The year 2020 has been full of surprises and, to be honest, some inconveniences. The current situation means that many of us, including Study in Estonia, are not able to participate in or organize already planned events. However, life will go on and it's good to see that more and more events are moving online and people are making the best of the situation. For Study in Estonia, our traditional networking events for companies and international students (in collaboration wth Work in Estonia) have been cancelled, but we will continue to support international students in Estonia – from now on through a webinar series!
The first Study in Estonia webinar took place on April 16 and focused on quite a universal topic: "How to Nail Your Job Interview". The webinar was conducted by Kätlin Lepp, who for many years was the Head of HR at Estonian IT-company Fortumo and is now the Chief People Person of startup Nevercode. During her career, Kätlin has been on the "other side" of the interview table as the employer and has participated in approximately 2000 interviews. She has recruited over 100 people from 20 countries.
In this first webinar, Kätlin highlighted several important aspects:
- before you try to convince other people at a job interview, make sure that you yourself are convinced that you're right for this position and that you really want to work at the company;
- don't simply copy-paste your CV for each new job application – make sure you customize your CV based on what is relevant for this particular position you are applying to, erase everything else that is not relevant;
- homework is crucial – before going to the interview, do some research on the company (Google is your friend);
- there's no such thing as "no prior experience" – even if you have no actual work experience, you can still highlight university projects, personal initiatives, even hobbies;
- try to tell a story instead of giving 2-word answers – for example, when asked about your strengths, give more context than just "organized" and "hard-working", tell a story about a situation that occurred that you were able to solve with those attributes (PROBLEM – what was the situation?; ACTION – what did you do to solve it?; RESULT – what changed afterwards?);
- be pro-active and ask questions – show interest in what your workday would look like, what teams would you mainly cooperate with, what are the company's expectations to a new colleague, etc.;
- be as specific as possible when it comes to salary expectations.
The next Study in Estonia webinar will take place on May 7th, 2020. This time the focus will be on entrepreneurship and starting your own company in Estonia. The webinar titled "Take charge! How to Start a Company in Estonia" will be presented by Krista Kink from the Tallinn Enterprise Department and Annely Tank from Work in Estonia (Enterprise Estonia).
