I don’t usually post a lot of things on social media, just as more important stuff. I believe that the most distant people end up following our lives through major milestones such as change, marriage, jobs, etc. that we share, and, we end up following theirs lives the same way.
Due to the nature of social networks, the impression we have is that these events happen suddenly, out of nowhere.
Suddenly my friend opened a company. Overnight a colleague left the country.
This is a problem because we always forgot that behind the scenes, to make this event happened there is a lot of energy and effort (or lack of energy and effort).
When I posted that I had moved to Ireland, many of my friends asked me how I managed to get out of Brazil, with a legal visa, with no deadline to return during a pandemic season. I never know how to answer properly because if I give the accurate answer to this question, it would be: “man, I applied for a job opportunity on LinkedIn, I did the interview and I came”.
I do not want to give this answer because it will not add any value to anyone who asked me and this person usually wants to know the process to get me there.
And this is the keyword, the process.
The process is something that does not happen suddenly, the process is what you do every day, every week, every month, every year and the event is the result of the process.
When I go to answer my friends that question, I always try to give a summary of the processes that eventually led me to leave Brazil but I always find the answer incomplete so, in this text, I want to give a complete answer to this question.
Here I will try to summarize the 3 processes (among many others) that were most relevant in this journey.
Experience and Graduation
For an Irish company to hire a person from outside Brazil it needs to go through an expensive, bureaucratic and time-consuming process. Let’s put ourselves in the position of the company for a moment.
I decided to hire someone from another country because they have the compatible skill set that I want. This person does not have a work permit and I will help them apply for the Stamp 1 Critical Skills Visa.
After evaluating the candidate the company will have to:
- Collect documents that prove that this employee has a degree and work experience relevant to the country.
- Organize the documents and fill out extensive forms.
- Pay a fee of 1000 Eur and the time of my employee to do all the paperwork.
- Wait 12 weeks and still hope that the visa application will not be denied.
- Wait until the employee moves to the country and settle down to start to work.
- Hope that after all of this, the employee goes quickly through the onboard process and adapts well to the new work environment.
See how for the company, hire a person abroad who will cost more time and energy from your team, requires that the person’s visa permit in the country be approved by the government, will have to pay a decent salary and it will take a long time at least 4 to 6 months to even start to add value to the company. Therefore, companies do not want and cannot bring people with little experience and without formal education.
The profile of the people who are accepted is generally a professional with 5 or more years of experience, who have a complete education degree and who have already worked with the technologies used in the company. If you are not in this profile, it is essential to work on these points.
If you are not yet graduated, I recommend finishing a college in the IT field, even if it is a two and a half year course as System Analysis and Development (yes, this is accepted as a valid diploma).
If you do not have five years of experience, I recommend you to enter the area or continue working in the IT area.
As for the technologies you should study/work with, attention is needed. During this time of accumulation of experience, keep an eye on the job market abroad. Look at the technologies that companies ask for in their positions and make a conscious effort to try to work with this here in Brazil as much as possible. If you get an experience that fits very well in the company you are applying to, they may ignore the fact that you have only 3 or 4 years of experience.
At one point in my career, I looked at the technologies that companies worked with outside the country and realized that my current job was not up to date and that I was getting “obsolete”. I made the difficult decision to leave the company for several reasons, but the deciding factor was the outdated technology them I moved to a company where I worked with everything newer and “updated” with the international market. Result of that? With four years of experience, I was hired and one of the reasons for the company ignore this 1 year left is the fact that I knew the company’s technologies. So, if I hadn’t decided to leave a company looking for a more up-to-date stack, I probably would have missed this opportunity.
Language
Learning a language is essential for you to get a job abroad while still in Brazil. That sounds clear, right? But bare with me, let’s expand that.
When we are dealing with an immigration process, considering that you passed the selection, you will need to go through several other barriers and make several very important decisions for your life shortly. You will need to ask, email, call, write letters and fill out forms in English. Therefore, you need to feel comfortable communicating in English. Thought for a moment about all the activities that likely will happen when you arrive in a new country like emailing the government of the country to ask when your visa will be issued, filling out bank account opening forms, looking for a home to live in, negotiating values, looking for a school for your child, taking a bus to work.
It sounds intimidating, right?
I always had a complex when it comes to English, I always considered myself “not fluent” and I thought my English was inferior because I never took a course like wise-up, English culture etc.
My English is self-taught, forged through the need to communicate with people when I played Dota or World of Warcraft which, for that virtual gaming environment, was just enough but not for real life. For years I was studying using Duolingo, studying alone until I was good enough to understand series, youtube videos, some songs and newspapers without subtitles. But since my goal was Canada, I would be required to take the dreaded IELTS test.
At this point, I was in a strange situation with my English. I knew it well enough to the point that I thought that a traditional school would not help me because I would take classes with very beginners but my “broken” English was not enough to get a good grade on the test. For this reason, I decided to invest in private lessons.
Paying for a private teacher is much more expensive than a traditional English course, but in return, he will identify your gaps and work surgically on what you need, instead of going through pre-programmed content. The fact that you are paying a lot more you end up investing more time and energy to try to get the most. During the period of classes with the teacher, I wrote practically one essay per day, in addition to doing grammar and listening exercises. Another great advantage is the fact that you are speaking to a person (who corrects you when you are wrong) in English for hours, which is very difficult to find in Brazil.
The result? I got 7 out of 9.
Taking the IELTS solved the worst problem I had: confidence. Because from that moment forward, I consider myself fluent and lost the embarrassment of speaking English to people. So much so that the next interview I passed. After arriving in Ireland I realized that you don’t have to be perfect, you end up seeing people who have English much worse than yours doing better than you just because that person is not ashamed.
So, if you’re being serious about immigration, you need to take your English seriously, too, but don’t be shy about talking to people. I believe that an English course will help you only if you are a beginner and there are actions that you can take in your day to day regardless of the level of English that will help you. Here are some examples:
- Take an Online English course
- Speak English with friends/partners who already know
- Duolingo
- Watch videos on youtube without subtitles (pew die pie, VSauce, etc.)
- Pay attention to the lyrics of the songs
- Change the language of the computer and phone
- Play games on English-speaking servers and be active in communication
- Participate in online language exchanges to speak with natives (usually free)
Interview, Resume and LinkedIn
In this part of the text, I will cover all the steps from before contacting the company and until you are hired.
During this period of job search abroad, it is important to keep in mind that your application will pass through the eyes and ears of many people from many different areas like HR, technical leader and managers. Not only your resume, LinkedIn profile but you will probably have to get in touch with these people as well.
As an example, I will give my experience. I applied for a job on LinkedIn, the company’s RH evaluated my profile, the company’s RH called me and talked a little more with me, code testing, my profile/resume was forwarded to the technical leader, I had an interview with technical leaders, and finally, I received the proposal.
In this process, it was involved:
- My resume
- My LinkedIn profile
- Ability to speak to RH and explain my past experiences
- Code Tests
- Ability to explain to Tech leaders my experience in technical terms
- Negotiate wages and benefits
- Ability to provide documents and prove my experiences to receive a visa
- Filling forms
If anything goes wrong during this whole process, I would not have been able to be here.
I realized in some interviews that I participated (and I was not hired) that I was not able to express myself and clearly explain my previous experiences. I thought I would be able to get by speaking in English but at the time I got stuck and couldn’t find the words. This happened not only because I forgot one word or the other, but because I had
Your resume and LinkedIn need to be clear so that everyone who reads it knows exactly what to expect, but you also need to be able to talk about it flawlessly. If you only translate your current resume to English you will not be prepared for the interview. The resume in English and your ability to talk about it in English are tightly coupled.
The good news is that all of the above points can be solved with one simple action: writing and improving your CV / Linkedin in English continuously. By creating a routine that will always improve your resume and Linkedin will help you think and reflect on your experiences in English which will help you to speak assertively and clearly during the interview and at the same time you will have a clear profile and objective.
But as I mentioned at the beginning of the text, this is not a checklist, it is a habit. I did several LinkedIn / curriculum iterations over the years looking until I’ was hired. Believe me, if you give a close look, You will always find ways to improve it.
In conclusion
Big projects like this don’t happen overnight. Turning a dream into reality happens every day when you spend time and energy on tasks that bring them closer to you.
This is not a checklist, they are processes. So these are actions that I did all the time, for weeks, months or even years. These are things I did on my weekend, the night after work when I had time off when I had any free time.
Eventually, this put me in the position where I applied for a job and I did not fail in the selection process.
In this article, I showed you the points that added the most value in my journey to encourage you to integrate actions in your daily life that will help you too. In my first projections, when I was in my first job, I would only be able to leave the country after about 5 years taking into account all these points. For a long time, I was discouraged to know that things would take so long and I almost gave up, but from the moment I started to take actions in the right direction, the results arrive exponentially, so don’t give up and focus on the small actions of every day that I’m sure you’ll achieve your goals as well.