How I got my first job in the UK

hey there evan edinger here everyone's favorite british american youtuber but i wasn't always british in fact it's kind of weird to me that my girlfriend has only known me as a british american she doesn't know the years of struggle to get my citizenship in this country it was a very long arduous journey i mean my brand for an entirely long time which many of you may be aware of was just that american guy that moved to the uk and is desperately trying to stay for some odd reason but here i am i've made it and i feel like i've got a lot of good insight that i might be able to provide either immigrants who are trying to do the same thing that i've done or just people who are into a good story so grab a cuppa sit on back let me tell you about how i got my first ever real job in the uk so story starts i moved here due to getting a tier four student visa to study in the uk to get an msc in actuarial science now it's a difficult degree sure but i really didn't quite grasp the difference in cultures when i tried to get a job as well you see on the tier 4 visa you're also able to work 20 hours at any job you want during term time and then off term time 40 hours i thought 20 hours darn i wish they'd let me work more you see in the us i managed to have an 18 credit semester while working 30 hours a week at the pizza hut making main channel videos daily vlogs on my second channel and i got a's in the uk though oh my god they don't really teach as much as they kind of talk and you have to go home and revise and also i know coming from someone like myself who english is my first language and yet it's a different dialect and so trying to study where all these different words are subtly thrown into conversation that i don't know of a very basic one per annum i know what it means now i know you're like easy it's annually sure but little instances like that all the time where i'm not aware of what a certain word is and i have to kind of pause to think and i miss a bit of the lesson some of that really gets to you and so i try and study i also tried to make some money because i didn't have much and so i got a quick job working at urban outfitters in marble arch now i really love working retail i know that's a weird thing to say but i just love people i love talking to people and i enjoyed my time there and i really thought that i could manage to work 20 hours a week while studying but i couldn't after two months i found myself feeling like i was drowning i was overwhelmed every day i'd go into class and i'd come back be like okay i know how much i need to study at home but i couldn't study at home because i've got to go to work right now and then i'd go to work and feel so exhausted by the time i came back i didn't have any mental capacity to study it was a vicious cycle and i'm not a quitter i'm really not but i had to and i felt so bad about it i remember going into work and asking to see my manager and i remember crying in the office being like i'm so sorry i have to do this to you but i just can't balance work and studying and i promise as soon as i graduate i'll be right back here and you'll see me in your office again and he said evan i swear to god if you get a master's degree and you come back here and work at urban i'm gonna slap you in the face so hard all right point taken i just am a loyal guy okay the last job i'd had i worked for five years that's just the type of person i am i mean i'm making youtube videos now for how long so yeah point taken i ended up studying and doing really well that term thank god i got all firsts because i took the time that being said when i graduated i was now in that really glorious period as an immigrant where you can get any job you want when you're switching from tier 4 to tier 2 you no longer have those governmental regulations put in place to block you out of jobs for instance when you're switching from tier two to tier two a standard job to a standard job well anytime you apply for a job and a company likes you they also have to wait 30 full days to make sure no british national also has a similar qualification because then they legally have to hire them which i really do hate now as a british citizen i think i have a bit more weight to my words when i say it i still think the most skilled person should get a job regardless of where they come from but that aside you have this six month period you can work any job you want and so i started throwing my resume out everywhere okay here's the thing though you might be wondering evan what's your first job in actuarial science were you an actuary they're incredibly well paid great benefits no actually for some reason i just didn't feel like it was for me necessarily i know i got the masters in it and i really enjoyed the math aspect but i really felt like an odd one out the entire time i studied no person i studied with felt like they were similar to me at all everyone was so focused like their entire life's purpose was being this actuary and they had no other personality traits and i just liked people too much i i didn't know if i could really see myself being this human calculator if it meant i'd lose part of myself and so i did apply to like ernst young and a couple big actuary firms but i don't think they liked me i didn't hear back from any of them but there was one thing that i was actually passionate about and that was social media at the time you see i'd grown my youtube channel to about 30 000 subscribers and i was super passionate about the field it was new it was exciting and it was something i loved and so i was like what if i combine my love of social media and my knowledge and skill of math into a job i applied to so many social media marketing places on websites like indeed which i do recommend and even more so linkedin if you're trying to find a job and you're not using linkedin what are you doing that's where i got all my jobs very highly recommended not sponsored by them however i within a week of applying i ended up getting a bite back from a company called eharmony now i do have to say as much hard work as i put into everything here there is obviously luck involved you work as hard as you can to get as many luck opportunities as possible and i did get one now eharmony seemed interested in my profile and they said how long can you work in the country i told them until january until i need to be sponsored and they pulled me in for an interview telling me they needed me to give a 20-minute powerpoint on how i can help their social media profiles especially their youtube channel and this was my specialty so i set myself to work the thing is though as an important note eharmony was not a sponsor in company they're not on the register of sponsors meaning that if i did work for them it would be short-lived and then eventually when my tier 14 visa expires in january i get the boot i got to get out unless i can convince the harmony to keep me so i've really gotta be really really really good or while i'm also working for them possibly look at other places that will sponsor me that was essentially my goal but i also needed money to live i was no longer having a place to live i didn't have any money in my bank account was in an extreme debt i needed money and so i applied and i gave them the powerpoint of a century now you might be thinking evan listen i know how these start not startups but i know how these companies work they try and get these inexperienced people in to give powerpoint presentations and they seal the ideas and implement them themselves i was aware of this as well i didn't want to put all this time into a powerpoint only to have them say thank you for the information bye-bye so here's how i positioned it i gave them all this information very large amount of jargon i broke it down for them but i wanted them to almost feel as if they have so many problems i set up all these pins and i'm the only bowler around to knock them down you can't do this without me and so actually i i found my original powerpoint here here it is driving traffic for youtube a 2013 presentation by evan edinger so i looked at all of their data using some chrome extensions i looked their youtube stats their retention i basically just pulled from the youtube playbook back in the day and even looked at their competitors did some analysis for them how to increase their engagement using a lot of different tools at my disposal and um one of my favorite moments i even went through their like titles and metadata was the thumbnails because i even like the most basic knowledge of youtube i was like look at the top five in your field faces everyone clicks on faces look at yours it's a teal background with white text come on guys i then went into some more tags metadata how to get up new tags i felt very proud of this i put so much effort into this 20 minutes of my time how to collab with youtubers advertising to spend more money and then at the end i was like now look what i've done 30 000 subscribers myself boom i impressed them so much they were so overwhelmed with the knowledge that i had on the platform that i got the call back the next week and i got my first ever job professionally in the uk earning 5 000 pounds for a three-month probationary period i was so excited i could finally afford to live in the country and kick that can down the road a little bit more now i did have a good time there for the most part i had to learn basic british etiquette such as how to make a proper cup of tea when you get up to make one for yourself and then don't ask any other people then everyone starts thinking that you hate them small offices okay there was a lot of drama there and so i wasn't necessarily in love with it but i did love being able to provide my brain for other people for something bigger than myself and the issue was the manager kind of put a carrot on the string a couple times like we might sponsor you we might do it depends on how you do which is really scary as an immigrant who might leave the country any moment now depending on the status of his visa so while i was getting them to possibly sponsor me i also was applying to more places on linkedin that were actually uh sponsors registered with the uk and as luck would have it i ended up finding the right company i interviewed with them twice and i became a facebook ad operations specialist came back to harmony was like hey thank you for the job opportunity but thank you i found a job that's gonna sponsor me they were a bit upset at me they were like we were gonna do it and i was like thank you but i i'm okay so i got a job i ended up climbing the corporate ladder and i made myself through many different jobs the person you see before you right now a british citizen it took a huge amount of effort in between every single job change but that first one was incredibly difficult and the only way i managed to do it was by dedicating such a huge amount of time into impressing into even if you can believe it for a large amount of time i had to memorize the documents for normal companies to become sponsors because i was so desperate i i'd interview at companies and they'd love me and then as soon as they found out that i was an immigrant they'd say actually we're not interested anymore and i'm like please look i literally know the 63-page document you have to fill out with the uk government to become a sponsor i also know it's a thousand pounds i'll even pay a thousand pounds please please just sponsor me and that never really worked so if you are an immigrant and you're looking for jobs i do recommend just looking i'll put the link in the description to the list of sponsors that can my option could have worked if i wanted to stay any harmony i didn't but in the end of the day i got a job here i am now a youtuber but it was a long journey and i'm very proud of where i've come but i do just also want to emphasize how much luck was at play there and also how privileged i am as someone who came from an english-speaking background that it was a lot easier for me as an immigrant to get those jobs but no matter where you are boy do you got to put in that work so hopefully you've learned something from this little tale or just enjoyed this little story of my history i do appreciate you stopping on by i know algorithmically this isn't going to be the one but i like just having a sitting chat you know it's my beginnings it's my roots and i always appreciate i hope you do too thanks for watching if you want to watch another sit in chat i've got one right here otherwise i'll see you guys on the next one next sunday goodbye

Channel: Evan Edinger

Views: 104,409

Keywords: first job, UK, british, evan edinger, job, tier 2, tier 4, visa, evan, edinger, 2022

Id: jZr9hDOitSI

Length: 11min 6sec (666 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 19 2022