How to Stand Out as an International Job Applicant

International students and job seekers with work Visas can gain a significant advantage by understanding how top employers hire.  Few international job seekers truly understand how employers hire, what they fear, what they expect, what they listen for, and how they evaluate candidates.  Understanding these topics becomes your competitive advantage.

Interview Ready starts with an online job search Readiness Assessment to help you find out what you know, don’t know, and need to know to conduct a successful job search.  Upon completion, Interview Ready will create a personalized study guide to help you become an “insider” and understand the hiring process from the employer’s perspective. 

I have observed international job candidates with exceptional knowledge, skills, abilities, and drive, do poorly in job interviews.  Many try too hard and come across as arrogant and not team players.  They are so eager to win that they make numerous simple mistakes that could have been prevented if they only understood how recruiters and interviewers think.

On the opposite end, many highly qualified international applicants (on CVs and resumes) are so shy or nervous that they fail to make a strong impression.  They answer the questions but fail to provide rich, detailed stories of their past performance in key situations or tasks and get assessed poorly.   

These mistakes are easy to correct by anticipating the questions you may be asked and practicing your answers out loud.

We understand the challenges international job candidates face and created Interview Builder (inside Interview Ready) to help you quickly assemble a set of position-specific behavioral interview questions and practice your answers with a friend, colleague, or spouse.  The transformation is notable!  

Our behavioral interview questions go one step further, they include a set of follow-up questions to help you pull out the rich details employers need to hear to feel confident extending a job offer to you. International job candidates have the knowledge and experience! Interview Ready helps draw out the information to help you come across as credible and memorable.  

Interview Ready also helps international job candidates understand the critical role biases play in the hiring decision.  Understanding this topic is crucial to your job search success.  We provide tips on how to use each bias to your advantage.  

Biases are rarely covered in books and competing programs.  Job candidates who understand this topic tend to outperform the competition by a wide margin, win more job offers AND receive offers at the upper end of the salary range.  

Employers are eager to hire exceptional candidates and many offer signing bonuses to those that truly stand out from the competition.