The Center Helps International Students Find Jobs
October 29, 2008
During the past several years, the College of Engineering and its Center for Spartan Engineering has been seeking ways to help international students find jobs after graduation. The college began by presenting workshops that prepared students for Career Gallery, a two-day MSU event that brings students and potential employers together, as well as for Engineering Expo and the Diversity Career Fair. Many international students, however, want to return to their country of origin after graduation; thus, conventional interviewing with U.S. companies didn't really meet their needs.
This fall, the staff of The Center, including Garth Motschenbacher, Director of Employer Relations, Bernadette Friedrich, Director of Student Advancement, and Jennifer Jennings, the MSU Career Services Field Placement Coordinator assigned to the College of Engineering, began seeking ways to help students find positions in their home countries. Working with Ravi Ammigan, Assistant Director of MSU's Office for International Students and Scholars (OISS), they found that many companies who come to the career gallery—Alcoa, Shell, and Dow Chemical for example—are actually very interested in hiring MSU graduates to work in their overseas locations, especially graduates who are native to those locations.
The College of Engineering has customarily invited all international students to its preparatory workshops, but the increased relationship with OISS has led to broader participation. This fall the seminar entitled "International Students: How to Work Career Gallery" had well over 120 participants. With this new focus on interviewing for jobs in their homelands, the students are finding the workshops and career events to be a highly valuable resource.