Advice for International Students Looking to Get Hired in 2025

With this year’s H-1B visa registration season behind us, we spoke with International Student Career Expert Marcelo Barros, founder of The International Advantage, about the 2024 H-1B lottery, strategies for beating the lottery odds next year, and what international students should be doing now to get hired in 2025. Below is an edited version of our conversation.

Vault: How’s the job market in general for international students these days?

Barros: We’re in the middle of a very tough job market, and international students have been feeling the slowdown in hiring. Job seekers need to adjust to an extremely competitive market where hiring managers have the luxury to choose from a pool of extremely strong candidates.

Are international students feeling discouraged by the tough market?

Not necessarily. The demand for tech talent has exploded in recent years due to the internet, smartphones, AI, e-commerce, and other innovations, and there are still not enough Americans interested in and applying for tech jobs. So, despite visa challenges, this dynamic will continue to create amazing career opportunities for well-prepared international students who understand the hiring market in the U.S.

Which sectors are you seeing the most opportunities for international students?

In tech, of course, despite the massive layoffs, but in many other sectors as well, as so many industries continue to absorb international students. And there are opportunities both at large, well-known firms and at mid-size and smaller firms. International students should go beyond the traditional brand names and find hidden gems in whichever sectors they’re interested in and aggressively target these firms—which, by the way, may offer sponsorship for superior candidates.

Can you talk a little about the results of the 2024 H-1B lottery?

In 2024, we again witnessed that the demand for H-1B visas far exceeds the limited supply. This year, there were more than 470,000 registrations aiming to secure one of the 85,000 visas available (20,000 of which are specifically reserved for students with a U.S. master’s degree or higher). In late July, USCIS announced that it would conduct a second H-1B registration lottery out of the previously submitted registrations. This announcement provided a good deal of hope to international students who were not selected in the first round. But, in the end, the second lottery only increased the selection rate by 3.1 percent, resulting in roughly a 29 percent total registration selection rate. In other words, there was only a minimum increase in selected applicants due to the second lottery.

So, a little less than one out of three H-1B international students who applied won the lottery this year?

That’s correct. By the way, we consider the 29 percent total registration selection to be more a “normal” selection rate. What’s key for us all to realize is that the number of eligible registrations dropped by 38 percent from 758,994 last year to 470,342 this year. This is a huge drop, and it was much needed drop in order to calm employers down. We don’t want to ever have a situation like the one we experienced last year. That was a nightmare year for all involved in the H-1B world.

Why was that? Was it a nightmare for employers as well as for the many students who didn’t win the lottery?

Because the registration numbers were so high in 2023, the odds of securing an H-1B visa were so slim that many employers I talked to last year told me they were ready to throw in the towel and stop trying to leverage the H-1B program altogether. Employers were highly discouraged. Similarly, international students competing for an H-1B visa were also doing the math and realizing they needed to be super lucky to get a visa because the odds were so against them. Much like employers, international students also felt that the American dream was becoming unachievable. But again, I feel like we have turned the page for the most part.

What should international students be doing now to give them the best change of securing full-time jobs after graduation?

There has never been a greater need for international students to get more hands-on experience in their desired fields while they’re in school through internships, co-ops, or specific projects. Students who stand out have resumes that quickly signal to employers that they have relevant, practical experience. So, it’s important to seek and secure these experiences in order to stand out in the very competitive job market we have going on right now. Everyone was getting hired when we were coming out of Covid, but the hiring landscape has done a 180 and now only the very best are getting noticed by employers. It’s a crowed job search market.

Can you talk a little about the controversial topic of multiple H-1B registrations?

Multiple H-1B registrations are normally associated with cheating in the H-1B visa lottery world. But that isn’t always the case. In fact, there could be some benefits associated with the strategy of having multiple registrations in term of negotiating better employment terms (salary, benefits, etc.) based on the strength of competing offers. We want our international students to be in control, and international students with multiple H-1B approved registrations may now have greater leverage, like their U.S. worker counterparts.

For example, this past year, The International Advantage followed the job search journeys of about 20 international students, all of whom received multiple job offers from different employers and had more than one H-1B registrations field on their behalf. Some of these international students who had multiple registrations got lucky and received approval from different employers and therefore had the luxury of choosing which employer to go with, creating some bargaining power for them when negotiating job offers with employers.

Do you have any other advice or encouraging news for international students who want to work full time here in the U.S. upon graduation this year?

First, I think it’s important that international students continue to take very good care of their mental health. The competitive and uncertain nature of the H-1B program continues to create a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety for international students. At the same time, I think it’s important to get excited about the opportunities that do exist. For example, I think it’s amazing that a salary of $150K might be feasible for an international student with three or four years of work experience and a master’s degree. In other words, there are realistic options for international students to stay and work in the U.S. after graduation. We have OPT and CPT. We have the H-1B program. We have the largest economy in the world. And there are quality jobs available in the U.S. for international student to pursue.

Year after year, thousands of employers compete for H-1B visas for their international hires, and thousands of international students land great jobs in the U.S. That’s not going to change in the near future. I’m very excited about the opportunity to continue to partner with U.S. universities to prepare international students to capitalize on the amazing career opportunities that await for them in the U.S. after graduation. I feel more confident than ever that universities are willing to make significant investments to help their international students get hired.

This past July, the University at Buffalo offered job search preparation webinars to their new international undergrad students and new School of Engineering and Applied Sciences international students even before these students started their classes. In other words, some of these students were not even in the U.S. yet when they joined these job search webinar programs. Again, universities continue to step up to the plate to do all they can to help their international students get hired. And, of course, that’s great news for international students.

Marcelo Barros is the author of The International Advantage: Get Noticed. Get Hired!, which gives international students advice on how to find the job they want in the U.S. To learn more about Barros and his work, connect with him via LinkedIn and be sure to join his job search training programs for international students next time he visits your university. Next stops for The International Advantage include George Washington University, Oct. 24th, 2024; University of Denver, Nov. 6th, 2024; and University at Buffalo, Nov. 15th, 2024.