How I didn’t get a job at AT & T or a bit about corruption in the Czech Republic
Published at the request of my friend. Maybe someone will save his story from similar situations
About a year ago, a good friend of mine told me that he found a job as a network engineer in one of the European offices of AT & T, in the city of Brno, Czech Republic. Having described in detail what he was offered, and how the interview process is going on, he suggested that I join him, since the company had enough open vacancies in abundance. Armed with the recruiter's contacts, and updating my resume, I also decided to try my luck.
It turned out that AT & T itself does not recruit staff, but entrusted this function to a single Slovak recruiting company, and later, with a successful interview, it is this company that takes the person to work, and then essentially leases it to AT & T . A day or two after sending the resume, I was called back by a local recruiter, and after talking about whether I really wanted to work in the Czech Republic, what experience I had and why I was interested, she said that they were very interested in my resume and she sends it further to AT & T, but for now I will send additional information on the conditions of work and moving to Brno.
')
A few days later, the recruiter called me again and scheduled the day and time for a telephone interview with AT & T managers. Initially, another technical interview with an employee of the recruiting company was planned, but then we were motivated by the fact that I had recommendations, we were moles because I really liked my resume, I was immediately introduced to AT & T.
Telephone interviews were held in the conference call mode, and it was quite difficult due to the quality of communication. In fact, the Czechs tried to be friendly, joked a lot and asked relatively simple questions like CCNA, CCNP, but the quality of communication and Czech English led to the fact that after the interview (which took about an hour), it seemed to me that my head had increased in volume two or three times.
After the interview, about a week passed, and one of the managers called me, the team I was taken to and told me that they would be happy to see me in their team. The recruiting company informed me about the same somewhere else in a week, and then the process of preparing documents for a Czech work visa began.
Initially there were no problems. Recruiters have promised that they will compensate absolutely all my expenses, you just need to keep the checks, and most of the paper work is assumed. All I had to do from time to time was to send papers from them by mail, fill them in where necessary by hand and send them back, well, to do a few translations with sworn translators. To send the truth to DHL, which was not so cheap, but then I was full of the most optimistic thoughts.
And here is a bundle of documents (including permission to work in the Czech Republic) in my hands. I go to the site visapoint.eu and try to register myself for submission of documents. It should be said that the recruiter immediately warned me that it was very difficult to register through the site. Basically, it simply does not have a single available time slot for submitting documents, sometimes it just lies, often does not accept captcha, etc. She advised me to try at different times of the day, but if I fail, then her other candidates have found some peasant who, for a modest amount of 300 euros, can register for the submission of documents. Of course, I am also compensated for this amount, but only after my arrival in the Czech Republic.
The fight with Visapoint begins. A couple of days, having tried to register at different times, I decided to write a letter to the Czech Foreign Ministry with a request to report the reason that I cannot register. Just a couple of weeks :) came the answer that this is due to the huge number of people willing to apply for a work visa and advice to continue to try. During this time I gave up, contacted the peasant, and a couple of days later he brought me a printout of a letter confirming that I could apply ... in Donetsk. According to him, in Kiev it is almost impossible to do this, because due to the large number of complaints, it is more difficult for his “employees” in the Czech Republic to organize filing in the capital's consulate. In parallel, the little man complained to me about life, that he was sending 3/4 of the money to the Czech Republic, and that if he could have taken less, he would keep everything.
Well, I'm going to Donetsk, submit documents. On the attitude towards people in the Czech consulate, you can write a separate topic :). However, I'm starting to wait. By law, I have to report within 3 months. At the end of this period, after the n-th attempt to call the consulate, there all the same someone picks up the phone and reports that I have a refusal, does not inform the reason, refuses to give me a certificate of refusal to send me or my employer, and says that if I need a document then you need to come to the consulate personally.
In fact, it would have been necessary to stop at this place, but the managers from AT & T call me again, are soberly interested in how I am doing, and they are advised not to lose heart. It seems that I arranged them so much that they agree to wait, and in addition they will put pressure on the recruiting company to do everything to get me to Brno. “We already have a table and a laptop for you. Everything is ready and we are waiting for you! ”. Six months have passed since the interview. Encouraged by such attention, I declare to the recruiter that I am not going to surrender, and I take the Visapoint site under siege.
At the same time I am sending letters to the deputies of the European Parliament from the Czech Republic, to the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in general, to everyone I can. In principle, except for one MEP, who promised to send my letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, everyone else simply ignored me.
Somewhere in a month I am lucky, and on Saturday morning, I see a free slot, again in Donetsk. There is! A confirmation letter in my mail, the submission of documents in a month again in Donetsk. I contact the recruiters again and inform them that I managed to register, and that I urgently need to re-create all the documents. And most importantly, everything went without a huckster.
A month later, I was again at the door of the Czech consulate. Through the intercom, the aunt begins to call the names of those who are recorded today for filing documents. Reaches the end of the list and turns off. I call the intercom and ask why they didn’t give my name. The aunt declares that my slot was not confirmed by me. I say that I have confirmation on my hands. Smoothly, we begin to swear with her through the intercom, because she declares that I am listed in her list as not confirmed. In the end, it just stupidly turns off. I call again and declare that I demand a meeting with the Czech consul, and yes, I understand that he is busy, and that's okay, I will wait and wait for a whole day.
After 5 minutes they call me to the building where the filing of documents takes place. The head of the visa department is sitting there, and he also declares to me that the aunt had said before: I did not confirm my application. Well, or it was not confirmed by the one who registered for me (here I was generally in shock, in fact, the consular official confessed that he knew that the applications were not registered personally, which is prohibited by the rules). 5 times I had to show him a letter with the words "Your appointment have been confirmed". He gave up, but asked me to show my civil passport. To the question “Why?”, He said that he was obliged to check my residence permit, because 3 days ago (!!) there was a decree that the consulate could only accept applications from citizens registered in the consular district. And yes, it does not matter that my application was filed almost a month before the adoption of this resolution, and the law is not retroactive, even in Europe. And yes, he will not use the rule that in some cases (of course not indicated in what) the consul can accept documents from any citizen of Ukraine, in any consulate. In general, I had to quarrel with him for about 15 minutes, after which he got up, and saying that I could complain anywhere I simply left.
After that, I called recruiters and said that I no longer want to apply for a work visa, and offered them to issue me a Czech green card or a blue card, to which they said they could not do that and the only option was a work visa.
That was it. The epic cost me about 1000 euros of various expenses, and half a year hassle. But from this I made one conclusion: you should never be led to any baryg. If the company can not absolutely legal methods to issue you a visa to your country, you should not spend your time and energy on them. They will not be able to offer anything good to you, well, they obviously don’t need them that much.
PS After talking with friends from the Czech Republic, I came to the conclusion that everyone knows about corruption with labor migrants in the Czech Republic, but no one really does anything. A few years ago, on Czech TV, they showed a story about a Moldovan citizen who officially worked in the Czech Republic, and from which the local police demanded a bribe to extend a work visa. When she, with the help of local journalists, announced this, the police officer was fired, tried and given a suspended sentence. After the appeal, he was reinstated by the police, but she was not extended a visa, deported from the Czech Republic with a ban on entry into the EU for 10 years.
About a year ago, a good friend of mine told me that he found a job as a network engineer in one of the European offices of AT & T, in the city of Brno, Czech Republic. Having described in detail what he was offered, and how the interview process is going on, he suggested that I join him, since the company had enough open vacancies in abundance. Armed with the recruiter's contacts, and updating my resume, I also decided to try my luck.
It turned out that AT & T itself does not recruit staff, but entrusted this function to a single Slovak recruiting company, and later, with a successful interview, it is this company that takes the person to work, and then essentially leases it to AT & T . A day or two after sending the resume, I was called back by a local recruiter, and after talking about whether I really wanted to work in the Czech Republic, what experience I had and why I was interested, she said that they were very interested in my resume and she sends it further to AT & T, but for now I will send additional information on the conditions of work and moving to Brno.
')
A few days later, the recruiter called me again and scheduled the day and time for a telephone interview with AT & T managers. Initially, another technical interview with an employee of the recruiting company was planned, but then we were motivated by the fact that I had recommendations, we were moles because I really liked my resume, I was immediately introduced to AT & T.
Telephone interviews were held in the conference call mode, and it was quite difficult due to the quality of communication. In fact, the Czechs tried to be friendly, joked a lot and asked relatively simple questions like CCNA, CCNP, but the quality of communication and Czech English led to the fact that after the interview (which took about an hour), it seemed to me that my head had increased in volume two or three times.
After the interview, about a week passed, and one of the managers called me, the team I was taken to and told me that they would be happy to see me in their team. The recruiting company informed me about the same somewhere else in a week, and then the process of preparing documents for a Czech work visa began.
Initially there were no problems. Recruiters have promised that they will compensate absolutely all my expenses, you just need to keep the checks, and most of the paper work is assumed. All I had to do from time to time was to send papers from them by mail, fill them in where necessary by hand and send them back, well, to do a few translations with sworn translators. To send the truth to DHL, which was not so cheap, but then I was full of the most optimistic thoughts.
And here is a bundle of documents (including permission to work in the Czech Republic) in my hands. I go to the site visapoint.eu and try to register myself for submission of documents. It should be said that the recruiter immediately warned me that it was very difficult to register through the site. Basically, it simply does not have a single available time slot for submitting documents, sometimes it just lies, often does not accept captcha, etc. She advised me to try at different times of the day, but if I fail, then her other candidates have found some peasant who, for a modest amount of 300 euros, can register for the submission of documents. Of course, I am also compensated for this amount, but only after my arrival in the Czech Republic.
The fight with Visapoint begins. A couple of days, having tried to register at different times, I decided to write a letter to the Czech Foreign Ministry with a request to report the reason that I cannot register. Just a couple of weeks :) came the answer that this is due to the huge number of people willing to apply for a work visa and advice to continue to try. During this time I gave up, contacted the peasant, and a couple of days later he brought me a printout of a letter confirming that I could apply ... in Donetsk. According to him, in Kiev it is almost impossible to do this, because due to the large number of complaints, it is more difficult for his “employees” in the Czech Republic to organize filing in the capital's consulate. In parallel, the little man complained to me about life, that he was sending 3/4 of the money to the Czech Republic, and that if he could have taken less, he would keep everything.
Well, I'm going to Donetsk, submit documents. On the attitude towards people in the Czech consulate, you can write a separate topic :). However, I'm starting to wait. By law, I have to report within 3 months. At the end of this period, after the n-th attempt to call the consulate, there all the same someone picks up the phone and reports that I have a refusal, does not inform the reason, refuses to give me a certificate of refusal to send me or my employer, and says that if I need a document then you need to come to the consulate personally.
In fact, it would have been necessary to stop at this place, but the managers from AT & T call me again, are soberly interested in how I am doing, and they are advised not to lose heart. It seems that I arranged them so much that they agree to wait, and in addition they will put pressure on the recruiting company to do everything to get me to Brno. “We already have a table and a laptop for you. Everything is ready and we are waiting for you! ”. Six months have passed since the interview. Encouraged by such attention, I declare to the recruiter that I am not going to surrender, and I take the Visapoint site under siege.
At the same time I am sending letters to the deputies of the European Parliament from the Czech Republic, to the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in general, to everyone I can. In principle, except for one MEP, who promised to send my letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, everyone else simply ignored me.
Somewhere in a month I am lucky, and on Saturday morning, I see a free slot, again in Donetsk. There is! A confirmation letter in my mail, the submission of documents in a month again in Donetsk. I contact the recruiters again and inform them that I managed to register, and that I urgently need to re-create all the documents. And most importantly, everything went without a huckster.
A month later, I was again at the door of the Czech consulate. Through the intercom, the aunt begins to call the names of those who are recorded today for filing documents. Reaches the end of the list and turns off. I call the intercom and ask why they didn’t give my name. The aunt declares that my slot was not confirmed by me. I say that I have confirmation on my hands. Smoothly, we begin to swear with her through the intercom, because she declares that I am listed in her list as not confirmed. In the end, it just stupidly turns off. I call again and declare that I demand a meeting with the Czech consul, and yes, I understand that he is busy, and that's okay, I will wait and wait for a whole day.
After 5 minutes they call me to the building where the filing of documents takes place. The head of the visa department is sitting there, and he also declares to me that the aunt had said before: I did not confirm my application. Well, or it was not confirmed by the one who registered for me (here I was generally in shock, in fact, the consular official confessed that he knew that the applications were not registered personally, which is prohibited by the rules). 5 times I had to show him a letter with the words "Your appointment have been confirmed". He gave up, but asked me to show my civil passport. To the question “Why?”, He said that he was obliged to check my residence permit, because 3 days ago (!!) there was a decree that the consulate could only accept applications from citizens registered in the consular district. And yes, it does not matter that my application was filed almost a month before the adoption of this resolution, and the law is not retroactive, even in Europe. And yes, he will not use the rule that in some cases (of course not indicated in what) the consul can accept documents from any citizen of Ukraine, in any consulate. In general, I had to quarrel with him for about 15 minutes, after which he got up, and saying that I could complain anywhere I simply left.
After that, I called recruiters and said that I no longer want to apply for a work visa, and offered them to issue me a Czech green card or a blue card, to which they said they could not do that and the only option was a work visa.
That was it. The epic cost me about 1000 euros of various expenses, and half a year hassle. But from this I made one conclusion: you should never be led to any baryg. If the company can not absolutely legal methods to issue you a visa to your country, you should not spend your time and energy on them. They will not be able to offer anything good to you, well, they obviously don’t need them that much.
PS After talking with friends from the Czech Republic, I came to the conclusion that everyone knows about corruption with labor migrants in the Czech Republic, but no one really does anything. A few years ago, on Czech TV, they showed a story about a Moldovan citizen who officially worked in the Czech Republic, and from which the local police demanded a bribe to extend a work visa. When she, with the help of local journalists, announced this, the police officer was fired, tried and given a suspended sentence. After the appeal, he was reinstated by the police, but she was not extended a visa, deported from the Czech Republic with a ban on entry into the EU for 10 years.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/129036/
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