Posts in Career
A Thorough Guide to growing your Network from crafting cold emails to Personal SEO

I've thought a lot about this again as I am currently traveling the world and hoping to gain knowledge and insights about each region in a very short period of time; the best way to do that is to talk to people. So how do I find people to talk to and who are willing to talk to me? For that, I have built out a framework to help build, expand, and maintain my network.

I hope this will help people at any career stage find a job, secure a partnership, or find a support group anywhere in the world.

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CareerIvy Xu
6 Ways to Understand Local Market Culture and work Cross-Border

Some of the greatest challenges of cross-border and cross-culture businesses are not understanding local markets, not being able to build trust with local customers and staff, and not localizing the product, thinking a product or business model that works for one market will work in another. In order to do this better, global companies need people who can empathize with local customers and diverse team members, build internal communication and decision-making models that include teams overseas, and most of all be able to keep up and adapt to different cultures quickly.

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The Emotional Journey of Job Hunting

This is a sequel to 6 Things I wish I knew about Job Hunting in San Francisco. It’s been 1.5 years since the article and I am humbled to still receive messages from people that have found it useful.

So many strangers and new friends have reached out seeking advice. Through these messages, I realized that it is the inner demons that need reassurance when one is lost. People needed words of comfort, not practical advice, they wanted to hear my emotional journey, and to hear that I too, once felt as discouraged but have now succeeded.

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CareerIvy Xu
6 Things I wish I had known while job hunting in San Francisco

I am Canadian and therefore unable to work in the U.S. without a work visa. I am a non-technical, new graduate, with no “real” work experience. As much as there is always a need for talent in Silicon Valley start-ups and tech giants, I didn’t have the background that screamed must-hire. Here are the 6 things I learned along the way that helped me find a job (twice!) and that can hopefully help you land a job in order to move to your dream city (or at least know where to start).

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CareerIvy Xu