Dear #AskaLocalizer,
I expect to graduate next May, and I’m anxious about job hunting. With only one year of experience as a localization project manager in Asia, I’m not sure I am competitive in the U.S. job market. Although I can speak multiple languages and have a multicultural background, I still feel self-conscious about my job hunting. What steps can I take to restart my job search with a confident mindset prior to graduation?
Sincerely,
Job Hunter
Dear Job Hunter,
I would say that networking and project managing your job search are equally important before you leave school and enter the job market next year.
With networking, try to build up connections with localization professionals through career events on campus or LinkedIn. It’s understandable that many students find it hard to reach out to people already in the industry since they don’t see how such networking is directly related to their future careers. Start anyway by asking for coffee chats with professionals in the fields or with backgrounds that intrigue you. Plus, asking for mock interviews from them may even help you become familiar with potential interview questions and get the hang of job interviews!
In addition to networking, staying organized is also fundamental for successful job hunting. We all know that looking for an ideal job can be painful and time-consuming. Approaching the job-hunting process with the discipline of project management will boost your effectiveness and confidence. Create a tracking system that allows you to monitor the companies you are targeting and stages of the application for each opening. Furthermore, setting and meeting weekly goals, such as sending check-in emails to the companies that you already had an interview with, will make the enormous challenge feel less daunting. Being organized, goal-oriented and accountable is always the top priority for a project manager. So why don’t you start to practice those essential skills now by making an Excel spreadsheet to track companies and roles you’re interested in and have applied to?
Finally, localization students have asked me about what strengths they can leverage when entering the job market. Since most of us are from multicultural backgrounds or have worked on a multicultural team, we are more adaptable to changes and new circumstances. In the fast-paced tech industry, I think adaptability is crucial and this skill is what makes localization students unique and competitive in their future careers.
Kind regards,
Eva Gross
I love the advice on having an actual organized spreadsheet to track the jobs. You could argue having a spreadsheet for your Linkedin localization contacts you’ve done coffee chats with can be helpful as well. In Kevin Ferrazzi’s “Never Eat Alone”, he says that he creates a spreadsheet of his contacts and prioritizes them for follow-up every month/quarter/year/etc… I think it’s a great way to remind ourselves of the people we’ve met. We meet so many people all the time, it’s important to also keep in touch with the ones we’ve already met to maintain that relationship.
Eva is awesome! I’ve learned so much from her. 🙂