Is Experience important to get Jobs Abroad?

Is Experience important to get Jobs Abroad?

At the heart of the international education dream is a powerful promise, but one that’s no longer enough on its own. You’re sold a £40,000 credential. A globally ranked business school. A GPA, maybe even a GMAT. The promise: academic excellence will unlock global opportunity. But employers, visa systems, and post-pandemic economies are no longer listening to grades. What employers value most today is something degrees alone can’t capture: the confidence that you’ve applied what you learned in the real world.

This contradiction between what universities sell and what labour markets reward sits at the core of the international student experience in 2025. It’s no longer enough to be excellent. You have to be experienced. Not after your degree, during it. But if experience is now the currency, why are degrees still priced like gold? Why is the system structured as if signals and credentials are still enough? This isn’t just about adding skills, it’s using education on what the real world now expects.

The Internship advantage

The tension is structural. Degrees, especially postgraduate ones like MBAs, MiMs, and MFin programs, are positioned as elite signals. They draw from Michael Spence’s signalling theory: that a degree communicates intelligence, diligence, ambition regardless of content.

But the signal is saturated. When 15,000 MFin graduates hit the global market each year, and top-tier schools churn out cohorts with near-identical CVs, the shine fades. Employers, overwhelmed by sameness, default to what’s legible: experience. Deliverables. Reputations that are earned, not purchased.

Universities are evolving, but not always fast enough to match how quickly the job market is changing. Their business model is credential-first: students pay tuition up front, not outcomes after placement. Career support is outsourced to underfunded teams. Work-integrated learning is an elective, not a core pedagogy. As a result, students navigate a growing contradiction: the institution rewards you for being a student. Employers respond best when they see you’ve already stepped into real-world roles, however small or self-initiated they may be.

The experience premium isn’t new. But it’s now non-negotiable.

In 2010, internships were a differentiator. In 2020, they had a strong advantage. In 2025, they’re table stakes. Across sectors and geographies, experience is no longer an edge. It’s a threshold. In Canada, students with no work-integrated learning during their program are 60% less likely to convert post-study work permits into jobs. In the UK, employers now rank “practical experience” as the #1 factor in hiring, ahead of university attended or final grades (Institute of Student Employers, 2024). In India, returning MiM graduates without real-world experience are often offered entry-level salaries indistinguishable from domestic undergraduates.

This isn’t just about employability, it’s about legibility. With so many strong applicants, employers often rely on clear proof of impact, real stories, real results. Who have you worked with? What did you build? Who can vouch for you?

What counts as experience? And who gets to count it?

Here’s the lie beneath the new orthodoxy: not all experience is visible. And not all visible experience is equitable.

The hierarchy is brutal:

• Tier 1: Paid, branded work (Google internship, McKinsey project)
• Tier 2: High-accountability unbranded work (freelance for a startup, academic RA, open-source contribution)
• Tier 3: Low-legibility labour (family business help, peer mentoring, unpaid NGO support)
  

But only Tier 1 gets automatically recognised by recruiters and visa systems. A software engineer in Lagos who ships production code for a local fintech company is invisible to a London-based hiring manager who filters by logos. A student in Brazil running a 15-person family import business is “unqualified” on paper. And often, the labour of Global South students is the first to be erased.

The reality is: not all kinds of experience are equally recognised, but that doesn’t mean they’re not valuable. 

Two students. One degree. Two systems.

Take Leila, an MBA candidate from Tunisia. She arrives in the Netherlands with scholarships and perfect grades. But her resume lacks recognisable names. During her first semester, she cold-emailed 42 startups. One says yes. Over 3 months, she rebuilds their operations dashboard, no contract, no stipend. She leaves with screenshots and a glowing testimonial.

She lists it on LinkedIn. Nobody clicks.

Compare Daniel, a MiM student from Spain. He interns at PwC Madrid. Never ships a single deliverable. But the logo gets him shortlisted for five interviews in London.

Both students “have experience.” One is instantly recognised. The other must learn to tell her story louder and smarter. That’s unfair, but it’s also a space where strategy matters.

The theory of experience breaks down. So what replaces it?

If you take human capital theory seriously, that experience improves productivity, then the market should reward any kind of valuable work, regardless of packaging.

But that’s not what happens.

What we’re seeing instead is credential inflation (more degrees = less value), labour market dualism (elite jobs vs everyone else), and cultural capital gatekeeping (networks, accents, names). Bourdieu matters here: students from working-class backgrounds may have rich experience but lack the codes and cues to translate it. It’s easy to believe that talent always shines through. But sometimes, what gets recognised is shaped by networks, visibility, and the right signals.

Why are Global South students set up to fail?

Even when students understand the need for experience, they’re often structurally blocked from accessing it.

• Visa restrictions: Many students can only work 20 hours/week, can’t freelance, and face processing delays that make summer internships impossible.
• Unpaid internship culture: In London, Paris, and New York, entire sectors (NGOs, media, fashion) run on unpaid labour, accessible only to those who can afford to work for free.
• Platform bias: Freelancers on Fiverr or Upwork from India or the Philippines charge 80% less, are rated lower, and rarely get “portfolio-worthy” clients.

With exceptions, most institutions still treat outcomes as optics, not responsibility. Visa offices warn about work limits but don’t advocate for reform. Experience is now essential. But access to it is uneven, and that’s something students and institutions must work together to change. But it’s auctioned to the highest bidder.

So what can these students do? 

We need more than hustle memes. Here’s a framework built on constraints, not clichés:

Situation	Constraint	Strategy	Outcome Tracker
No internship	Visa/work limits	Shadow alum 1 hr/week, build case study	Portfolio asset + LinkedIn endorsement
No big-name brand	Unrecognised experience	Translate work into metrics + client quotes	Results-driven CV bullets
Zero network	Low cultural capital	Run student-led podcast/interviews to build access	10 warm leads + public digital footprint
No employer response	Application black hole	Launch own project (e.g., open-source tool or toolkit)	1 demo link + user testimonials

This strategy would help you to write your success story. But let’s not romanticise this. Building experience while studying is not a triumph. For many, it’s a story of burnout, imposter syndrome, and constant code-switching.

You’re told to “own your story” but that story is edited to fit recruiter filters. You’re asked to “hustle for experience” but punished when that hustle falls outside formal structures. You’re expected to lead projects, ace coursework, manage homesickness, and fund your own career prep, all while paying triple the tuition of domestic students.

It often looks like resilience, but beneath it can lie exhaustion. That’s why finding support systems and sustainable ways to build experience is just as important as the work itself

Reckoning universities don’t want

If experience is the new credential, then degrees must be judged not by their curriculum but by their capacity to produce work-ready graduates. So why are most universities still treating career outcomes as a marketing metric, not a pedagogical responsibility?

Why are international students paying £20,000 for “career-focused” programs that offer no work placement? Why are elite institutions still requiring unpaid internships for credit, effectively making students pay to work? This contradiction should trouble even the most well-meaning institutions.

The future: Resumes without grades

If current trends hold, we’re heading toward a world where:

• LinkedIn portfolios matter more than transcripts
• GitHub repos replace final projects
• Recorded case studies replace CV bullets
• Alumni referrals carry more weight than career fairs
  

By 2030, we may no longer ask “What did you study?” but “What did you ship?” And students won’t just need to learn. They’ll need to leave a trail of proof.

Conclusion

This isn’t just a shift in hiring. It’s a shift in power. International students are waking up to the lie that grades guarantee opportunity. They’re demanding proof of learning, not just lectures. Outcomes, not optics. Experience, not excellence alone.

But until universities, visa systems, and employers rewire their incentives, students will keep carrying the burden of their own employability, quietly building the very outcomes their degrees were supposed to deliver.

And if that’s the new reality, then it’s time we start treating experience not as an extra, but as essential to what education should deliver.

FAQs 

1. Why is experience more important than a degree in 2025?

Because employers no longer trust credentials alone. With degree inflation and global competition, they want proof you can do the job.

2. What counts as “experience” in today’s job market?

Anything with accountability: paid internships, freelance work, case studies, open-source projects, even shadowing or building your own portfolio. But big-name brands still dominate visibility.

3. Why are international students at a disadvantage?

Visa restrictions, unpaid internship cultures, and lack of local networks block access to visible experience especially for students from the Global South.

4. Isn’t a top-ranked degree still valuable?

Only to a point. Prestige might get you shortlisted, but employers are increasingly filtering by what you’ve built, shipped, or led.

5. How can students gain experience without internships?

By creating their own proof: shadowing alumni, launching small projects, contributing to open source, or documenting work from home-country roles. Visibility > perfection.

6. What should universities be doing instead?

Embedding real-world work into the curriculum. Funding placements. Advocating for fair visa policies. Stop selling credentials and start brokering opportunities.

7. What’s the future of graduate hiring?

By 2030, transcripts may fade. Instead, expect portfolios, GitHub links, client testimonials, and verified case studies to replace GPA as the default hiring signal