Finding a job after graduation is stressful and confusing. There’s the endless stack of applications, the recommendations, the interviews.

For international students like me, the pressure is amplified.

International students often come to the U.S. to get a world-class education in the hopes of eventually finding employment back in their home country. Just like American students, they look for jobs and internships as undergraduates to help boost their resumes before starting the job hunt after graduation.

But even at a school like GW, international students don’t have the built-in network of connections that many Americans do, making it much harder to find jobs both as students and graduates. We often get lost in the complexities of job networking, an increasingly important part of finding employment.

Without clear guidelines offered by the University, I found myself looking for peers who could share essential information with me about ways to find a job. It is easy to get discouraged throughout the long process.

The office should launch a career and internship fair geared specifically toward international students, enticing those high-quality, idealistic and courageous students who would otherwise be left at a great disadvantage.

If this is organized, companies who are interested in hiring international students at GW would be able to tailor the information they disseminate specifically to this unique group of students. Such an event would be a great opportunity for the whole international student body as it would allow for direct networking with hiring companies.

It is true that GW has already provided many of the tools to help international students compete. For example, the career center hosts workshops for international students to prepare them for GW’s Career and Internship Fair. But since GW strives to double its international population in the next decade – according to the strategic plan released by the provost last year – it needs to step up its commitment.

Many of GW’s peer universities, such as American, New York and Boston universities, only hold the conventional career and internship fair that is geared toward domestic students.

This is a chance for GW to carve out a place for itself among its competitors and really demonstrate a commitment to diversity. In an era where competition in higher education is fierce and GW struggles to compete with other schools that recruit high numbers of international students, offering a career fair specifically geared toward this group could set the University apart.

Sunik Kim is a sophomore in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences.