Job Search for a Programmer in London

Disclaimer

Everything written below is based on my personal experience and does not claim to be true. Where possible, I give references to sources, read, check. If there is no link to the source, then it’s just my personal opinion, you can disagree with it, just don’t try to change mine.

We moved to London (United Kingdom) from Khabarovsk (Russia) at the end of 2014. My husband is a senior php developer, with extensive experience working with linux and in general a good clever. My professional luggage includes all nonsense like FoxPro, but at the last place of work I was developing for integration bus and JavaEE.

Step 1. Visa

Obviously, in order to come to the UK, a visa is required, in the context of work, perhaps the most realistic version of the Tier2 General.

It is arranged like this:
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1. An employer in the UK draws up some papers that allow him to import labor from abroad;
2. receives a quota for a future employee;
3. looking for a suitable candidate;
4. draws up a certificate of sponsorship on him;
5. candidate with this document goes to the visa application center and receives a Tier2 visa

Registration certificate of sponsorship and obtaining a visa usually fits into the calendar month, but if items 2 and 3 are interchanged, then longer.

Tier2 visa is issued for a period of one to three years (with the possibility of extension to 5) and allows a person to work specifically for this company, i.e. to enter and change employers will be very problematic, although options exist. But there is also a positive side: the spouse of the Tier2 owner receives a Tier2 dependent visa, which also gives the right to work in the UK (with the exception of doctors) and is no longer tied to an employer.

Everything written above is based on the experience of my husband. Then I will share my experience, taking into account the Tier2 dependent visa and finding a job already being in London, but I will also note the universal points for searching from Russia.

Links: a list of companies that make visas, information about visas .

Step 2. Prepare a summary

It is better to write a resume in English before looking for a job, it took an unexpectedly large amount of time from me. Excellent phrases in Russian when translated into English looked completely ugly, some terms are used differently, and to figure out how to write my education, I had to google.

For your own peace of mind, you can read articles with tips on preparing a summary in English, but I can not say that the rules are very different from those adopted in Russia. My resume on hh.ru was almost the same. The only difference is that you still need to write a block “profile”, aka “personal statement”, it is also “about me”, in which you need to write about your qualities and goals in the form of 3-4 coherent sentences. This, at least, will come in handy later during a telephone interview. I also didn’t mention gender in my resume, age and didn’t attach a photo, although I think it’s just a tribute to traditions and formalities, anyway, agents are probably looking for everyone on facebook and linkedin.

The next required step is to fill out the profile on linkedin (do not forget to choose the profile language English). On linkedin, there are indeed many recruiters and vacancies, plus most of the job search sites allow you to import information from there.

Step 3. Job search

I used jobserve.com , monster.co.uk and linkedin.com to find a job. Jobserve looks scary, but in my experience it turned out to be most useful, it allows you to fill out a profile on the site, attach several different resumes in the form of doc, pdf documents, and there are really a lot of vacancies.

When looking for a job in linkedin, it often goes to reed.co.uk, so it’s also worth filling out a profile there. Unfortunately, you cannot attach different versions of resumes to reed.co.uk.

It also makes sense to write a cover letter. Imagine that you are sending your resume as an attachment by e-mail, a cover letter is what should be in the letter itself. I was usually limited to the standard template that all sites offer for job search. Perhaps more complex options have a greater effect, but I doubt it.

As a rule, the vacancy indicates whether the candidate should have the right to work in the UK, or the company is ready to make a visa. The latter are obviously smaller, but they are found.

Henceforth, experience related to finding a job on site with a work permit.

I wrote down all the vacancies to which I responded to a single file, this is useful:

1. Most of the vacancies are placed through agencies. Accordingly, it is enough to send your resume to each agency once, they will save it in their database and call for any suitable position. So I wrote down from which agency there was a vacancy to cover as much as possible.

2. Almost in all vacancies written contact person. Accordingly, if they liked the candidacy, they call back and say “Hi, I am Btrtfgh OIIgegkj from Kjhiuhjhqrb Jhldljii agency. I understand you. App. So, because Suddenly, 99% of my responses were to java developer vacancies, and it’s almost impossible to parse the company's name by ear, the only hope is to identify which job is being discussed and to find out what to answer the question “what kind of salary you want” is to write down the name of the contact person. Solving Tom, Sam or Emma by ear is much easier than Brickendon Consulting Limited or Handle Bearing Limited.

Another very interesting thing: as a rule, after a response to a vacancy, I was called back literally after 15 minutes, a maximum of an hour, so the task of finding the desired job is greatly simplified.

3. Quite often, a new vacancy on the site is just a fresh copy of an already familiar job that went into the archive, and this fact is not reflected on the site in any way. So, to write down the main details of a job (position, place, salary), so as not to waste time and energy on such repetitions, is also useful.

All vacancies can be divided into two types:
- permanent (permanent); for such vacancies, the salary is indicated in the form of an annual amount before taxes (see what amount will be paid per month and after paying taxes you can here thesalarycalculator.co.uk);
- contract (contract); contract hire is usually carried out for a specific period and for a specific project. Contracts are: both for 3 months and for a year. Here, as a rule, the rate per working day is indicated, taxation for contract workers is different, I did not go into details, because I was looking for a permanent job. By the way, this option is also popular with the “trade in carcasses of programmers”, the company makes a person a visa, draws up documents and supplies contracts.

Step 4. First Call

If a resume fits the job described, an agency recruiter calls a candidate, talks about a company that is looking for employees, and asks a couple of standard questions:
- availability and type of visa;
- when ready to go to work;
- salary expectations, in this place they often ask the amount at the previous place of work, which is very funny, at the time of the move, my annual salary in Khabarovsk fell between 4 and 6 thousand pounds, and here I considered vacancies with a level of 30-40 thousand pounds (this is middle, 30 may be a junior, java senior may be 60). In general, we smile nicely and say that it is too difficult to compare.
- what role interests, here it is desirable to recall what kind of vacancy in question and answer that this is exactly the job of your dreams. However, I periodically answered honestly “I just came to the UK and want to find a job as soon as possible, everything suits me that falls into the familiar technology stack” and it also worked :)

Then the recruiter promises to send a resume to the client and call back, usually it ends there.

These calls are very useful:
- you get used to talking on the phone in English. This is by the way one of the most difficult things, the quality of communication often leaves much to be desired, and if in Russian the brain routinely builds an information picture, then in English it just does not work. Plus, here you can find a huge number of different accents and pronunciations, you just need to get used to it and learn to distinguish. [non-political block] There is nothing worse than a Hindu accent! [end of non-political block]
- grind answers to standard questions. Some completely natural phrases in Russian are not easy to write in English on the go, yet no courses can prepare a person for a conversation about technology, project and role in a team.

Step 5. Technical Interview

If the resume is still interested in a company that is looking for an employee, a technical interview will follow. The recruiter calls back to clarify that you are still interested in the work, coordinates the time and sends a letter describing the vacancy, the company and useful tips on what to expect from the interview.

A technical interview can take place in the most varied forms, I came across such options in different combinations:

- Telephone interview
Not a very common option, if you are looking for work already in place, usually immediately invited to attend. If, however, telephone is first, then the interview usually lasts 30-40 minutes and looks like a classic conversation about past experience, technologies used, team organization, there may be theoretical questions in the spirit of "what distinguishes left join from inner join”.
The main difficulties are about the same as in the case of the first call, often on that side the interviewers use the speakerphone, so it remains only to listen carefully and not be shy to ask questions again.

- Classic test task
The candidate receives the job description by mail, after the allotted time sends his decision in the form of an archive / link to the repository. When you receive such a task, it is usually useful to search it on the Internet, the probability of finding a solution on github is very, very high. The possible benefit lies both in the chance to peep an elegant solution, and in the conclusion “well, I can definitely do better than this.”
It is clear that when performing a test task, you need to look at the job description and use the technologies specified there to a reasonable extent.
If, after such a test, you are invited to the next interview, be prepared to answer specific questions on your code, why it’s done so and not otherwise what can be improved, etc. It often happens that the test task was done some time ago, or mixed up in the head with other tasks, be sure to review the code before the interview so that the thought “I wrote this?!?” Did not interfere with answering questions.

- Test task on site
Almost always, with a face-to-face interview of the candidate, some kind of testing awaits. Test options can be an infinite amount. Next, describe what happened to me personally.
SHL tests are a type of psychometric tests from SHL . I had to pass Speech and Numerical Ability Tests: “Speech abilities tests are aimed at assessing your ability to understand information in writing and evaluating statements relating to such information. Tests of numerical abilities are aimed at assessing your ability to understand the tables with statistical and numerical data, as well as your ability to deduce ("(c) www.shldirect.com/ru/practice-tests ).
In other words, the first type of test consists of several questions in the format of a small text (1-2 paragraphs) and several statements for which you need to select the option "true / false / not specified." The difficulty increases from question to question, and the time to perform the test is quite limited. Those who have submitted IELTS are undoubtedly familiar with such tasks and will most likely be able to show a fairly high result.
The second type is a mathematical problem based on tables, charts or graphs, basically it is necessary to consider proportions and percentages. In order to properly understand the condition of the problem in English, additional efforts may be required, plus in real life it is not so often necessary to do calculations on the basis of diagrams, so it makes sense to solve several training tasks.

- Test of theoretical and practical knowledge of a particular language
Such a test can be either in the form of some online test, where you need to choose the correct answer to a theoretical question and write code in a special form for a practical question, or in the form of questions on a piece of paper to which you need to write an answer and / or sample code. The online test seemed to me the most stressful and least objective way. I passed the test from the hackerrank.com resource . Theoretical questions were quite simple and essentially demonstrated that I read a JAVA book and is able to use linux, but practical tasks required writing a fairly complex algorithm in a short time in a completely unusual environment. It is not often necessary to write code without a syntax hint on the keyboard, where special characters are located in absolutely unexpected places (to write the condition “or” - “||” I opened the symbol table I copied the desired character). The correctness of the assignment is determined by passing the tests laid down in the system, after the interview I tried to solve several problems on the site itself and was faced with the fact that it was not enough to write the correct algorithm to pass, you also need to correctly format the output, which is trite depending on the locale, which executes the code. In general, all this does not contribute to a calm and high-quality writing of the algorithm, and I strongly doubt that it shows the real possibilities of the candidate. Best of all, such tests will be passed by people who took part in programming contests in the recent past, if it is not about you that you can practice in advance in similar systems.
In another place, it was necessary to perform a test task on paper, a framework of classes was given for the implementation of a single-linked list, some methods needed to be supplemented, others to be implemented completely. This task was significantly simpler than what is found on hackerrank.com, and is rather designed for eliminating juniors that are completely unsuitable for business (at the same time two girls completed the assignment, just graduated from the university, judging by their appearance, the task seemed not so easy).

- Practical on-site test
Candidate is asked to perform a test task on the spot. The main difficulty lies in the unusual working environment, but this option is still easier than on-line testing, because It is possible to test your code with your own tests, and not something mysterious on the other side of testing.

- Pseudo-language “aptitude for programming” test (A Programming Aptitude (Pseudoocode) test)
I also had to perform this type of test on paper. At the start of the test, the simplest language is given with several basic commands (set the value of the variable to 0, assign the value of one variable to another, increase the value of the variable, perform all the actions inside the loop N times). The task is to implement in the course of the test the simplest arithmetic functions (addition of two numbers, subtraction, multiplication, division, comparison, etc.) while in each subsequent task you can use the functions from the previous ones. A pseudo-language remotely resembles an assembler, but even having no idea how it works, solving tasks is not difficult for a person who knows that multiplication is an addition repeated N times.

- Practical task on the board with a marker (white boarding task)
In the process of an in-person interview, a candidate is asked to implement an algorithm on the board, as a rule, the algorithm itself is not at all complicated, because must fit in a limited space and take literally 10-15 minutes. In addition to the actual verification of elementary knowledge of the language and algorithms, such a task demonstrates well communication skills, as a rule, you need to clarify the task, make some assumptions or limitations.

- in-person interview
Standard conversation about experience and technology, technical issues are usually more than on the phone. As a rule, it is easier than telephone, because the person is clearly visible and audible. If there is difficulty in explaining something, you can always draw a diagram on a sheet or clarify the spelling of the term. This interview lasts about an hour.
When you receive an invitation for an in-person interview, you must compile a route in advance and look at the street panorama. Most likely you will have to travel by subway / train / train, traffic jams in this case are not terrible, but various problems occur (you can check the current status of the necessary lines and the schedule of scheduled work at tfl.gov.uk ). If the route with transfers, lay extra time, Google draws an extremely optimistic time for it, I can only fit into it in familiar places. In particularly difficult cases, it is worth going along a route or part of it in advance.
In terms of appearance, I had the feeling that it was better to be dressed too formally than not enough. Recruiters do not always warn whether a dress code is adopted in the company, so pants and a strict shirt would be a good option.

Step 6. Final Interview

Most often, a conversation with a manager of a higher rank than a team leader who conducted a technical interview and / or a personnel department employee. They ask standard questions about motivation, life goals, plans for the near future. It will be useful to do the preparation of answers to such questions in English, read tips on this matter on the websites of local agencies (for example, here or here ).

The final interview can be carried out on the same day as the technical, and after some time. In the first variant, an in-person interview, taking into account tests and conversations with several people, may take several hours. My personal record of the interview, which lasted continuously for four hours, usually still about two.

Step 7. Job offer

The most enjoyable moment in the whole process is receiving a job offer. As a rule, the recruiter calls back and tells the good news. Be sure to ask to send a letter with all the details and conditions of the proposal before giving an answer (adequate agents do this without reminding, but there are also not quite adequate ones). At this point, it is usually specified when the answer is to be given, the usual period is 2-3 days. I once managed to beg a whole week, explaining that I really, really like the offer, but I have already agreed to another final interview and would like to try it out.

Conclusion

Now on the UK labor market there are a lot of programmer jobs. It took me a couple of weeks to get all the way from the resume to the first sentence. And a couple more weeks to get an offer that I really liked and go to work.

Most of the agents with whom I had the opportunity to communicate, were quite well versed in the technical details of the vacancy, were polite and punctual in English, called back at the appointed time, sent all the necessary information and gave useful advice. In general, they made a much more pleasant impression than their colleagues from Russia.