Expert Advice| 权威建议

How to Plan Your Career in the U.S.?

September 14, 2017 8:32 am | By Emmanual Ticzon

This article is the first of a four-part series on planning your career in America. This is one coach’s guide to what foreign students looking to build a career in the USA. See what you think and stay tuned for all four sections.

Emmanuel Ticzon works as an Independent Careers and Digital Marketing Professional in New York City. He has been involved in these fields since 2008 and has lived and worked in the Philippines, Hong Kong, China, the UK, and the USA since 1998. He is a Mentor with Drew University and Arizona State University. In addition, he writes resumes and helps build contingency plans with and for students and professionals. He has spoken to groups ranging between 10 and 300 people on Careers and what they need to do to succeed during a recession. The following is the first part of the series。

Congratulations, you have made it to University/College here in the USA. The next step for those looking to work here is to figure out what to do. I’m going to function as your Coach and Guide to help you build that career in the USA.

So what do you need to do to build a successful career in the USA?

1)    Develop continuously, a successful mindset and learn the culture of the country you are in.

2)    Set goals. Get Plan A working. When it is, build Plan B, C-Z.

3)    Network with Integrity.

4)    Strategic Job Build.

First, work on your mindset during college. Be open to opportunities when they come to you. Become open-minded and don’t prejudge other people-you don’t know who will lead you to a successful career. Develop humility and work hard. Do not develop overconfidence or think you are totally recession proof. Every industry has its strengths and weaknesses and unless you are one of the few polymath’s to exist you must learn to know a little bit of each industry and see where you can fit in. Try to see the larger picture with opportunities presented to you.

Successful people never stop learning. Unsuccessful people think they know everything already. Know that no job or career is below you. Remember that. It does not matter what your major is. It does not matter if you are a software engineer, aspiring Wall Street financier, biochemist, philologist, translator or teacher. No job or opportunity is below you. In fact the opportunity is always above you, it is just being presented to you at the level you interpret things at and the stage you are in at that moment. Just because you went to MIT or NYU does not automatically guarantee your success.

Know that for each automatic rejection you issue or every opportunity presented, in these times, there are hundreds of thousands of American Citizens who will move mountains for that opportunity.

Second, people as a whole tend to wait for “the dream job”. In a time of Recession and economic uncertainty, don’t wait. Take action. If you want it, go get it. 15 Minutes or 30 minutes of studying a specialty or sector and quality networking outside of what you want to do can really help you in the long run.

I have noticed a lot of foreign students become ignorant and overconfident because they are experienced with “xyz specialty, etc, etc” and think opportunity will be served to them on a silver platter, so they can just sit and wait. No one cares if you had an internship with Yahoo!, JP Morgan Chase, Stryker Medical Systems, or Apple. An internship simply shows you gained exposure. A summer job simply shows you could do something, but not everything. Don’t expect a “silver platter.”

If you want to be paid $70’000 and the present opportunity that is currently the best is offering you a job paying $40’000 a year, you should consider accepting. $40’000 is better than $0K and if you really think you deserve $70’000, then take up a second job or start something on your own with the first paycheck you earn to make that extra $30’000. Learn to trade, start a sole proprietorship, freelance, figure out how what else you are good at and see how you can put a price on it outside your day job. Take the $40’000 and network day in and day out to get yourself to a better job.

In the next article, I will go over Goal Setting.

To read more about this “How to plan your career in the U.S.” series, visit part two here and part three here.

Emmanuel Ticzon works as an Independent Careers and Digital Marketing Professional in New York City. He has been involved in these fields since 2008 and has lived and worked in the Philippines, Hong Kong, China, the UK, and the USA since 1998. He is a Mentor with Drew University and Arizona State University. In addition, he writes resumes and helps build contingency plans with and for students and professionals. He has spoken to groups ranging between 10 and 300 people on Careers and what they need to do to succeed during a recession.

He can be contacted at tyemmanuelticzon@gmail.com or found on LinkedIn.