Study abroad can not only provide memorable and valuable life experiences, it can be a powerful catalyst for your career development. Your experiences of living and studying abroad can help you develop various skills considered desirable for the world of work. Additionally, in a crowded, competitive field of entry-level candidates, studying abroad can prove a key differentiator, giving you the edge over other candidates. Let’s take a detailed look at how you can use your experiences to make the connection between studying abroad and your future career.
Studying abroad can be a catalyst for your career
With the graduate job market becoming increasingly competitive, how can your studying abroad set you up for success in the graduate job market? Here are five key positives you can take from your overseas experience into the world of job applications and work:
Enhances your resume
The most practical way your studying abroad can boost your future career prospects is by adding valuable experience and skills to your resume. When you’re looking for ways to stand out from the competition, especially for junior or entry-level roles, foreign study can differentiate you in various ways, from the skills you’ve gained, to the cultures you’ve experienced.
Build confidence
The experience of living and studying in a different culture can build your confidence to take on new challenges. After you’ve taken on the challenge of moving to, settling and living in a new country, other new challenges can seem far less daunting. You can take this confidence into the workplace, knowing you’ve experienced valuable life lessons from your time abroad that you can apply to your new career.
Brings a global perspective
On top of the confidence-building effects of living and studying abroad, the experience can give you a broader, more global perspective on life and work, and a richer, more nuanced understanding of different cultures. All these combine to make you a more attractive prospect for employers in various industry sectors, particularly if you learned a foreign language during your stay.
Fosters adaptability and other soft skills
Studying abroad can help you develop various other soft skills that employers are increasingly seeking in candidates in the modern world of work. With technology advancing rapidly, the demand for technical skills is changing all the time, so soft skills are becoming more desirable for many employers and industry sectors.
The experience of studying abroad can really help you develop some key soft skills that can transfer to the world of work. These include adaptability, resilience, open-mindedness and communication. For many students, managing stress and maintaining balance while abroad is also part of the learning process, and resources such as having an emotional support animal can provide comfort during challenging times. If you can show how your overseas experience has helped you develop and use those skills, you’ll place yourself in a strong position with hiring companies.
Develops your professional network
Spending time overseas can broaden your horizons and expand your professional network, opening up opportunities to work in other parts of the world. Having a connection to a foreign educational establishment could serve you well if you look for employment opportunities in that country in the future. Likewise, using your time abroad to make connections with local employers and recruiters that you could return to when you’re looking to take the next step in your career, can be valuable in the long term.
Emphasizing your studies abroad in job applications
If you’re just starting out in your career, you’ll want to find points of difference from other candidates for your job applications. If you’re applying for entry-level roles, you might not have much relevant work experience to build your resume around, so you’ll need to find other ways to showcase key skills and experience, and stand out from the crowd. Thankfully, your experience of studying abroad can be a valuable asset to any resume, especially when you’re a junior candidate.
Here are some key tips for maximizing your study abroad experience, to help you make the next steps in your career:
Mention it in your resume summary
Your resume summary or objective can be an ideal place to reference your study abroad if you’re applying for entry-level roles and want to draw attention to the experience. This can be particularly impactful if you’re applying to work abroad, with a company that has an international presence or where awareness of other cultures is important. If you mention your study abroad experience in your summary or objective, be sure to show how it helped you develop key skills related to the job description.
Use a functional format
A functional or skills-based format is often the best resume structure for graduate or junior roles anyway. When study abroad is one of your most valuable experiences, its impact is only enhanced when referenced in this resume style. This resume layout prioritizes your skills and education over work experience. Both these sections give you a great opportunity to mention your study abroad. List it in your education section, but also showcase it in your skills section, underlining how the experience helped you develop useful soft skills that can serve you well in the workplace.
Add bullet points to your education section
Your education section doesn’t have to simply be a list of your qualifications. You can add bullet points to this section to draw attention to valuable experiences, specialist subjects you studied, projects you completed or skills you gained. Especially if you’re just starting out in your career and you’re using a functional resume format, education bullet points can be a useful way of reinforcing your credentials, so consider mentioning your study abroad in this section.
Show the skills you gained
Throughout your resume, when mentioning your study abroad experience, be sure to link it to key skills required for the role. This could be language skills, cultural awareness or other soft and transferable skills, such as adaptability, resilience or flexibility. It’s important that everything you mention in your resume has some relevance to the role and links back to the skills and experience referenced in the job description.
Mention it in your interview
While you can’t be sure what the interviewer is going to ask you in a job interview, it’s worth having a few anecdotes and examples ready. Your time studying abroad can potentially be adapted as an answer to various common interview questions regarding your strengths, weaknesses, experience, challenges and skills. If you’re just starting out in your career, experiences like international study can be a good way to discuss valuable lessons you’ve learned about yourself, especially if you don’t have much experience in the workplace.
