Yale University Graduate Shares How 600 Emails, 80 Calls Led Him To Bag Job At World Bank

March 2020 was a complete nightmare. COVID-19 had been declared a worldwide pandemic, millions of people lost their lives globally and scores of people lost their daily livelihood. Getting fired from jobs was rampant and the hope of landing a new job was diminishing. Against this background is set the story of Vatsal Nahata.

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Vatsal Nahata was to graduate from Yale University on May 2020. In March, two months before his graduation, he didn’t have a job offer in hand. It was also the time when former US President Donald Trump tried to put a stop to the H-1B visa.

“It was March of 2020 and I was about to graduate from Yale in 2 months. Donald Trump was President. I would reach the final rounds of several companies only to be told that they could not sponsor my visa. I did not have a job at hand and I was going to graduate in 2 months. And I was a student at ‘Yale’,” Vatsal wrote on LinkedIn.

It was getting difficult for him to remain strong during such a time. However, he was determined to receive his first paycheck in dollars. So this is what he did – networking and wildly applying for jobs.

“I thought to myself: what was the point of coming to Yale when I can’t even secure a job here. It became harder to sound strong to my parents when they called and asked me how I was doing. I went all out on networking, and took the risk of completely avoiding job application forms or job portals.”

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He sent as many as 600 cold emails and 1500 connection requests on LinkedIn. He was on 80 odd calls with different kinds of people. He faced constant rejection, but that helped him develop a thick skin.

“In those 2 months, I sent over 1500 connection requests, wrote 600 cold-emails, got on 80 odd cold-calls with all types of people (I was clocking close to 2 cold-calls per day) and faced the highest number of rejections I’ve ever gone through. I developed thick-skin by necessity. And I was getting nowhere.”

This finally paid off as he had knocked on so many doors that some had to open! He paved his way to working for the World Bank as a consultant.

“I ended up with 4 job offers by the first week of May and chose the World Bank. They were willing to sponsor my Visa after my OPT and my manager offered me co-authorship on a Machine Learning paper with the World Bank’s current Director of Research (something unheard of for a 23 year old).”

He advised, “If you’re going through something similar where the world seems to be collapsing on you: carry on – do not go gentle into that good night!”

Have a look at his full post here:

Vatsal Nahata is currently working with IMF (International Monetary Fund) as a full-time research analyst.

Hope his story inspires you today!

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