How I got a Job in the US
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RSS FeedEven before I was a Computer Science student at DLSU I’ve always been hearing and seeing people travel abroad such as US and Australia. When I was around 8 or 9, my Dad would travel occasionally on consulting assignments in Europe, Asia and the US. When I was around 12, cousins and aunts on both sides of the family migrated to the US. Since then, I was kind of dreaming that someday I, too would have a chance to go abroad, even go to the US and see my relatives again. When I was in my 20’s even my sister left for Canada! So you could imagine how much I wanted to be there as well. On my first job, I started as a Programmer Trainee for three months. During this time, I would always hear about our more senior staff getting hired and leaving for the US. It even got to the point where the President of our company gathered everyone for a meeting to talk about it. He basically told us that he also lived and worked there himself. He then told us what are the pros and cons of living in another country. Nevertheless no one really took his warnings seriously. In short, all the senior programmers and analysts left eventually. On the meantime, our current batch was already starting to wonder how we could also land a job ourselves. Pretty soon we found out we didn’t really need to look further. Every now and then someone would spread the word that Mr. so and so would be at this certain hotel having a talk and of course would be collecting resumes. This happened quite regularly, some recruiters came from Singapore but most of them were from the US.
One year later, we thought of testing the waters by sending our CV’s to one of those job fairs held in a posh hotel in Makati. To our surprise, all of us were called for an interview. It was even a group interview. The recruiters usually would ask us all the same question one by one and then take a Polaroid photo of each of us (digital cameras were not yet common back then). It seemed quite uneasy to actually sell yourself in front of your peers whom you work with everyday but hey, back then, there was still no American Idol but our experience was somehow very similar to that of a contestant auditioning in front of Simon Cowell. One time, another recruiter even had each one of us videotaped for goodness sake!
Two years past and then we knew we were ripe for the picking so to speak. We knew that one of these days we will eventually get picked somehow. One day, I received a surprise envelope in the mail. It was from a company in the US which I do not really recognize. They were not one of those who came here and held job fairs in the posh hotels. Even worse, when I read the letter I was shocked to find out that I was already offered a job! It was a formal job offer, salary and all, and very specific information that I was already being petitioned for a working visa. Talk about fast!
Before I totally celebrate, the next day I asked my colleagues if they had heard about this employer or if they received a letter as well. Pretty soon I found out that most of the people from our company did receive a job offer. Investigating further, I found out that about a while ago someone actually collected our resumes. I have no recall of such time at all but hey I have a solid job offer from a real company, there’s really nothing wrong with having a job offer. And I heard that the company was quite okay — there were people that were already there working for them and I heard that they are well taken cared of. At that time we were also interviewed by another company who also gave us offers. The first company is from Pennsylvania (Philadelphia area) while the second one is a Manhattan based company. The Manhattan based company’s annual salary offer was $10,000 more than the other one but I figured that if you factored in the cost of living in New York, the other one’s probably just as good. Besides, I’ve already heard that good reports from former colleagues who were already there in Pennsylvania.
I accepted both offers and thought that whoever gives me the working visa first will be the one I would go with. Five months later, I got a call from their manpower agency here who is taking care of the visa processing. They told me that my visa is ready for pickup! Before I went to the embassy I made sure I was ready with my IT training certificates, diplomas and CV and of prepared myself to go through an interrogation process. During the interview, I remember that it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. They only asked me what my degree was and I used Cobol. I told them I had a BS in Computer Science and that I never used Cobol at work but it is another programming language mainly used with mainframe computers. I can’t remember the rest of what I told them. After a few days I was back again to pickup my passport, now stamped with a US H1B Visa. 
At that time, I wasn’t even sure what to say when the Agency asked me what date I preferred to leave. I asked them for a few weeks for me to think it over. I have been waiting for this (my whole life) but now that it’s there it felt like it was all too soon for me. I remember also at this time, I subscribed to an Internet Service Provider for the very first time in my life and with it my own personal email address. I corresponded with the HR lady in Pennsylvania about my flight details. I thought, January is winter time, I better go during a more pleasant season. I asked for May 26, but tried to request for a one week layover in San Francisco so that I could see my relatives there. It was a nice that they did approve it. My flight was on May 19, 2006 going to San Francisco and seven days later to Philadelphia. It was Memorial Day when I arrived in Philadelphia.
2 Comments
1.
dean jerald commented on June 17, 2009 at 6:56 pm
I was brwsing blogsites and found urs. interesting story indeed. somehow similar to what might happen to me then… but no regrets, im having a excellent job here in mideast. good luck to you!
2.
mixxy commented on July 11, 2009 at 4:02 am
Thank you Jean and good luck to your job there. Have fun!