Howdy Colleagues,

I was wondering whether you know ways/websites/channels/magic owls to how to help find a job in USA as a programmer as in for relocating there while the company pays for the Visa and the travel expenses?

My land-lord's son found a job as a programmer in Texas and the company was generous and kind enough to pay his travelling expenses, as well for his wife and kid.

I have an account in Monster & Indeed and I send CVs very often, but no luck so far.

And I want to go there to work and live, not like some people to rely on welfare, I have worked my whole life.

Thank you!

BR,
Stefany

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Stefany, web programmer

Probably easier to stay in Europe. Most places I seen requires at least a green card.

It also is a lot on your talent and experience. I am guessing that guy have worked for a long time and have a filled CV.

Also to really have a chance, the real way is to have an active LinkedIn profile with good skills, contacts and so on. (I got my job from a random mail from a English recruiter, but I did not have to move for this job as we have a office in Stockholm)

Unfortunately, visas for residency are rather limited, and even if you get approved by a company for an H1-B, they go very quickly, in the sense that the year's allotment is used up in the first few days of the year. I believe there are only about 50,000 available each year. More permanent visas are also difficult to acquire.

In terms of getting a company to sponsor you, it's really the same as any job search. Make yourself known as a good programmer and use networking to connect with people who might be interested in employing you, or know other people who might. Hiring someone from overseas puts a few bars in the way that don't exist for someone who is already a legal resident, so it would help a great deal to have some sort of connection to the hiring manager to convince them you're worth sponsoring. A larger company is also more likely to have experience sponsoring employees from overseas, and may be more willing to do so again. As with any position, the more difficult and in-demand your skillset is, the more likely you are to capture their interest as well.

I also recommend getting a LinkedIn profile, if you are interested in a job in the United States. Recruiters use LinkedIn all the time to search for potential interview candidates. After you create a LinkedIn profile, search for people that you know or have worked with on the site, and add them as connections. The more connections you have on the site, the easier it is for recruiters to find you when they are looking for candidates.

My current job is due to a recruiter finding my LinkedIn profile and contacting me (of course, I had to be successful with the job interviews after that).

Anyway, from what I read online, LinkedIn is not that popular outside of the USA. But in the USA, it is very popular, and also very useful for getting a job.

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be immersed

As I said it is big in Sweden too at least, and the recuriter that called me for my current job was from the UK.

I guess an average would be 1 recruiter per week, they usally come in chunks a few months after the newly examined engineers and people have been in place and they realise they need somebody that can work in corporate world too.

Also original poster, without any knowledge of how much and how you worked and with what it is hard to give advice. Also are you generally looking for jobs anywhere or is it just US? Have you done any open source work? Do you have a GitHub account?

Because whereever I looked, the two things we that works as programmers do after reading the work test, is also check out GitHub repos or public work. Because we want to know how well you write code if we are to work with you.

It's tangential to your goal, but you could consider going for a graduate degree in Computer Science. I work at a tiny company, too small to sponsor anybody for a visa, but we did hire a (paid) intern for a summer with an F-1 visa, and the process was painless for us. I think you just have to get through your first academic year.

If you can get in with an F1 visa and demonstrate your value, it should be a lot easier to convince a company to go through the process of sponsoring you. Plus having an advanced degree would, I assume, make it easier to be selected for a traditional work visa.

Of course, that all assumes you've got the financial resources and interest for further schooling.

1. I haven't heard good things about Monster; expand and try other places such as Craigslist, Dice, etc.
2. It's all about the connections; LinkedIn is a great resource in this regard.
3. Are you sure your CV / resume is as good as it can be? For instance, don't make the mistake of shotgunning the same CV / resume to every single company. Tailor each one to the expectations of the company you are applying for, especially for the cover letter (generic cover letter templates is bad aji). And NO grammar / spelling mistakes. I would highly recommend checking out "The Google Resume" by Gayle McDowell if you haven't already.
4. Using 2 through your peers or your peers' peers, try to get the resume in internally rather than trying to go through the career portal.
5. Make sure your {GitHub, BitBucket} portfolio is stellar and your interviewing skills are top notch.

I know a few people who got hired by my previous employer from overseas because they were significant contributors to open source projects that were being used heavily. It's not profitable at the start, but it can be very useful down the road.

What might work as well is to try to get work by an american firm that has an office in your country and then relocate later, but I'm not sure how big the USA is on outsourcing coding work to Bulgaria, so the options in that regard might be rather limited.

€dit: I just clicked a little through your website, you really should fix the spelling/grammar errors there. Stuff like that can be a huge turnoff for potential employers.

The easiest way to be able to work in the USA is probably to marry a citizen. And no, I am not being facetious. That is what I did and I had no trouble getting a green card. It was over 30 years ago so things may have changed, but I still think it is likely to be the most successful.

When I was looking to hire programmers, while I was still in the IT world, I hired quite a few contract programmers and many of them were from India. The best one I ever hired was not even in the country at the time, so perhaps you can find a contract agency and convince them to push you as a candidate. But as someone said above, work visas can be in short supply.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Things most certainly have changed, especially after 9/11.

Immigration (e.g. through K-1) is hell. I don't wish it upon anyone.

Many thanks to everyone for the help!

I do have a GitHub account and I am a big fan of open source - https://github.com/Stefany93?tab=repositories

Thank you for pointing out LinkedIn. I had no idea it was that popular in the New World.

@Folama, thank you, but I know my stuff, I do not need to waste my time in the Uni. Plus they don't teach you web programming there, which is my specialty. I will be stuck studying biology or philosophy that would make no sense.

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Stefany, web programmer

Best of luck Stephany (Azumi).

Even for webprogramming, uni studies will help. Esp. if you want to work abroad. Yes I have no formal education outside of courses when I was 17 but thoose are still helpfull because they explain and teach programming theory, and that stay the same regardless. Also you will compete with people who do have such education.

Of course quality devs are few and far between. But sure if you setup a big site and write all the code and it gets seen by the world you have a chance, or if you make good contributions to one of the major webb-platforms.

First of all - best of luck to you.

Second of all - the goal you have is not an easy one, and I speak from experience. Especially with the skills you have. Web Developers with HTML/CSS/PHP (which is what you look like from your resume) are plenty in the US, and so companies are not really forced to look outside and go through the expensive and messy process of sponsoring people from oversees. Also, times are tough, and I see what battles I have to fight just to hire and intern or a part-timer now, its the constant "do we really need one, can't we do without, what if we shift the deadline" and stuff like that. And I am in a relatively rich and future-oriented industry (biotech.)

If anything, the tendency here seems to be outsourcing rather than sponsoring. India is the current trend, it seems. Cheap labor, and all that...

But do not get discouraged. The fact that it is hard does not mean it is impossible. You already got several pieces of good advice - look for large companies (they have the resources to sponsor) and get a killer LinkedIn presence (it seems to be what the managers are looking at.) Network with people. Clean up your website, some elements do not display right on my machine (OSX10.10.1+Safari+17"screen.) It also looks very "girlish" - which might deter potential employers (try to make it more corporate/professional or more unique/artistic, its a big deal, trust me) - although this is personal, so don't take what I say too seriously, and do not get offended, just trying to help. I am looking at you as a potential employer now (have been going through this same exercise recently to hire people, so this is stuff I looked at.) GitHub repos and contributions on forums like StackOverflow or ServerFault might count as well, even if all you do is ask questions - it shows you are willing to work with others and solve problems by networking rather than getting stuck by yourself.

Beef up your resume. Not necessarily by working more (although some jobs and positions would help) - what you have there might be fine, just expand on that. For example - you said you developed an on-line store for a 3D player, or some such. Great, tell me more. Was it a success, did you create an e-commerce site which makes its owner thousands now? What technology have you used? Give a link if the site exists out there. Stuff like that... Same goes for all the "Latest Projects." Toot your horn as much as you can. I know it is not a very "European" thing to do, but US is US, different world, people are shameless here.

In your "Social Skills" section, do not put Age Of Empires first! It might impress some people, but most will find it strange, sometimes off-putting, sometimes just confusing. They will wonder if this is the most important thing about you, and if so, are you worth hiring. It is good to mention such things, just like your Go level, but maybe under "Hobbies" heading or something, not mixed together with the important skills employers are looking at.

Find examples of technical resumes on-line and just copy the format of the one you like, or combine several formats into something personal. Like with your website - make it look more professional. And expand on your projects - this is what you are selling!

So much for critique, now lets get constructive.

I think that best way to get your foot in the door is to try to get some kind of scholarship in the US and take courses, go to school. Or come here as a tourist, try to enroll in some courses and adjust your status to "student". It is generally much easier to get from "student" to H1-B than from "foreigner" to H1-B. And many companies like hiring "straight from school." But I am not sure how viable this option is, both financially and legally. Still, this is the kind of thing I would look at if I were in your shoes.

Another important thing which can help you, probably the most important thing - figure out which technology is up-and-coming, what will be needed next year, and learn that! Even if you can't come here and go to school, learn it in Europe, this is your best bet. Offer something which is rare here, something which is just starting to catch on, and you are golden. Companies will rather sponsor than wait another year and hire locally. For most of the established stuff there are tons of people in the US looking for jobs, so it is hard for companies to justify hiring from oversees. But if your skills are "in demand", it is much much easier.

Another strategy might be to look for internships, working remotely for little money or even no money at all. Just to get a foot in the door, you understand, not for ever. See if you can find somebody you can help with what you know, and don't mention sponsorship. Just get contacts, exposure, and recognition. Once you have some work you have done in the US on your resume, it might help. Yo get to people through people, as they say, so get to know the people, even if it means doing work for cheap and remotely for now. Take the initiative! You can find some (small) companies with really crappy web presence and email them with the offer - you can help redesign and re-code their website for free (or small fee), you can say you are a recent graduate and need projects to beef up your portfolio, or something. Some people I know have had good luck with such strategy, although I do not know nobody for whom this would lead to a sponsorship. Still, might be worth looking into. American experience goes a long way here.

Not sure what else to say, it's late, I am tired, and probably just talking silly.
Once again - with you all the luck in the world! Don't give up.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Nigel Farage (leader of the anti-immigration UKIP party here in the UK) would hate me for saying this, but I can't but wonder if the best way to get into the USA is via another EU country: get a job in a European office of some big multinational (I guess there are more of these in UK/France/Germany than Bulgaria) and after a few years of showing your worth to them apply for an internal transfer to a US office.

Also what Bantari said about your skills is very important, at the moment you appear to be a dime-a-dozen web programmer. American companies can probably find plenty of home-grown people to do that, or even hire them remotely from India/Bulgaria/wherever. Your chances will be much better if you are skilled in a niche discipline, and also for a job where you add a lot of value being in the same room as the rest of the team.

This. Focus on something that the market needs dramatically. I've seen entire start-ups being bought just because a bigger company desperately needed someone to work on the same technological stack. Yes, I'm talking about buying a company and throwing their product away just because you need those 5 programmers to work on a different project. That's how important differentiation is.

looking around where the world is today node.js / io.js ,but the fact that we are talking about it might well mean it is to late.

But again, a good programmer should have theoretical knowledge of the ground theory's of multiple languages (and thats where studying might well be a good thing. Knowing the difference between typed and untyped languages and the small traps that might create. Knowing both some perl and some php is a good beginning, though by that perl project I went, why not use Data::Dumper)

Because you have to install a separate module. That would take time & learning curve. Then you'd have to learn the way it is invoked, what parameters you need to pass it on with qw and so on. That would take forever and by the time you have done with it, you will say " screw it, I am sure that array is fine " and your project will fail.

That is, for new & green programmers having a ready made sub is much better.

I hope you addressed that statement as a question, not as a "derailing question"


P.S. Not many programmers know both PHP & Perl. Especially not as young as me.

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Stefany, web programmer

Unfortunately age is not usually a determining factor. In fact, it can be a problem. Most, if not all, use companies will require a degree plus experience.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).