Advice for job seekers

[mosl31 0]

I notice people asking for tips on finding a job here. I moved here from Canada 5 years ago and got a low paying job. Although I am a native English speaker I am an avid student of Spanish and I know how much work it takes to learn a language. So here goes:

Make friends with native English speakers. Avoid speaking your native language for the first two years. Ask your native speaking friends to correct your grammar and pronunciation, tell them you will not be offended if they do. If they are good friends they will help you.

Do not read any newspapers/web sites about how bad the economy is, ignore it all. There are many jobs in the USA and the unemployment rate is very low. The U.S.A is the easiest country in the world to get rich.

Finding a job is easy, finding a well paying job is difficult. If you have a degree that is a good thing. Also, Professional designations go a long way. They can be expensive, I had to study for four months of weekends to get mine and take four tests at $150 each but it was well worth it. Make sure you do the research to see if it is worth it.

Ask Americans for advice – make a list of companies you want to work for and talk to the people at the highest positions in those companies. Ask them for 10 minutes of their time. Tell them you admire them and ask how they became successful and what advice would they give a person like yourself. Don’t ask advice from the guy wearing the Mickey Mouse costume, aim higher.

Make sure the people you associate with are successful; you want friends that will pull you up, not drag you down.

Don’t get a job, start a business – Realize that in the U.S. that the tax laws are geared to help people who own businesses. You can write things off like your car, gas and business lunches and pay very little tax. When you are an employee you only have the 401(k) and mortgage interest. This web site is a great example, create a forum like this one called ireallyneedajobnowliketoday.com and put Google ads on the site. This allows you to work from home and write off the cost of your computers/printers you use for the business. Go to the IRS site and study the small business documents.

Teach people your language – create fun/interesting, easy to understand podcasts for beginners of your language and put on iTunes , sell transcripts to the podcasts via website/PayPal for $2 each. Very little upfront costs to get this started.

Hope this helps....

Edited December 30, 2008 by mosl31