Between your degree and your first job sits a layer of services that promise to connect them: university career centres, placement agencies, resume writers, interview coaches. Some are free and excellent, some are paid and worth it, and some sell hope. This guide is about telling them apart — and about using the free ones first, because they are better than most students believe.
Start With the Free Ones
Your university's career service is the most underused asset on campus. For international students specifically, most offer:
- CV and cover-letter reviews in the local format — the format itself is a skill; a CV that reads as "correct" to a local recruiter clears a real barrier.
- Mock interviews — including recorded video-interview practice, the format most graduate programs now open with.
- Employer events and career fairs — the employers attending are, by construction, the ones willing to hire from that university, including international students.
- Job boards pre-filtered for your institution — less competition than public listings, and postings that career services vet when employers misbehave.
Use them early and often: a CV reviewed in your first semester becomes the one that is ready when application windows open in your final year.
What Paid Career Support Legitimately Offers
The paid tier earns its money on specificity and accountability:
- Placement agencies for student corridors — the category EduRut lists on its hub page. The good ones maintain employer relationships on student-heavy corridors, check visa compliance before placing you, and their fee is either employer-paid or contingent on placement. What they sell is access and paperwork competence, not magic.
- Interview coaching for specific formats — case interviews, technical screens, and assessment centres reward targeted practice; a coach who has sat on the other side of that exact format compresses weeks of self-study.
- Industry-specific portfolio review — design, code, analytics: expert feedback on the artefacts that get you shortlisted.
The Paid Services to Walk Past
The scam patterns repeat: guaranteed job placements (nobody can guarantee a hiring manager's decision), pay-to-access job listings (real listings are free on employer sites and university boards), visa-plus-job packages from unregistered "consultants" (an immigration outcome nobody can sell), and any service that asks for your passport or banking details to "start your file" beyond what KYC legitimately requires. A legitimate service is specific about what it does, named about who it works with, and comfortable being paid against results.
Verify⚠ Verify: in several destinations, immigration consultants must be licensed or registered — Canada's RCIC regime and Australia's migration-agent registration are the clear examples. Check the register before paying anyone for advice that touches your visa.
How to Judge a Placement Agency
Five questions, and the answers tell you everything:
- Which employers placed students through you in the last year? — named employers are checkable; "many top companies" is not.
- What exactly do you check about my visa conditions? — a good agency knows the hour caps and authorisation categories from memory.
- Who pays your fee? — employer-paid or success-contingent aligns incentives with yours; large upfront candidate fees do not.
- What happens if the placement does not work out? — replacement guarantees are standard in the honest end of the industry.
- Can I speak to a student you placed? — a real recent placement is the only reference that matters.
A Support Stack That Works
Free and sufficient for most students: university career service + student-society networks + direct applications + the corridor-focused agencies listed on EduRut when you want placement help. Add paid coaching only for a specific, identified gap (a case interview in three weeks; a portfolio that needs expert eyes) — never as a subscription for hope. Keep every document — CV versions, applications, interview notes — in one folder; the graduate-program timeline rewards students whose paperwork is always ready.