By: Skye Li, NCA Career Ambassador
Are you an international student looking for internship or full-time employment? Do you want to know where international alumni from Northwestern are employed? If your answers to both questions are yes, then I strongly recommend you check out the “Post Undergraduate Survey Data” or the “Post Graduate Master’s Survey Data” on the NCA website.
What is the Post Undergraduate Survey and the Post Graduate Master’s Survey?
These surveys collect data about Northwestern students’ status after graduation. You can view a breakdown of the data about what graduates are up to by industry, location, and even the names of employers and graduate programs. The surveys currently include data from the Classes of 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 which is collected six months after graduation.
How do you access the Post Undergraduate Survey and the Post Graduate Master’s Survey?
When you enter the NCA website, click on the top right button that says “Resources.” You can find the “Post Undergraduate Survey” or “Post Graduate Master’s Survey Data” from the dropdown menu.
How do you use dashboard?
When you enter the survey, a new window will pop up with an interactive dashboard. This dashboard shows the employment status of recent graduates, who they are employed by, as well as the location of their employers.
Notice that on the top of the dashboard, there are a series of filters you can use. You can limit your search to students who graduated from a particular college/school and see where they were employed after they graduated. You can also filter by major as well as by employer location. What’s more, you can even filter by industry in which students were hired — say I am an international student studying journalism who is interested in working in the tech industry, I can simply narrow my search by – Colleges and Schools: Medill, Population: International Grads Only and Industry: Technology, and I will be able to see a list of tech companies that hired Medill international student grads in the past few years. NOTE: A separate dashboard is available to see data based on undergraduate minor/certificate.
Remember, the filters will narrow your results, so even using one filter to begin is a great place to get started to generate a list of potential employers. Just because an employer hasn’t historically hired someone from your school or major doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be a great candidate.
How can the dashboard help international students?
As pointed out in the example of the international student above, you can also narrow your search to only apply to international students who graduated from Northwestern using the “population” filter. This will allow you to see where international students were employed within six months after graduation.
You can also see how many of these students worked inside the US and outside the US. I personally find the list of companies listed on the right particularly helpful. By reading which companies hired international students from Northwestern in the past few years, I can see potential companies I could apply to that I may be willing to hire international students again.
Anything else I should know about?
While this is a wonderful resource for international students to refer to when they are searching for jobs, keep in mind that this is historical data. The data is collected from the Classes of 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and companies listed may change their recruiting policies and data is not necessarily indicative of current hiring practices.
If you have any questions about this resource or would like to learn more about it, I encourage you to schedule an appointment with a career adviser/counselor on Handshake.