How I looked 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 soul of the experience of changing work 8 years ago, but in Russia. This story is about how my expectations met with American reality.

Before going into 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 your eye - agents are everywhere. They are no longer just for convenience here - without them you will not find anything interesting, because many companies publish their vacancies only when no one pecks for a long time. The agent’s task is to find in the villages and villages all who could pass the interview, and for each attached soul he receives a percentage of his salary. Those.
  • To know a good agent is 50% success, maybe more. Each of them works with a certain group of companies, and it may very well turn out that your agent simply physically cannot offer you anything interesting.
  • Your potential ability to be interviewed makes you very, very attractive in the eyes of agents. Another thing is that such love usually cools down to an absolute zero after the first unfinished interiorview.
  • Your personal happiness, interests, prospects, etc. - only concern you. If an agent could sell you to the galleys, he would.
  • Although most agents specialize in hiring employees for a specific area and know some kind of vocabulary, there are also stray peppers. Just be prepared to answer whether you are programming in XML.

For example, one day a dude from California called me and persuaded me to consider the opportunity from some media company for a long time. He did not stop that I did not even hear about any of the keywords that he listed for me. As it turned out later, he needed a system administrator.

The big exception is that 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 a town 50 miles north of it are two big differences.


This is 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 you do not take into account the lifestyle of the famous "one-story" America.

Here's the thing. If in a big city there is a line of competing specialists for each vacancy, then in the countryside who is unemployed and living nearby will work. At the same time, everyone who could decently develop, most likely found a job in the city.

Here is an example: I went for an interview just to work out, so I was ruffled and calm. The show began with a pleasant conversation with the project manager. We chatted about this and that, periodically inserted technical questions like “by the way, what is X”, etc., and then passed me an SQL guru. I scraped the rust from my knowledge and gave him a solution that was not the fact that something was solving. But it turned out to be not so simple to check, because after 20 minutes we just agreed that there were definitely working solutions and parted with friends. The next interview was about algorithms, and then strange things started to happen. My code for DFS was called "the best implementation of this algorithm that I saw in an interview." Ok, I thought, you're probably joking like that. A couple of the following answers were awarded roughly the same epithets, then one of the solutions was recognized as "it is better than the answer that I had in mind." After he asked everything he wanted, and I asked everything he could, he unobtrusively said: “Well, you see, understand me correctly, I would certainly want to work with you, but are you sure that you will not be bored here?” At about this moment, I realized that something was going wrong, much wrong - because it was me who, as an interviewee, should do my best to show how excited I was and all that. We still talked, and he called the project manager, who immediately said, “Don’t be offended if I ask too directly, but how do you work with people in a team who are not as smart as you are?” Yeah, I wish every developer to hear such a question in an interview once, just to then laugh at their answer. My was "still no problem." which I had in mind. " After he asked everything he wanted, and I asked everything he could, he unobtrusively said: “Well, you see, understand me correctly, I would certainly want to work with you, but are you sure that you will not be bored here?” At about this moment, I realized that something was going wrong, much wrong - because it was me who, as an interviewee, should do my best to show how excited I was and all that. We still talked, and he called the project manager, who immediately said, “Don’t be offended if I ask too directly, but how do you work with people in a team who are not as smart as you are?” Yeah, I wish every developer to hear such a question in an interview once, just to then laugh at their answer. My was "still no problem." which I had in mind. " After he asked everything he wanted, and I asked everything he could, he unobtrusively said: “Well, you see, understand me correctly, I would certainly want to work with you, but are you sure that you will not be bored here?” At about this moment, I realized that something was going wrong, much wrong - because it was me who, as an interviewee, should do my best to show how excited I was and all that. We still talked, and he called the project manager, who immediately said, “Don’t be offended if I ask too directly, but how do you work with people in a team who are not as smart as you are?” Yeah, I wish every developer to hear such a question in an interview once, just to then laugh at their answer. My was "still no problem." "Well, type, understand me correctly, I would certainly like to work with you, but are you sure that you will not be bored here?" At about this moment, I realized that something was going wrong, much wrong - because it was me who, as an interviewee, should do my best to show how excited I was and all that. We still talked, and he called the project manager, who immediately said, “Don’t be offended if I ask too directly, but how do you work with people in a team who are not as smart as you are?” Yeah, I wish every developer to hear such a question in an interview once, just to then laugh at their answer. My was "still no problem." "Well, type, understand me correctly, I would certainly like to work with you, but are you sure that you will not be bored here?" At about this moment, I realized that something was going wrong, much wrong - because it was me who, as an interviewee, should do my best to show how excited I was and all that. We still talked, and he called the project manager, who immediately said, “Don’t be offended if I ask too directly, but how do you work with people in a team who are not as smart as you are?” Yeah, I wish every developer to hear such a question in an interview once, just to then laugh at their answer. My was "still no problem." not so much - for it is I, as an interviewee, who should do my best to show how excited I am and all that. We still talked, and he called the project manager, who immediately said, “Don’t be offended if I ask too directly, but how do you work with people in a team who are not as smart as you are?” Yeah, I wish every developer to hear such a question in an interview once, just to then laugh at their answer. My was "still no problem." not so much - for it is I, as an interviewee, who should do my best to show how excited I am and all that. We still talked, and he called the project manager, who immediately said, “Don’t be offended if I ask too directly, but how do you work with people in a team who are not as smart as you are?” Yeah, I wish every developer to hear such a question in an interview once, just to then laugh at their answer. My was "still no problem."

After the interview, I called the agent and said that the vacancy was not interesting to me. At first he was indignant, but then he seemed to understand why. Well, it's wonderful, I thought, ciao. Nope. The next day, the agent called again - my manager called him, who, in his own words, had not slept all night, and wanted to try again to persuade me. No no no thanks.

Interviews - a form of art


... and you must treat him accordingly. Learn rituals, lick out resumes, give accurate answers to standard questions, ask when asked and not get smart. I missed my most 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: “Well, no one has Facebook open at the workplace. How are you relaxing here? ”After which he was sent home. Well done, pulled out defeat from the jaws 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 saw 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 vacancy there are dozens (maybe hundreds) of applicants. They have plenty to choose from. A few stories:
  • The very first interview I went to was a complete 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 Indian who was interviewing me asked something simple about LINQ. I answered. The Indian’s eyes began to go glassy, ​​he said: “This will not work” - “Why?” - 10 seconds pause - “hmm ... but what is it all about?” - “LINQ query” - “hmm ... no, I don’t know what you, but it will not work ”-“ are you sure? The last time this worked for me no more than yesterday "-" Yes? But what is this? ”-“ This is a collection ”-“ no, it won’t work. ” As I think now, the Indian knew only about sql-like syntax and did not know about methods like GroupBy, Select, etc. It happens.
  • At one interview, they asked me: “If you write one return in a try block, and one in a finally block, who will win?” I didn’t know. I was ashamed. But I have never written such a thing in 10 years. Because such code is obviously bad. Now, if I had written like this, I would have known that the compiler would have told me “come on, correct your writing, my friend.” I did not go through that interview. They probably hired a craftsman who was familiar with this compiler message.
  • Very, very often people ask about what they have been struggling with recently, or what they specialize in, even if it has nothing to do with the vacancy, and is not able to weed out flies from cutlets. It is impossible to prepare for this. Just humble yourself.
  • Well, the last story in this series. In one interview, another Indian asks me - why is so much technology mentioned in your resume? Let me tell him what, why, where, how. And here he will tell me, “I don’t like all these your new technologies, some troubles from them. My team doesn’t use anything like that. ” Surprisingly, I went through the interview, although I decided not to continue.


Tips:


  • If someone has already sent your resume to some company, and then another agent is offering the same vacancy - politely say no. I once said to the second - “no problem, send it!”, And then I had a very unpleasant conversation when he found out about the first agent. Well, the chances of an interview immediately drop to zero.
  • The questions “why do you want to change jobs” and “why our company” are sacred. It helps to believe in your answers.
  • The notes — who asked what I answered — really help not to make the same mistakes and polish the answers.
  • Train more.

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