Moving to work abroad: 6 services to help immigrants in the USA and Canada
Finding a job abroad and moving is an extremely difficult event with many subtle moments and pitfalls. The slightest help on the way to the goal will not be superfluous for the potential emigrant. Therefore, I have compiled a list of several useful services - they will help in finding a job, solving visa issues and communication in the new realities.
MyVisaJobs : Search for US Visa Sponsoring Companies
One of the most obvious ways to relocate to the United States or Canada is to look for an employer. This is not an easy process, about which many articles have been written. But you can at least slightly alleviate it, if you even begin to search with the right companies. Your task is to move, but it can be difficult for a company to bring an employee from abroad. Small startups are unlikely to spend resources on this, it is much more effective to look for employers who actively hire foreigners.
MyVisaJobs is an excellent resource for finding such companies. It contains statistics on the number of work visas to the USA (H1B) issued by a number of companies to their employees.
The site maintains a constantly updated rating of the 100 most active employers in terms of hiring foreigners. On MyVisaJob you can find out which companies most often apply for H1B visas, how many of them come with such a visa, and what average salaries such immigrants get.
Note : in addition to data for workers, the site has statistics on universities and student visas.
Paysa : Salary Analysis by US Industry and Region
If MyVisaJob is more focused on collecting visa information, then Paysa collects statistics on salaries. Basically, the service covers the field of technology, so the data is presented for professions related to IT. Using this site, you can find out how much programmers pay in large companies like Amazon, Facebook or Uber, and compare the salaries of engineers in different states and cities.
What is interesting - with the help of various search settings you can filter the results to find out, for example, which skills and technologies are the most profitable today.
Like the previous resource, Paysa can be used in terms of training - it shows the average salaries of graduates from different universities. So if you are going to study in America first, studying this information will not be amiss from the point of view of your subsequent career.
SB Relocate : Search for information on specific visa issues
A work visa is far from the most ideal immigration tool, especially when it comes to the United States. The number of H1B visas issued each year is limited; they are several times smaller than the applications received from companies. For example, for 2019, 65 thousand H1B visas were allocated, and about 200 thousand applications were received. Who will get a visa and who will not, is determined during a special lottery. It turns out that more than 130 thousand people found an employer who agreed to pay them a salary and become a sponsor for the move, but they will not be given a visa because they simply were not lucky in the drawing.
At the same time, there are other options for moving, but finding information about them yourself is not always easy. SB Relocate service solves exactly this problem - firstly, in his store you can buy ready-made documents with answers to questions about different types of visas (O-1 , EB-1 , which gives a green card), the process of processing them and even checklists for self-assessment of the chances of receiving them, and secondly, you can order a data collection service for your specific situation. After listing your questions within 24 you get answers with links to official government resources and licensed lawyers. Important: content on the site is presented including in Russian.
The main purpose of the service is to save on communication with lawyers, the project has a network of specialists who provide answers to questions and conduct reviews of published content. Such outsourcing is several times cheaper than direct contact with a lawyer from the very beginning - to only assess your chances of obtaining a visa you will have to pay $ 200- $ 500 for consultations.
Among other things, on the site you can arrange the service of personal branding, sharpened for visa tasks. This is necessary to obtain some work visas (for example, O-1) - the presence of interviews, professional publications in well-known international media will be a plus for a visa application.
Global Skills : search for technical jobs with the possibility of relocation to Canada
The site publishes vacancies for technical experts from Canadian companies that sponsor the move. The whole scheme works like this: the applicant fills out a questionnaire, which indicates experience, technologies that I would like to use in my work. Then the resume falls into the database, which companies from Canada have access to.
If one of the employers is interested in a resume, then the service will help to organize an interview and, if successful, to collect a package of documents for an accelerated move within a couple of weeks. At the same time, documents for obtaining the right to work help to apply, including for spouses, and for children - permission to study.
Offtop: two more useful services
In addition to services that directly solve specific problems in the process of emigration, there are two other resources that cover issues whose importance becomes clear with time.
Linguix : improved written English and bug fixes
If you are going to work in the USA or Canada, then you will obviously have to actively conduct written communication. And while verbal communication still can somehow be explained by gestures, then in the form of a text everything is much more difficult. The Linguix service is on the one hand the so-called grammar checker - there are different ones, including Grammarly and Ginger - which checks errors on all sites where you can write text (there are extensions for Chrome and Firefox ).
But its functionality is not limited to this. In the web version, you can create documents and work with them in a special editor. It contains a module for assessing the readability and complexity of the text. It helps when you need to withstand a certain level of complexity - not to write too simply so that it does not look silly, but also not to be too clever.
An important point : the web editor also has a secret mode for editing private documents. It works like a secret chat in the messenger - after editing the text, it is deleted.
LinkedIn : Networking
In Russia there is no such cult of networking, self-presentation and recommendations, which is present in North America. Yes, and LinkedIn social network is blocked and is not very popular. In the meantime, for the United States, this is a very good way to find quality jobs.
The presence of a “pumped” network of contacts in this network can be a plus for employment. If you communicate well with colleagues on LinkedIn, publish relevant professional content, then when a vacancy appears in their company, they can recommend you. Often, large organizations (such as Microsoft, Dropbox, and the like) have internal portals where employees can send CVs to HR people who they think are suitable for open positions. Such applications usually take precedence over just letters from people on the street, so extensive dating will help you get an interview faster.
In order to "grow" a network of contacts on LinkedIn, you need to behave actively in it - add current and former colleagues, participate in discussions in profile groups, send invitations to other members of groups with whom you managed to communicate. This is real work, but with proper regularity, this approach can be beneficial.