How I was looking for work in the glorious city of New York
A few months ago, I changed jobs. The whole process from the decision to search and the first interview in the first company turned up to the accepted proposal took 8 months. Before the start of the marathon, I had the experience of changing the work 8 years ago, but in Russia. This story is about how my expectations met with American reality.
Before you go into the details - a brief overview of me. I am a developer with about 10 years of experience, writing for the .NET platform. The first seven years I was based in St. Petersburg and 3 years ago I moved to the states.
So let's go!
This is the first thing that catches the eye - agents everywhere. They are no longer just here for convenience - without them you will not find anything interesting, because many companies publish their vacancies only for a long time no one bites. The task of the agent is to find in the villages and villages everyone who could undergo an interview, and for each attached soul he receives a percentage of his salary. Those.
For example, once a caller from California called me and persuaded me for a long time to consider an opportunity from some media company. It did not stop, that I did not even hear about any of the keywords that he listed to me. As it turned out, he needed a sysadmin.
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The big exception is you know exactly which company you want to get into and just send them your resume. This works great for large companies like Microsoft, Google, etc.
It's obvious, isn't it? But suppose you are offered a trip to a non-binding interview in a beautiful place near the national park - what will you expect? Beautiful nature and less pathos? And you will be wrong, because they do not take into account the lifestyle of the famous "one-story" America.
The point here is this. If in a big city there is a line-up of competing specialists for each vacancy, then in rural areas who are unoccupied and living nearby will work. Moreover, all those who could decently develop, most likely found work in the city.
Here is an example: I went for an interview just to practice, so I was rasbalen and calm. The show began with a pleasant conversation with the project manager. We chatted about this and that, he periodically inserted technical questions like “by the way, what is X”, etc., and then passed me on to the SQL guru. I scrubbed rust from my knowledge and gave him a solution that is not the fact that something was solving. But it turned out to be not so easy to check, because after 20 minutes we just agreed that there were definitely working decisions and parted friends. The next interview was about algorithms, and strange things started happening here. My DFS code was called “the best implementation of this algorithm that I saw in the interview.” Ok, I thought, you’re probably joking. A couple of the following answers were awarded about the same epithets, then one of the solutions was recognized as "this is better than the answer I had in mind." After he asked for everything he wanted, and I asked everything I could, he unobtrusively said: “Well, like, understand me correctly, I would certainly like to work with you, but are you sure that you won’t be bored here?” At about this moment, I realized that something was going wrong, not much - because it was me who, as an interviewer, had to show with all my might how I was excited and all that. We still talked, and he called the project manager, who immediately said from the door: “Do not be offended if I ask too directly, but how do you work with people on the team who are not as smart as you?”. Yeah, I wish each developer to hear such an interview question once, just to laugh at his answer later. My was "still no problems."
After the interview, I called the agent and said that I was not interested in the vacancy. At first he was indignant, but then he seemed to understand why. Well, that's wonderful, I thought, chao. Nope The next day, the agent called again - he was called by my manager, who, in his own words, had not slept all night and wanted to try again to persuade me. No, no, thank you.
... and treat it appropriately. Learn rituals, lick resumes, give verified answers to standard questions, ask when asked and do not be clever. I missed my financially advantageous opportunity because I honestly answered the question “why do you want to change jobs”. Another dude successfully completed a 6-hour interview, relaxed, and decided to joke: “Wow, no one has a Facebook account open in the workplace. How do you relax here? ”, After which he was sent home. Well done, snatched defeat from the mouth of victory.
The fact is that ordinary people will interview you. Many of them took their questions from the Internet. Few of them asked themselves how their questions could help in the search. Not all of them have seen your resume, and not the fact that you generally fit the description. But you know what? This is New York, baby, and this is a big investment bank. For every job there are dozens (maybe hundreds) of those who wish. They have someone to choose from. A few stories:
Before you go into the details - a brief overview of me. I am a developer with about 10 years of experience, writing for the .NET platform. The first seven years I was based in St. Petersburg and 3 years ago I moved to the states.
So let's go!
Agents
This is the first thing that catches the eye - agents everywhere. They are no longer just here for convenience - without them you will not find anything interesting, because many companies publish their vacancies only for a long time no one bites. The task of the agent is to find in the villages and villages everyone who could undergo an interview, and for each attached soul he receives a percentage of his salary. Those.
- Know a good agent - 50% of success, maybe more. Each of them works with a certain group of companies, and it may very well be that your agent just physically cannot offer you anything interesting.
- Your potential ability to pass an interview makes you very, very attractive in the eyes of agents. Another thing is that such love usually cools to absolute zero after the first undelivered interview.
- Your personal happiness, interests, prospects, etc., - only you care. If the agent could sell you to galleys, he would do it.
- Although most agents specialize in hiring employees for a specific area and know some vocabulary, there are also flying peppers. Just be ready to answer whether you are programming in XML.
For example, once a caller from California called me and persuaded me for a long time to consider an opportunity from some media company. It did not stop, that I did not even hear about any of the keywords that he listed to me. As it turned out, he needed a sysadmin.
')
The big exception is you know exactly which company you want to get into and just send them your resume. This works great for large companies like Microsoft, Google, etc.
New York and the town 50 miles north are two big differences.
It's obvious, isn't it? But suppose you are offered a trip to a non-binding interview in a beautiful place near the national park - what will you expect? Beautiful nature and less pathos? And you will be wrong, because they do not take into account the lifestyle of the famous "one-story" America.
The point here is this. If in a big city there is a line-up of competing specialists for each vacancy, then in rural areas who are unoccupied and living nearby will work. Moreover, all those who could decently develop, most likely found work in the city.
Here is an example: I went for an interview just to practice, so I was rasbalen and calm. The show began with a pleasant conversation with the project manager. We chatted about this and that, he periodically inserted technical questions like “by the way, what is X”, etc., and then passed me on to the SQL guru. I scrubbed rust from my knowledge and gave him a solution that is not the fact that something was solving. But it turned out to be not so easy to check, because after 20 minutes we just agreed that there were definitely working decisions and parted friends. The next interview was about algorithms, and strange things started happening here. My DFS code was called “the best implementation of this algorithm that I saw in the interview.” Ok, I thought, you’re probably joking. A couple of the following answers were awarded about the same epithets, then one of the solutions was recognized as "this is better than the answer I had in mind." After he asked for everything he wanted, and I asked everything I could, he unobtrusively said: “Well, like, understand me correctly, I would certainly like to work with you, but are you sure that you won’t be bored here?” At about this moment, I realized that something was going wrong, not much - because it was me who, as an interviewer, had to show with all my might how I was excited and all that. We still talked, and he called the project manager, who immediately said from the door: “Do not be offended if I ask too directly, but how do you work with people on the team who are not as smart as you?”. Yeah, I wish each developer to hear such an interview question once, just to laugh at his answer later. My was "still no problems."
After the interview, I called the agent and said that I was not interested in the vacancy. At first he was indignant, but then he seemed to understand why. Well, that's wonderful, I thought, chao. Nope The next day, the agent called again - he was called by my manager, who, in his own words, had not slept all night and wanted to try again to persuade me. No, no, thank you.
Interview - an art form
... and treat it appropriately. Learn rituals, lick resumes, give verified answers to standard questions, ask when asked and do not be clever. I missed my financially advantageous opportunity because I honestly answered the question “why do you want to change jobs”. Another dude successfully completed a 6-hour interview, relaxed, and decided to joke: “Wow, no one has a Facebook account open in the workplace. How do you relax here? ”, After which he was sent home. Well done, snatched defeat from the mouth of victory.
Human factor
The fact is that ordinary people will interview you. Many of them took their questions from the Internet. Few of them asked themselves how their questions could help in the search. Not all of them have seen your resume, and not the fact that you generally fit the description. But you know what? This is New York, baby, and this is a big investment bank. For every job there are dozens (maybe hundreds) of those who wish. They have someone to choose from. A few stories:
- The very first interview I went to was a fiasco. I thought that I would come, everyone would be surprised at my coolness, and immediately make an offer. In fact, it turned out like this: the Hindu who interviewed me asked something simple about LINQ. I replied. Hindu eyes began to glaze, he said: "It will not work" - "Why?" - 10 seconds pause - "hmm ... what is it all about?" - "LINQ query" - "hmm ... no, I do not know what you, but it won't work ”-“ are you sure? The last time this worked for me was just yesterday ”-“ Yes? Well, what is this? ”-“ This is a collection ”-“ no, it will not work ”. As I think now, the Hindu knew only about the sql-like syntax and did not know about methods like GroupBy, Select, etc. It happens.
- In one interview, I was asked: “If you write one return in the try block, and one in the finally block, who will win?”. And I did not know. I was ashamed. But I have never written anything like this in 10 years. Because such code is obviously bad. Now, if I wrote like that, I would know that the compiler would have told me "let me correct your writing, friend." I did not pass that interview. Probably hired a craftsman who was familiar with this compiler message.
- Very, very often, people ask about what they have struggled with lately, or what they specialize in, even if it has nothing to do with a vacancy, and is in no way able to weed out flies from cutlets. It is impossible to prepare for this. Just accept it.
- Well, the last story in this series. In one interview, another Hindu asks me: why are you mentioning so many technologies in your resume? I let him tell - what, why, where and how. And then he will declare to me - “I don’t like all these new technologies of yours, only evils from them. I don’t use anything like that in my team. ” Surprisingly, I passed the interview, although I decided not to continue further.
Tips:
- If someone has already sent your resume to some company, and then another agent offers the same vacancy - say politely no. I once said to the second - “no problem, send it in!”, And then I had a very unpleasant conversation when he found out about the first agent. Well, the chances of an interview immediately fall to zero.
- The questions “why do you want to change jobs” and “why our company” are sacred. It helps to believe in your answers.
- Entries - who asked what I said - help a lot to not make the same mistakes and polish the answers.
- Practice more.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/285610/
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