Job search abroad
Judging by the reviews on my previous article on the process of passing the interview, many habrokleglei interested in how best to prepare for finding a job in the west. I want to share my experience and give links that will be useful to those who are thinking about moving or just want to find out how it works in another world. The article is focused on the average software developer, so if you have brilliant spoken language skills and excellent knowledge of the necessary technologies and programming languages, you can skip many tips.
So, you are thinking about finding a new job.
')
Unfortunately, many interviews are very technical and there is a great chance that you will be asked for highly specialized knowledge. Making a good impression in the absence of such knowledge is very problematic, especially if there are some barriers in communication (for example, with insufficient skills of the spoken language). So you need to get / have this knowledge, and this means you need to decide on the area of work. If you do not have special preferences, you can simply analyze the labor market and the whole region as a whole. A few examples:
In general, if the candidate follows the news, or even simply reads Habr, then he will already be able to form an opinion on current trends. However, this does not mean at all that you need to follow these trends, it can just help in finding the area that interests you.
Here you have to sacrifice your time and energy, but it's worth it. Here are the examples in order of importance (from most to least):
I will say the captain obvious, but I advise you to search yourself in search engines. Keep in mind that re-indexing of unpopular resources does not happen so often, so take care of this issue in advance. Also, if you have some compromising material on social networks (for example, photos from your orgies in Las Vegas), it is better to remove it, or hide it from public access. Although the chance that your personal data will look rather low, it is better to be safe.
Several links to OSS projects ( updating the list is welcome ):
Research examples for a professional blog:
Please note that indexing your presence will take some time (up to several weeks), so some SEO skills may be required (for example, giving the right links to popular sites).
There is a big chance that resumes will be analyzed automatically and information will be extracted in text form. This does not mean that you need to send a simple text file, after all, a good design also says something about the candidate. I advise you to prepare a resume in pdf-format (for example, I use LaTeX), and when viewing copy the text to the clipboard and see what happened. LaTeX allows you to play with the presentation as I want, but of course, you can use some less exotic technologies, such as just making an HTML page. Note that printing in PDF from browsers may differ (for example, Chromium doesn’t make me particularly happy under Linux), so try a few options.
At the beginning of the resume you must specify the name, e-mail address, telephone number, address of residence No data about the family and age, photos are also not needed. At the end of the list of contacts or "References are available upon request", mainly the name, position and telephone number of the contact. Email is not used for obvious reasons.
The summary itself usually includes familiar technologies, methodologies, libraries, and programming languages. Includes information on education and previous jobs. If you have blogs and OSS projects, you need to include a list of links too. Lists can vary, for example, if you take a job as a web developer, it is not necessary to indicate knowledge of C ++. Do not specify too much, it is better to focus on the main thing. I see this mistake quite a lot when considering resumes from Russian candidates - they have very long and detailed resumes. Believe me, no one really reads this, and the focus is only on keywords. So limit your resume to 2, maximum 3 pages (only as a last resort, if you changed a dozen jobs, and all of them are important for a new position).
When sending out a resume, it is advisable to also include Cover Letter or simply add a message to the message, where you tell a little about yourself, what a great specialist you are and how you will be happy to work with this company. It is advisable to describe what kind of experience you have in the area in which the company specializes. If, for example, they are involved in network security, you can write that you have experience writing scripts and 0-day exploits for the Metasploit platform.
Sometimes you will need to bargain about salary. Many hide this information, so you have to use resources like www.glassdoor.com to know what to be ready for. This information can also be used to calculate the limits of your salary requirements. Do not be afraid to overstate, but do not go too far, sometimes it may scare the other side (for example, they may think that you have an excessive self-esteem and you will be a bad team player).
Just a few tips:
For example, here is a list of questions that may be encountered in an interview for a candidate C programmer (I just give an example of what detailed knowledge you may need):
Those. Some questions may be quite general, but in real practice, programmers do not encounter this. Other issues are highly specialized under the toolkit. Personally, I do not agree with such methods of conducting an interview, but it happens (even worse when asked to describe the format of a TCP / IP packet with all the memory shifts). There may be other extremes, about square hatches, but in my practice I have not seen this. In any case, it is necessary to prepare and it is better to be prepared for the worst.
So, you are thinking about finding a new job.
The first thing you need to decide is in what area you want to work.
')
Unfortunately, many interviews are very technical and there is a great chance that you will be asked for highly specialized knowledge. Making a good impression in the absence of such knowledge is very problematic, especially if there are some barriers in communication (for example, with insufficient skills of the spoken language). So you need to get / have this knowledge, and this means you need to decide on the area of work. If you do not have special preferences, you can simply analyze the labor market and the whole region as a whole. A few examples:
- go to monster.com ( dice.com , indeed.com ), enter the geographical location, and look at the published vacancies
- www.glassdoor.com - also search for companies by location (as a bonus, there are reviews and salaries)
- TIOBE index www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html - although the index is also based on programming languages, some languages are more often used for some specific purposes (for example, Objective-C for developing iOS applications )
- stackoverflow.com - popular questions and jobs
In general, if the candidate follows the news, or even simply reads Habr, then he will already be able to form an opinion on current trends. However, this does not mean at all that you need to follow these trends, it can just help in finding the area that interests you.
Enhance network presence
Here you have to sacrifice your time and energy, but it's worth it. Here are the examples in order of importance (from most to least):
- Own projects (for example on github-e)
- Participation in other projects, mainly OSS. It is important that you can track the history of your commits.
- Participation in thematic conferences and specialized sites (guess why the answers to stackoverflow.com are often so detailed and informative)
- Maintaining your own professional blog. On a blog, it is better not to abuse copying others or publishing obvious and simple things. I advise you to do research in the area of interest to you and publish them.
- Have profiles on specialized sites such as linkedin.com
I will say the captain obvious, but I advise you to search yourself in search engines. Keep in mind that re-indexing of unpopular resources does not happen so often, so take care of this issue in advance. Also, if you have some compromising material on social networks (for example, photos from your orgies in Las Vegas), it is better to remove it, or hide it from public access. Although the chance that your personal data will look rather low, it is better to be safe.
Several links to OSS projects ( updating the list is welcome ):
- Google Summer of Code, for example, list of projects for 2013: www.google-melange.com/gsoc/projects/list/google/gsoc2013
- sourceforge.net - choose popular projects, see what there are errors, and what you could fix
- Projects for newbies to improve the Linux kernel: kernelnewbies.org/KernelProjects
Research examples for a professional blog:
- Numeric metrics for algorithms, libraries and programming languages (speed, memory consumption, number of lines of code, etc.)
- Comparison of different libraries and programming languages (both numeric and other metrics)
- Detailed overview of a narrow area (internal structure of functions or subsystems of any platforms)
- Original algorithms that specialize in certain characteristics (minimum consumption of memory or processor resources, maximum use of the processor cache or its MMX / SSE instructions, vectorization, lock-free, etc.)
Please note that indexing your presence will take some time (up to several weeks), so some SEO skills may be required (for example, giving the right links to popular sites).
Resume preparation
There is a big chance that resumes will be analyzed automatically and information will be extracted in text form. This does not mean that you need to send a simple text file, after all, a good design also says something about the candidate. I advise you to prepare a resume in pdf-format (for example, I use LaTeX), and when viewing copy the text to the clipboard and see what happened. LaTeX allows you to play with the presentation as I want, but of course, you can use some less exotic technologies, such as just making an HTML page. Note that printing in PDF from browsers may differ (for example, Chromium doesn’t make me particularly happy under Linux), so try a few options.
At the beginning of the resume you must specify the name, e-mail address, telephone number, address of residence No data about the family and age, photos are also not needed. At the end of the list of contacts or "References are available upon request", mainly the name, position and telephone number of the contact. Email is not used for obvious reasons.
The summary itself usually includes familiar technologies, methodologies, libraries, and programming languages. Includes information on education and previous jobs. If you have blogs and OSS projects, you need to include a list of links too. Lists can vary, for example, if you take a job as a web developer, it is not necessary to indicate knowledge of C ++. Do not specify too much, it is better to focus on the main thing. I see this mistake quite a lot when considering resumes from Russian candidates - they have very long and detailed resumes. Believe me, no one really reads this, and the focus is only on keywords. So limit your resume to 2, maximum 3 pages (only as a last resort, if you changed a dozen jobs, and all of them are important for a new position).
When sending out a resume, it is advisable to also include Cover Letter or simply add a message to the message, where you tell a little about yourself, what a great specialist you are and how you will be happy to work with this company. It is advisable to describe what kind of experience you have in the area in which the company specializes. If, for example, they are involved in network security, you can write that you have experience writing scripts and 0-day exploits for the Metasploit platform.
Sometimes you will need to bargain about salary. Many hide this information, so you have to use resources like www.glassdoor.com to know what to be ready for. This information can also be used to calculate the limits of your salary requirements. Do not be afraid to overstate, but do not go too far, sometimes it may scare the other side (for example, they may think that you have an excessive self-esteem and you will be a bad team player).
Actually job search
Just a few tips:
- Do not be afraid to send your resume several times to the same company - if you don’t come up now, you can come up later (a vacancy opened, HR didn’t overlook and finally saw your resume a second time, etc.)
- Get ready to talk on the phone. If your English is lame, I advise you to read out your resume aloud to be sure how to pronounce it in the right language correctly (especially if you worked in some companies with a Russian name or had a position that does not exist in the western market, for example, “leading specialist ")
- Refresh knowledge, especially theoretical (algorithms, data structures, design patterns, etc.)
For example, here is a list of questions that may be encountered in an interview for a candidate C programmer (I just give an example of what detailed knowledge you may need):
- What is gperf for and how to use it
- Write the implementation of a data structure (stack, tree, queue) using an array and / or linked lists
- Calculate O of any algorithm (including those written by you in an interview, and then there may be a question about optimization)
- Invert a single-linked list without using additional memory. Why the recursive implementation (this is one of the possible) does not use the stack of the execution thread when compiling on gcc.
- How gcc optimizes such and such code, and what optimization it does in general.
- How to include debugging information in gcc and what additional debugging mechanisms the compiler provides
- What is the order in which the function arguments are evaluated using gcc, and is it possible to influence this?
Those. Some questions may be quite general, but in real practice, programmers do not encounter this. Other issues are highly specialized under the toolkit. Personally, I do not agree with such methods of conducting an interview, but it happens (even worse when asked to describe the format of a TCP / IP packet with all the memory shifts). There may be other extremes, about square hatches, but in my practice I have not seen this. In any case, it is necessary to prepare and it is better to be prepared for the worst.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/285606/
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