Hello international students, and welcome to the UK and King’s College London! Given that you’ve found yourself on our blog you’ve clearly got some desire to start thinking about your career options – whether that’s working during your studies or figuring out what you want to do after you finish, you’re in the right place! We often find that when international students start at King’s they’re a little unsure about exactly what we do and how we can help, particularly when it comes to staying in the UK after graduation. So with that in mind, we got a two part blog post for you – this piece will detail how Careers & Employability can help with your career planning, and next week we’ll have a piece about what our good friends in the International Student Advice team can do to help you.
Most of you will be on a Tier 4 visa while you study in the UK. This allows you to study, and to do some work while studying (more on this in next week’s post.) If you wish to stay in the UK after your graduation then there’s a few different options, but the most common route is via the Tier 2 (General) visa (again, more on this in next week’s post!) If you wish to go back to your home country or to move to another country altogether, then you’ll need to look into the requirements for that particular country. But whatever your plans, we’re here to help:
King’s CareerConnect
This is our online careers portal, which allows you to engage with all our services. Get yourself set up as soon as you can – the sooner you can do that, the sooner you can start using us! You should be automatically registered with your King’s ‘K’ number and network password 24 hours after your registration on campus.
Appointments
We run three main types of appointments:
- Application Advice appointments allow you to get your CV, cover letters and job applications checked by one of our Application Advisers. The standard format of a CV for the UK may well be different to the ones in your country, so get familiar with that before you come in.
- Careers Guidance appointments can be used either as a starting point to your career search, or to discuss a range of issues further into your search – this could include how and where to target employers who can sponsor your Tier 2 (General) visa.
- Practice Interviews can be booked once a term for you to practice for an upcoming interview.
Find out more about our appointments and how to book on our website.
Events
We run events throughout the year, particularly during the Autumn Term. Some of these have a specific international focus – the Future Advantage: International series has seminars on careers in China, France and the USA, the “Graduate Careers and Immigration Options for Tier 4 students” outlines options for remaining in the UK after your graduation and the Global Career Series is a series of panel events throughout the year. In addition to these there’s a wide range of careers fairs and events, focusing on different sectors and careers areas. Find out more about our events on our website, or on King’s CareerConnect.
Online resources
You may already have an idea of what you’re interested in, but if you don’t then we have lots of places we can direct you towards to help you educate yourself about what’s available. The King’s Careers Hub on KEATS has stacks of useful careers information, with different tailored pages for you to navigate around depending on what stage of career planning you’re at, and King’s Career Kit has all of our sector guides stored in one handy place. GoinGlobal is an internationally-focused careers site that we have a subscription to, allowing you to explore the job market and customs in different countries around the world, and may be of particular interest to those interested in moving to a different country after the conclusion of their degree.