On exchange and want to stay? How to find a job in the country you are studying in

Every spring, thousands of exchange students fall for the city they are studying in and want to stay. Most leave anyway, not because there were no jobs but because the search started too late and ran from the wrong country. Here is how to run it from where you are.

Use the term, not the last week

Your advantage is being there. You can meet people, attend events, interview in person and understand how the local market talks about roles. That advantage expires when you fly home. Start the search in the first month, not the last.

Three things to do in the first weeks: attend your host university's career events, which local companies use to find exactly people like you; join the student associations in your field, where the internships get mentioned before they are posted; and tell your professors you want to stay, because they know which companies hire their students.

Fix the CV for the local market

CV conventions differ more than people expect. A photo is common in Germany and unusual in the UK. Dates and formats differ. Some markets expect a one-page CV and some tolerate two. Look at how graduates in your host country present themselves and match it.

Say your language level plainly, in a recognised scale where one exists. "German B1, learning" is more useful to an employer than "conversational". Put your home university and your host one both on the CV, with what you studied at each.

Where the roles are

English-speaking teams are the easiest entry for an international graduate: software, data, product, research, and the international functions of large companies. Startup hubs in Berlin, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Barcelona, Dublin, Stockholm and Paris hire in English every day. Mid-sized companies increasingly do too.

Search the city you are in, in English, and keep the local language roles in view for when your level allows. IdealJob's Career Agent lets you set the place, the fields and the languages, scores each new role against your CV every morning, and for the UK and the Netherlands tells you which employers hold a sponsor licence, which matters if you are not an EU citizen.

Visa, in brief

If you are an EU citizen in an EU country, there is no visa. Register locally, get a tax number, done.

If you are not, the rules depend on the country, and they are better than most students assume. Several EU countries offer a period after your studies to look for work, the Netherlands has the orientation year for graduates of recognised universities, and the UK has a post-study route. Many of these count a degree from the host country, which an exchange term is not, so check what applies to an exchange student specifically, and check before your current permit ends. Employers that sponsor regularly know these routes; ask early.

Keep it going after you leave

A search started on exchange should not end at the airport. Keep the local city as your search location, keep applying, and take interviews online. Companies that hire internationally are used to it. If you verified your university email with IdealJob, the student offer covers two months of Premium whenever you redeem it, so you can save it for the months after you get home, when the search gets serious and you are no longer in the city.

The students who stay are rarely the ones with the best grades. They are the ones who treated the term as the first month of the job search, not the last month of the holiday.