Get a job as a programmer at ABBYY.howto

Thanks to habranaruod for the warm welcome, comments and pluses to our first post. It is very pleasant to realize that both you (those who wrote comments) and us (those who are at the origins of the ABBYY blog on Habré) are worried about the same things. We were just about to answer most of the questions that were asked in the comments in our first posts. So expect in the very near future our stories about how our office looks and what it lives on, what “unknown” products we are releasing, what projects ABBYY is involved in and many more interesting things. And right now, I offer you a guide from my colleague on how to become part of our friendly team!

Suppose you are a programmer by profession, or you want to become one, and at the same time want to work in ABBYY. What awaits you after sending your resume to the company?

Let's start from the very beginning - with vacancies: There is always room for experienced programmers as well as students who just wrote “Hello, world!” on Visual Basic. At the same time, the company, for the most part, is in no hurry to hire people at all costs, but is looking for those who are able, right now, or in the long term, to strengthen the team. This approach has been applied since the founding of the company, and it is thanks to it that successful and competitive products have appeared and are developing. “People are our everything” (CEO, aka general director). At the same time, capable senior students who have behind them at least small advances in programming have very high chances of finding a job and undergoing training in a company with subsequent work on a commercial product. This is because the company is primarily focused on training personnel “from scratch” in its environment, which gives good results. However,

Now about the resume. They are quite ordinary - you can fill out a form on the website or send an email to resume@abbyy.com or job@abbyy.com . Programmers with experience should immediately attach samples of their code (the higher qualifications you declare, the more complex and high-quality the code should be), for “students”, that is, applicants without experience, this is not required. Then you need to wait a bit - the recruitment specialists (aka HR managers), although we are very frisky guys, they also need time to evaluate what should be done with a specific resume. Of course, there is always, albeit a minimal, but non-zero probability that your profile will be lost by a suddenly rebooted mail server, or it will be deleted by an evil sleepy adminanti-spam filter, so if you don’t receive a letter within 24 hours that the questionnaire has been accepted, you need to try again. If the resume seemed interesting to our personnel officers, they contact you and invite you for an interview. Typically, a prospective job seeker is contacted within a few days after they submit a resume. However, if they did not immediately answer that there was no chance, they could pick up a resume in weeks and months and call - this happens, for example, if a vacancy is opened that the applicant can apply for.

Well, here, they invited me for an interview. How is it arranged? Firstly, it can be quite long. One to five hours, depending on the success of the applicant. It all starts with solving several “quick-witted” tasks (“A piece of ice floats in a bucket of water. How will the water level change when the ice melts?”), And pairs of algorithmic (quickly - for O (log N) arithmetic operations on numbers - find Nth Fibonacci number). The tasks are given by the HR manager, and he also checks the solutions to the tasks “for quick wits”. This stage lasts one to two hours, and allows you to evaluate how much a person can think in general, to cope with standard and non-standard tasks, how he behaves in difficult situations - he tries to find a solution or quickly gives up if nothing works. Agree, for a programmer, an important enough skill is always to find a working solution. If all is well, an expert from among the programmers connects to the interview, who checks the solution of the algorithmic problems, and also evaluates the professional suitability of the applicant, talking with him on the content of his resume, and also offering to solve additional algorithmic problems. By the way, it is worth noting here that for “students” it is more important how well they solve problems - this shows their potential, and for programmers with experience it is more important how their experience is suitable for use in the company, although they should be pretty decent tasks. This part of the interview, which can last from an hour to three, is the most important, because the opinion of the expert, which he presents after the interview to the personnel department, becomes the main assessment of the applicant. At least,

So, this barrier has also been passed. Then the HR manager can offer you an interview with the future direct boss - the project manager. Most often, this conversation takes place immediately after a conversation with an expert, but sometimes, if you can’t immediately meet with the leader, you are scheduled to meet in a few days. The project manager will be interested in, first of all, how much you will approach a vacancy in his unit. It is very similar to an interview with an expert, only fewer tasks, and the conversation is more about practice. It is clear that he may not like you, but that’s selvah.

But that is not all, although you are already close to success. Now you have a meeting with the head of the department (aka DPD), or with the technical director (aka CTO), strict but fair, who makes the final decision on hiring the applicant. This meeting is usually quite short, but rich, and the expert’s positive assessment from the previous stage does not guarantee anything here, but only helps to form a good impression about you that you must try not to dispel. But sometimes all the positive reviews go to dust, and the applicant does not go home without brains. And this also happens.

And finally, the final battle of the meeting. With the head of the security department. Why is it the most secret military secret. I can’t tell, but it won’t hurt, except maybe a little. In general, as at the dentist’s appointment, the main thing is not to be afraid, and everything will be fine.

Now for sure. Level boss passed, level up. With bravura music, the HR manager congratulates you on successfully passing the entrance test. You discuss with him the formal aspects of employment, and after a while you sign a labor contract. “Welcome to the club!”, That is, for “students” - admission to the study group, and those with experience immediately fall into the working draft.

PS A reasonable question arises: why is all this necessary? Well, that is, why work at ABBYY as a programmer? What is so interesting about this work? We will answer these questions with other interesting posts!

Konstantin Tarachev
Head of Mobile Linguistic Application Development Group