your experience. For example:

    • Tell me about a time when you had to adapt quickly to change. What are the top three lessons you learned?
    • How did this experience change your life?

Check out Interstride for more job-searching tips for international students.