More than a line in your Resume: Articulating your International Experience to Potential Employers

1. More than a line in your Resume: Articulating your International Experience to Potential Employers Presenter: Aparna Datey CIE/UWM

2. What a Resume is not - • An autobiographical essay of your entire life – leave out experiences that do not relate to where you are headed. • Necessarily chronological.

3. What is a Resume? • A resume is an accurate marketing document that can serve as a magnet to draw job opportunities to you. • It summarizes your education, employment history, and experiences that are relevant to your qualifications for a particular job for which you are applying. The purpose of a resume (along with your cover letter) is to get an interview. Hence customize your resume to each job. • Research shows that it takes an average of 10 interviews to receive 1 job offer, so your resume needs to be persuasive and perfect. • The decisions you make about what it says and how it looks can effect whether you get the job you really want, or get a job at all.

4. General Resume contains four sections - • The general purpose resume usually contains four sections: • Contact information • Education (Degrees, Minors, Certificates) • Experience (Professional, International & Volunteer) • Awards & Activities

5. General Resume contains four sections - • Create headings that are meaningful to your experience. Example: • LEADERSHIP & OFFICE EXPERIENCE Milwaukee Justice Center, Administrative Intern, Sept 2011 – Dec 2012 • Prepared survey data, statistical data, and narratives for grant proposals, annual and quarterly reports • Updated volunteer contact information, records, and schedules for more than 300 volunteers • Assisted pro se litigants in filling out forms regarding divorce, child support, and small claims

6. Highlighting your international experience in the job search

7. Global Competencies • How would you describe some of the skills you gathered or enhanced while overseas to a potential employer? • Name some skills

8. Not sure about what is a transferrable skill? Try this! Come up with a story to demonstrate some of these skills – you will surprised how quickly a typical ‘day running errands abroad’ can turn into a story demonstrating some of these employer-friendly skills! • Foreign language proficiency • Flexibility and adaptability • Increased cultural awareness and sensitivity • Improved communication skills • Increased awareness of global issues • Problem solving in an unfamiliar environment • Ability to work in cross-cultural teams • Increased self-awareness • Travel skills • Ability to work in ambiguous environments • Patience • Openness to different cultures and customs

9. A few general tips….. • Connect the dots - Articulate the experience in terms of a direct benefit to the company/organization and identify proficiencies beyond those associated with your specific host country and culture. • Do not assume that potential employers automatically see the value of your international experience – it must be demonstrated and clearly identifiable as full of transferrable skills. • Use stories! • Can you demonstrate cross-cultural competencies and interpersonal skills as developed by your overseas experience? • Can you explain how these skills are used in problem-solving? • Can you identify tangible activities or classes you participated in while overseas that are value-added from an employer’s perspective? • Did you volunteer, complete an internship or a research project?

10. Resume tips….. • List your overseas experience under the education section in the resume. • If you worked while abroad, list the job/internship under your professional experience section rather than your activities section and be sure to focus on the cross-cultural learning component. • Examples: Served patrons in a local café. Worked as the only American in a French business. Trained co-workers on American style customer service • Include the skills you acquired while overseas (such as intercultural communication, adaptability, growth in foreign language proficiency etc.) • Be honest about your language proficiencies – proficient, business literate, conversationally fluent, limited working proficiency, etc. Consider a professional evaluation of your language skills (ACTFL score)

11. Gauging your Global Competency • How do you gauge the value of some the skills you gathered or enhanced while overseas?

12. Relating your Global Competency to current job application • Language and Communication Skills: • What languages do you speak? Write? Understand? In what languages are you fluent? • Do you have a professional network (i.e. professional contacts) in other countries? • Do you have an ear for understanding different accents? • Are you able to recognize different meanings in gesturing from more than one culture? For example, hand waves and head nods can mean vastly different things from one culture to the next. • Do you understand slang words in more than one language or dialect?

13. Relating your Global Competency to current job application • Knowledge of Culture, Both Traditional and Popular: • With what cultures and nationalities have you interacted? • Are you familiar with the nuances of ethnic or religious traditions beyond your own? • Can you cook traditional or popular dishes associated with your country or culture? • Are you closely familiar with specific cultural, religious or national festivals and their significance? • Can you identify traditional and/or contemporary forms of art from multiple countries? • Are you familiar with social trends in other counties (i.e. what's popular in music, fashion, movies, etc.)? • Do you use, or are you familiar with, technologies or gadgets that are currently popular in other countries? • Do you know of websites that are popular in other countries?

14. Relating your Global Competency to current job application • Knowledge of Business and Employment Practices: • Are you familiar with the predominant management styles in more than one country? Can you articulate differences and similarities of these styles? • Are you familiar with labor standards and/or hiring practices in other countries? • Are you aware of specific labor laws from other countries?

15. Relating your Global Competency to current job application • Education: • In how many countries have you studied? • Are you able to articulate the similarities and differences in educational systems with which you are familiar? • Have you observed a noticeable difference in teaching and/or learning styles in different countries?

16. Relating your Global Competency to current job application • Ability to Adapt: • How many countries have you visited? Lived in? Worked or volunteered in? • Do you adjust quickly to new surroundings? • When faced with a new environment, do you fit in quickly? • Are you comfortable using public transportation in multiple countries?

17. Relating your Global Competency to current job application • Global Thinking Skills: • Do you follow the news from multiple countries on a regular basis? • When news happens in one country, do you often think of its implications on other countries? • Can you clearly describe the political parties from at least one other country? • Do you know how to access social services in another country? • Have you participated in providing humanitarian aid in another country?

18. Transferrable skills • Identify, articulate and capture your transferrable skills on the resume

19. Identifying your transferrable skills • Write down some of your most challenging and rewarding moments during your overseas experience. What did you learn from these experiences? • Jot down the answers to these following questions: • Did you complete a research project overseas that relates to your field of interest? • Did you travel independently? • Did you learn any new languages or customs? • Did you resolve any conflicts that stemmed from a cultural misunderstanding? • Did you work on any projects with a diverse group of people?

20. Articulating your transferable skills • Often the most difficult part of developing a resume excerpt is learning how to articulate your experiences in a way that will impress potential employers. • Regardless of how trivial an experience might seem to you at the time, every job/internship results in the acquisition of skills which are transferable to other work settings. • Follow these easy steps to better identify and articulate your skills to potential employers:

21. Articulating your transferable skills • Make a list of each experience you've had, whether it was a volunteer position, a full-time job, an internship, or a student organization role. Picture in your mind what you did on a typical day, during a busy week, during a special event etc. • Use the Action Verblists to brainstorm all of the skills you employed during this day. • Select three to five of the words you feel best convey your responsibilities. • For each verb, ask yourself 'Who, What, When, Why and How?' to expand upon your statement. • Whenever possible, address the outcome, impact, and/or results you delivered. • As you write each bullet point ask yourself: • What difference did my work make? • What were my accomplishments?

22. Capturing Your transferable skills in a Resume • What am I trying to communicate to a potential employer about my international experience? About its relationship to my major? • What skills did I gain? What cross-cultural competencies did I develop? Did I become proficient in a language? • Did I gain research experience through conducting an independent study project? Have I become well versed in some aspect of my host country‘s culture? • Where should I include this experience on my resume so that it will have the most impact and support what I am trying to communicate?

23. Interesting Facts about Going Abroad • “...It is simply not enough to seek an international experience- the experience itself has little value. The savvy job seeker must be able to speak about their abroad experience in terms of transferable skills... (Matherly, 2006).” • “...Students returning from overseas educational experiences reported increases in awareness of career options... (Kauffmann, Matin, et al, 1992).” • “...The competencies employers continue to site as most important, leadership, communication, confidence, problem-solving, all are almost naturally enhanced through experiences abroad, sometimes in ways that students themselves may not be fully aware ...(Johnson, 2006).” • “...Hiring managers are cited critical new requirement: cross-cultural competency, defined as ability to work in a multicultural environment than may not be located in the U.S.... (Matherly, 2006)”

24. Resume excerpt samples • Intern, May 2005 - September 2005 Notre, Paris, France • Researched and published study on privatizations in the European Union Organized “Reuniting Europe” seminar for European leaders in Brussels • Participate in department weekly meetings and drafted meeting minutes • Telephone Crisis Counselor (Volunteer), August 2004 - April 2005 2-1-1 Big Bend Telephone Crisis Referral Services, Arica, Chile • Provided self-directed telephone short-term crisis counseling, as well as information and referral • Completed over 200 hours of service • Reported twice a month for overnight (11p-8a) shifts • Study Abroad, Institute for the International Education of Students La Plata, Argentina (Jan.-May 2007) • Learned to establish rapport quickly with individuals in an unfamiliar environment. • Developed culturally appropriate questionnaire. • Interviewed 25 rural Argentinean women, overcoming linguistic and cultural barriers. • Analyzed data using Argentinean software and wrote final report in Spanish.