Searching for co-ops is a difficult and stressful process. A process that I was not looking forward to during my semester abroad in Spain. I thought that being in Europe would put me at a disadvantage compared to students in Boston. There were a few reasons I believed this: the inability to do in-person interviews, the distractions of studying abroad, and the six-hour time difference. However, now that I am finished and have accepted a co-op offer, my opinion on this process has changed. I wasn’t at a disadvantage compared to Boston-based students, in fact, I think being abroad might actually have been an advantage.
To begin, the fact that I am doing this in 2022, instead of pre-2020, made a significant difference. Since the start of the pandemic, it has never been easier to search remotely for a job on the other side of the world. Most companies are still doing virtual interviews, but even the companies that have returned to in-person interviews won’t hesitate to switch back if necessary. I never had a problem with a company wanting me to interview in person instead of remotely.
The time difference wasn’t a problem either. The latest I needed to interview was 10pm, which is 4pm Boston time. As I mentioned in a previous post, people in Madrid stay up late. Over the past two months, I have adapted to that lifestyle, so it wasn’t inconvenient to interview late at night. In fact, it might have been advantageous. In the interviewer’s eyes, if I was willing to stay up late for the interview, it meant that I was interested in the role and committed to the company. Another benefit of the time difference was that interviews rarely conflicted with classes. The earliest I had to interview was 2pm, which meant I could focus on class in the morning and interviews in the afternoon.
However, there were some downsides of the six-hour time difference. The worst part for me was waiting to hear back after interviews. Waiting for a decision is one of the hardest parts of the application process. Your future is out of your hands, and all you can do is wait and refresh your email. When I was in Boston, if I didn’t hear anything by 5pm I knew I wasn’t going to know anything for the rest of the day. In Madrid, it is completely different. In Boston there was a chance I could wake up to an email containing good news, but here I know I won’t receive anything until 2pm. Additionally, instead of calling it quits at 5pm, I was refreshing my inbox until 11pm. While this didn’t have an impact on my chances or the outcome, it did add stress that wasn’t there in Boston.
In my opinion the hardest part of searching for co-ops while abroad is the time commitment and motivation. The more time you spend applying and preparing, the better chance you will have. However, that is easier said than done. There are plenty of distractions while abroad, but the worst for me was travel. I didn’t want to be on a trip when a company requested an interview, but I also didn’t want the co-op search to prevent me from traveling. Instead, I had to find a balance and be flexible, this included preparing for interviews on planes and in random libraries across Europe. This led to busy days and late nights, but in the end it was worth it.
Even with the time difference and all the distractions, I still believe that being abroad helped me when finding a co-op. Being abroad is a fantastic icebreaker. A typical interview usually starts with awkward small talk, unless you know you have something in common with the interviewer. I was able to avoid that small talk by mentioning that I was studying abroad in Madrid. From there, the conversation could go in countless different directions. In some cases, the interviewer was familiar with Spain, and we chatted about that. In others, they studied abroad when they were in college, and we compared experiences. Other times, we just talked about the time difference and how I am liking Madrid. Regardless of how the conversation went, it created a more casual environment and helped calm my nerves. My interviews during this co-op search all went more smoothly and were more enjoyable than in my previous two searches. Could this be attributed to my experience and familiarity with co-op interviews? Maybe. But I believe that being abroad during this co-op search was a greater advantage than expected.
