Describe yourself in three words or phrases.
Lived experience, compassion and value creation. They are slightly loaded terms, but they underpin how I approach career development and the work I try to do every day.
What led you to start UK Jobs Insider?
I came from a very humble family and my father took on significant financial risk to send me to the UK. I went to LSE, graduated with a distinction and won awards for my research, but still ended up applying for around 1,600 jobs.
At one point, I was working cleaning jobs for close to 40 hours a week, which was not where I expected to be after graduating. That experience pushed me to study career development properly. I later worked in skills policy within an arm’s-length body of the Department for Work and Pensions and began sharing evidence-based career advice online. That audience grew into a community, and eventually into UK Jobs Insider.
What do you enjoy most about the work you do?
Seeing someone get a job. I know how difficult job hunting can be and how much rejection can affect you, particularly as an international student.
Their experience is often very different because there are visa pressures, family expectations and a limited amount of time to secure work. Being able to support somebody through those rejections and eventually see them succeed is still the part of the job I enjoy most.
What is different about the way you approach career development?
I believe career development should be iterative and evidence-led. There is a huge amount of advice online, but nobody can tell you with certainty what will get you an interview.
You have to apply best practice, test it in the market and then look at the results. If something is not working, you adjust it; if something is working, you double down on it. That is much more useful than constantly changing your strategy based on the latest piece of advice you have seen online.
How would you describe the international student job market right now?
It is incredibly dynamic. There are periods where the wider labour market improves, but ultimately job hunting is still a very individual process.
You can be in a strong market and still struggle if your applications are not targeted or consistent. International students should focus on the things they can control: their strategy, application volume, consistency and resilience.
What advice would you give an international student looking for work in the UK?
Do not take career advice at face value. International students can be particularly vulnerable during the job search, which makes it easy to follow every new hack or piece of advice you see online. Ask what evidence supports it, test it properly and do not completely change your strategy after every rejection.
The second thing is resilience. You will not feel resilient every day, so create systems that keep you going. When I was job hunting, I would put £1 aside each day I hit my application target. By the weekend, I would use it to go to a historic pub, have a pint and apply for jobs from somewhere new. It gave me something small to work towards and helped make the process more sustainable.
What should universities be doing differently to support international students’ career development?
Universities need to place much more emphasis on lived experience. Career development is not purely academic, there are social and emotional elements to job hunting that differ hugely between groups of students.
International students may be dealing with visa pressures, language barriers, cultural expectations or significant pressure from their families. Careers services need to understand those experiences and bring people who have navigated them successfully back into the room.
Students should not only be told how to write a CV or submit an application. They also need to hear what the process actually feels like from people who have been through it.
