he No-Filter Truth About the 2025 Job Market for International Students
May 14, 2025
Before we start, I want you to take a moment and picture a recruiter’s inbox at 9 a.m.
It’s overflowing with hundreds of “strong communicator, team player” resumes. Most look the same, read the same, and say the same, and this is making decision-making more difficult with AI.
That’s exactly why 2025’s hiring has been shifting along with the job market, I mentioned hiring trends from my podcast with John McMahon (Product Director at Indeed) earlier….
This is another reality you need to know: the conclusions I’ve drawn here come from my conversations with 100s of international students at Northeastern, UTD, Purdue, ASU, NYU, and many other universities.
Also, I have been fortunate to be on the other side of recruiting where I hire teams, work with recruiters, C-Level people on daily basis. I even went to career fairs and spoke to FAANG recruiters to understand the job market.
Btw, what I am telling you here, I’ve already shared with the people in my ULTIMATE JOB HUNTING COURSE community. If you didn’t know already, the course is where I teach you to tweak your resume and strategize to land an interview at your dream company.
1. Let’s Understand the Market Shift
Entry‑level and mid‑level roles in SDE, Data, AI, Product, Project/Program Management, and Consulting can receive upto 1,000+ applications in just one week of a job being posted, so there’s a strict competition.
At the same time, you’re also competing with people who were let-go.
>> As there is a recession going on and hiring is not abundant, the hires are evaluated based on the value they will bring to the table, in the context of both experience and business.
That’s why Average talent will not survive in this market, and awesome candidates who can generate results will be hired, so be skilled at what you do.
>> Skills and accomplishments will matter more than any university brand. If you have real proof of work, that’s tangible and highly visible to the recruiters, you’re a good hire, but if you’re just thinking that your university brand will help, that time is long over.
So your resume, LinkedIn, and every Interview round should reflect that you’re an outlier (you bring in value, have done real work & are ready to hit the ground running)
2. Rebuild Your Proof Of Work
1/ Results > Promises
Replace future‑tense hype with past‑tense numbers.
> Before: “Responsible for optimizing marketing funnels.”
> After: “Increased paid‑ad ROI 32 % by rebuilding funnel in HubSpot.”
How to obtain numbers if you don’t track them:
– Re‑run last year’s SQL queries to measure churn before/after your feature.
– Track campaign spend vs. revenue for your marketing project.
– Ask a manager for baseline KPIs, then calculate the results your work produced.
2/ Implementations > Responsibilities
Hiring teams want to know what you shipped/produced, not what your job description said.
Produce evidence:
– a public GitHub repo, Figma prototype, or Tableau dashboard.
– a case‑study PDF showing problem → actions → metric shift.
– a 60‑second Loom walkthrough of a live product feature.
3/ Execution > Ideas
Ideas are a dime a dozen, but execution is how you can stand out.
Say you have an awesome project idea, move beyond that:
- Scope one user's pain.
- Build the smallest testable fix (landing page, script, Notion template).
- Share the link with a short “what I learned” post on LinkedIn.
- Iterate next weekend with feedback.
Two weeks of public iteration show more grit than a dozen bullet points that start with “Ideated…”
3. Being Decent Isn’t Enough
In 2025, average talent will not survive.
There’s too much noise in the job market, and just being “decent” is not enough anymore.
→ If you have a degree or a big university brand, it’s not enough.
→ If you can’t show how your work helped the business, you will not be hired.
Companies don’t care where you studied anymore.
They care about what you’ve done, how you can help them generate more revenue or move faster (basically add value to the business)
That’s why the people who show results will always be ahead.
And the talent like that will be the cream of the crop, and these folks will demand the comp. they want.
4/ Don’t Do What Others Are Doing.
If you’re doing what everyone else is doing, mass applying, waiting weeks, refreshing your inbox in the hope of results, you’re stuck on a treadmill.
You’re moving, but you’re not going anywhere.
To build leverage, you have to understand 2 concepts:
→ Starting early
→ Spending time on a strategy rather than spray and pray.
If you want an internship in the coming 4-6 months, start early.
If you know you will graduate in 8 months, start job hunting early.
But if you’ve already been applying, do it strategically rather than blindly.
That’s what most people do not understand.
Here are some quick fixes you can make to your strategy:
>> Daily Filter: LinkedIn Jobs → Past 24 h + target role.
~Fresh posts = thinner queues.
>> Use the 10‑10‑10 Rule:
→ 10 tailored applications
—swap the top JD keywords into your resume and tailor it
→ 10 value‑based DMs
—message senior employees who reposted the job:
→ 10 minutes of metrics logging
— update a Google Sheet: company, applied, DM sent, follow‑up date, next step.
>> Weekly Retro (Friday):
Review replies vs. silence, refine copy, and double down where response is highest.
Start this cycle earlier, and you double the feedback you receive..
The more feedback, the better your skills will be, and the more
Your network will grow as you’re constantly adding people to it.
You will have talked to 50 recruiters, learned 10 things about the job roles in a month while others are just fixated on building their resume alone.
The people in my ULTIMATE JOB HUNTING COURSE community have already been armed with this knowledge. A community of 1800+ students is already learning at an accelerated pace and making their path closer to their jobs.
I keep sharing insights around every process of job-hunting along with how to apply them in this market. If you also want to accelerate your learning and jump into the job market with a full view of the reality, come join us :)
Until the next one,
Keep Smiling and Hustling.
Yudi J