By Michael Miller, the founder and President of Culture Adapt
Living in a foreign country is hard. Going to university as an international student is even harder. You need to meet new people, master a different language, and learn how to succeed academically. Getting over this “culture shock” can take anywhere from nine months to years.
On top of those problems, your student has to develop his or her professional skills. Studies have shown that college students in general are not developing their professional skills as much as they should during their college career. This is for a number of reasons including: they do not see it as a priority in their lives, they are overwhelmed with academics, they don’t have time, or their school’s career services don’t have the resources needed to make them successful.
This is doubly true for international students because on top of all those problems, they have to deal with a completely different business culture, immigration laws and employers that don’t want to sponsor visas. So a new company has formed, Culture Adapt, whose goal is to help international students succeed in America. Michael Miller, the founder of Culture Adapt, has developed numerous courses to help students understand American culture. They have worked with hundreds of international students and really understand the problems that they face.
One of their most popular classes is an online career development course, DreamJob Achiever. Over the course of four short weeks, the course teaches every part of career development that an international student would want to know. Things like: understanding visa laws, how to perfect an American resume, how to effectively network on LinkedIn, how to network in America, how to find companies that have their dream position and how to meet connections at those companies to interview them.
One student of the class, Meng Shen, had this to say, “Michael provided a highly-personalized program to help me succeed in American business. With the support of Michael, I was able to equip myself with better interpersonal skills and more instrumental knowledge of the business world. On top of those fundamental things, his tailor-made course content helped me get my resume into the hands of a manager at my dream company, EMC!”
As a parent, you want your student to succeed not just during school but after graduation as well. This is why it’s imperative that they develop the skills covered in DreamJob Achiever. They should also know that basically any company can sponsor a visa, that they can follow their American dream and that nothing should stop them from doing that.
If you’re thinking that your student should get an internship or a job, then you should be doing everything you can to help them differentiate themselves. You should be using something different than what their school’s career services has to offer and watching their dreams come true.
