Jayson_Lond

This is not an immigration thread!

I recently got my green card through employment.

I have never tried to get another job after my transfer to the usa and subsequent green card with present employer.

I would like people's experiences on whether being a Brit is a handicap or a positive in securing a new job. Or indeed being a non American.

I work in the internet / marketing and early 40s.

kodokan

Hubby found himself applying for a new job last year, after a layoff, and I think the biggest hurdle (other than working in an industry that often requires Top Secret clearance he can't get as a non-US Citizen) was filling in the online application forms.

He often found it very hard to crowbar a UK education and work history into the forms - they would insist on GPA for his degrees (he took to using a ballpark from here just to move the form forward: http://www.fulbright.org.uk/pre-depa...demics/marks); they wouldn't accept employer addresses outside the US, etc.

He also had to be very clear about his work status - he too, in his 40s, only had one US job to put on his resume, and didn't want to get dumped as a visa chancer. Putting something like 'US Permanent Resident (Green Card holder) - eligible to freely work throughout the the US' seemed to help. He did it as a separate sentence below his personal profile blurb, to make it stand out.

kodokan

Quick thought - if you only recently got your Green Card, do you have any lock-in conditions? He had to stay with that employer for two years, or pay back the GC costs. This turned out not to apply when they laid him off 18 months later, of course.

AdobePinon

This was my experience too. Despite all the discussion on this forum, every job I have applied for has required the résumé to be filled out as a form, which is almost impossible to do in a completely truthful manner. Some jobs fortunately put more stock in the cover letter than the résumé. Can usually submit a pdf for that.

Bob

That's kind of where LinkedIn and a bit of detective work comes in and just don't bother with the online application form and contact the likely hiring person direct, avoiding the whole HR "says no" hole for all the reasons mentioned.

kodokan

Honestly, the circumventing the hiring process doesn't work. Sure, you can track down the manager, and work out their email once you've sussed out the in-house format. At best, it's an add to the online process, never a replacement. There really is no way around it. The job hubby has now, which was via a headhunter, where he already knew the hiring manager from a previous employment, where they already had his resume, STILL made him go online and fill in the form as part of the application/ interview process.

Now, hubby's experience is all with corporates. It's perfectly possible that small creative agencies are a lot more fluid about such things. But he did literally hundreds of applications last year while job hunting (unemployment benefit says so ) and you can assume it's the case that if a company has a website, then there's s job portal/ application process on it, and it's going to be a royal pain in the neck for your app.

Bob

That's true, but if you know you can do the job and can get a body to see your history and cover letter, even if they tell you to go fill in the online application, they'll have HR keep an eye out for it and it won't be automatically binned for not fitting the HR format.

kodokan

I expect it's very industry dependent. The OP could very well find that trying to find an 'in' to a personal relationship will work, and if so, being 'that British guy' will be usefully memorable.

I'm kind of an interested bystander, not having worked in the US, but I asked hubby the exact same thing when he was job hunting: 'Can't you just send your resume, etc, direct to the hiring manager, like the books suggest you do?' He laughed, and said that he, and everyone he knows (Director and VP level) pay absolutely no attention to such backdoor approaches. They mostly find it irrelevant and indicative of not being able to follow a process (engineering jobs), because the job ads clearly tell candidates not to email or call; they also frankly don't have the time to spend on the early filtering stages, because that's what HR is for.

They may, possibly, keep a vague eye out and think 'oh, there's that guy who sent me his resume, in this batch that HR have sent over'. But they'll never walk over or call HR, and effectively tell them how to do their job. So if the app gets dumped by the robots at the first hurdle... *shrug* It's not like there's usually a shortage of qualified applicants.

But this is anecdotal and individual. Maybe it's just how it works in engineering multinationals, and other similar formal process-driven companies. Anyone here a hiring manager, who's responded positively to an emailed resume, and helped the applicant circumvent the HR online system?

Jayson_Lond

Thanks for all the replies. I don't have any tie in thankfully with current employer.

I am wondering if there is any actual positive or negative discrimination based on non Americaness ?

I can also see lack of familiarity with European companies in your resume could hurt and universities being a much less known commodity than their US equivalents is a possible downside.

Bob

You want to Americanise your resume as much as possible.

Dont' put addresses down, just name of company etc.

End of the day, it's all going to depend on the industry you're looking for work in and probably the level of seniority too. Mid level management is probably going to be quite different to senior vice president.

indigogirl1976

I have to say i've never had a problem. I've worked for 4 different employers here in the states (in the museum/cultural heritage industry). They never really questioned my UK qualifications . I do agree with the poster who said make sure to let them know you are a permanent resident and they won't have to sponsor you at all or get into visa applications. I found it easier to get jobs here than in the UK lol.

Pulaski

Mine too. Even my current employer has a job web form that makes it impossible to enter UK qualifications, and if you try to fudge using similar US qualifications it leads you to questions that are unanswerable, and easily verifiable as being a lie e.g. "Which state are you registered in?"
IME US employers fall over themselves to avoid overt discrimination. The problem is with "inadvertent" discrimination - such as several of us described above, with web forms that leave you with a choice of either lying or selling yourself short.
That depends on the employer. My employer, which I doubt is unique, provides only a filtered list of applicants that we're allowed to choose from. IOW, HR decides whether the applicant fits the job description and no matter how good the candidate, we are not supposed to consider anyone else. .... I found an excellent candidate for a position I was looking to fill a few years ago, and was preparing to go into battle with HR, when the applicant withdrew. I am far from certain it was a battle I could win. I had tried and failed to get my manager to post with a slightly wider range of a acceptable experience and qualifications, which would have made it possible to hire that person.

kodokan

I don't recall hubby using his actual resume to apply for a single job last year, out of well over 100 (other than sending it along as an unasked foraccompaniment). It always had to be the company's online form, which often had ridiculous requirements like not only addresses for previous companies, but also dates of employment with a box for the actual day, or your manager's name and contact phone number for a job you had 10 or 15 years ago.

It's total madness, even for people with a regular US history.

It's one of the things that turns me off the idea of going back to work (SAHM for 15 years): that with a UK degree, UK experience over 15 years old, etc, I would NEVER get past any screeners. The advice is 'craft a resume to highlight your experiences and skills - managing a family through several international moves/ school systems/ financial regimes, becoming fluent in foreign languages, volunteering, etc - demonstrate that you've far from vegetated, how flexible, adaptable and self-starting you are, what a fast learner, that you're actually far more versatile than someone change-averse who's held down the same office job for a decade'. Total outdated tosh. I've looked at dozens of these flipping forms, and there is no way to portray the last 15 years as anything other than a void. Perhaps 5-10 years ago a functional resume and a bit of networking would've worked, but not now. I can't even successfully fill in the online app for my local supermarket for a minimum wage job.

Pulaski

This, 100% this. And the form won't take non-US phone numbers, or addresses without a state, or other such nonsense.
My experience has been that employers, both mine and others, ask me to upload a résumé, which the software then extracts into their web form, for me to review and edit.

I know as a hiring manager myself, that in the case of my employer, the hiring manager has access to download the original uploaded résumé from the applicant, and I always do so, rather than rely on the "square peg" standardized résumé that the application software has sledge-hammered into the round hole of the application form. I wouldn't be sure that other hiring managers would take the effort I do.

Nutek

I just blag it until I can get my foot in the door. Then try to straighten it all out once I am in front of an actual person.

Seems to have worked out ok so far.