Welcome Home: How to Sell Your Study Abroad Experience in the Real World

In 2008, USA Today reported that a "record" number of U.S. college students were choosing to spend at least part of their college years studying abroad: a whopping 150% more students than had ventured overseas in the 1990s. And despite the languishing economy, colleges in this country are still sending record number of students abroad. It’s important that this generation of students takes advantage of study abroad opportunities, especially as education opens up to a more global perspective, just as business and industry have become more internationally collaborative. But with that increase in opportunity also means in increase in competition. If every job applicant who walks into an interview has studied abroad, what’s going to make your experience stand out?

The smartest thing you can do to help yourself sell your study abroad experience is to first pick a program that actually serves some sort of academic and/or career-building purpose. While traveling abroad — especially in a country that speaks a foreign language — is notable enough on its own, employers want to know that you didn’t just party and travel the whole time. When it comes time for an interviewer to ask you what your favorite or most memorable part of your study abroad experience was, your answer shouldn’t involve weekends to Ibiza or Amsterdam. Part of studying abroad means traveling abroad, but work with your study abroad counselor at your home school to pick a program that will translate responsibly on a resume, too.

After you return from study abroad, work on making a list of transferrable skills, or how the experiences you encountered — traveling alone, solving problems independently, learning a new language, adapting to an unfamiliar work and school environment, trying new things, and learning from your peers — translate into the real world and will prepare you for a job in this country. Your ability to trust yourself, move temporarily to a new country and make it back in one piece (and hopefully with decent grades and reviews from internship employers) is extremely impressive, but you have to be able to articulate these experiences and point to detailed examples if you want to make your point and stand out from the rest of the applicants. Pick a story or two ahead of time to tell if your interviewer asks about any challenges you overcame or that taught you real-life lessons.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 8:07 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.