The role wouldn’t just give her a paycheck. As an international graduate<\/a> on an F-1 optional practical training (OPT) visa, it would allow her to keep living in the US instead of returning to India.<\/p>\n But on May 24, an email landed in Singhal’s inbox with every job seeker’s nightmare: Her future employer had reassessed their hiring needs, and her job offer had been rescinded<\/a>.<\/p>\n “My spirits dropped from 100% to negative 100%,” said the 26-year-old, who lives in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n With only a few months to find new employment before her visa status was at risk, Singhal and her family canceled a planned post-graduation trip across the US to visit relatives and friends. Instead, her parents stayed home to support her as she began what would become a nine-month search for full-time work<\/a>.<\/p>\n Singhal is among the recent US college graduates who have struggled to find work<\/a>. As of June, the most recent data available, 4.8% of people aged 22 to 27 with at least a bachelor’s degree were unemployed, compared with 4.0% of the overall workforce ages 16 to 65.<\/p>\n These challenges are tied to a hiring slowdown across the economy that has particularly affected the newest members<\/a> of the workforce. That includes the nearly 200,000 foreign students who received OPT work authorization<\/a> last year \u2014 and whose visa status depends on staying employed.<\/p>\n Related stories<\/p>\n Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know<\/p>\n Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know<\/p>\n While some recent grads are still searching for work, others, like Singhal, have used various job-search strategies<\/a> to secure employment.<\/p>\n We want to hear from\u00a0job seekers<\/a>\u00a0and people who\u00a0recently landed a job<\/a>. If you’re open to sharing your story, please fill out one of the linked Google Forms above. You can also find more of our job market coverage below:<\/p>\n Visa pressures added stress to the job hunt<\/strong><\/p>\n Singhal’s journey to full-time employment began years before her offer was rescinded. In August 2022, she moved to the US to begin her master’s program at UPenn. After earning her degree in December 2023, she began working in March as a part-time, paid research intern at Marketing for Change, a research and creative agency. She said she couldn’t work full-time until February 2024, the designated start date tied to her OPT visa approval.<\/p>\n With her OPT approved, she began more seriously looking for full-time employment. Since she was employed as a research intern, she said she wasn’t at risk of using up the 90 unemployment days<\/a> allowed under OPT before her visa status could be jeopardized. However, the internship only lasted through the end of May, so she still felt pressure to find a full-time gig.<\/p>\n “That’s the source of the most stress that international students have in the US,” Singhal said, “the clock ticking in the background and having to find a job.”<\/p>\n When she received the full-time job offer at the tech startup <\/strong>in April 2024, Singhal said she stopped looking for work. So when she learned in late May that the offer had been rescinded, she was suddenly back at square one.<\/p>\n “I stopped doing any networking or applying to jobs,” she said. “So I kind of had to start from scratch.”<\/p>\n Networking helped her make progress in her job search<\/strong><\/p>\n Starting in the summer of 2024, <\/strong>Singhal said she began closely monitoring job boards and applying for jobs. She also relied heavily on cold outreach<\/a>, sometimes messaging 20 or more people at a company in an effort to get noticed. She said she used LinkedIn to search for posts about job openings, <\/strong>then reached out to company employees who shared them.<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/placeholder.png\")
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