Getting a job in Texas/California from the UK
Sep 12th 2016, 1:26 pm
#31
Sasstronaut
Joined: Aug 2016
Location: Manhattan, NYC
Posts: 1,304
Re: Getting a job in Texas/California from the UK
Do you have any tips on U.S interview techniques? I've got RBF (resting b***h face), so have been working hard on that and 'bigging myself up' more to run against the competition.
Sep 12th 2016, 1:40 pm
#32
Joined: Dec 2001
Location: Dixie, ex UK
Posts: 52,448
Re: Getting a job in Texas/California from the UK
..... I did raise the point about concerns on putting down if I have work authorization or not, and we ultimately agreed to put in a one liner on the bottom of the second page: Work authorization: US green card holder - The ideology behind this was that If the recruiter had scanned down to the bottom of the second page, I was of interest and it avoided the question of 'Oh you have a British accent?' on the screening call. .....
Sep 12th 2016, 9:39 pm
#33
BE Site Lead
Joined: Aug 2004
Location: MA, USA
Posts: 92,170
Re: Getting a job in Texas/California from the UK
It's getting it past the automated system that's the problem.
Best bet is using LinkedIn, to bypass relying on the the whole process and contact who you need to contact. You'd still need to do the automated application in most cases, but if you get a human interested, they can keep an eye out for you and make sure you make it through the "computer says no" issue.
Sep 12th 2016, 11:16 pm
#34
Just Joined
Joined: Sep 2016
Posts: 3
Re: Getting a job in Texas/California from the UK
Agree that Linkedin is the best website is to find a job. Most companies usually ask if you are authorized to work in USA. Plus being a green card holder is very favorable compared to those on visas as companies have to spend a lot of money to apply for visas.
Sep 13th 2016, 2:28 am
#35
Forum Regular
Joined: Aug 2011
Location: Dallas, TX
Posts: 205
Re: Getting a job in Texas/California from the UK
I relocated with my job from UK to Ft. Worth, TX in 2011 and lived there just over a year before being relocated again by my employer to Irvine, CA where I was for 3 years till Nov. 2014 when I was relocated to Australia, where I am coming up to 2 years residing here.
TX has no State tax and it is very cheap to rent a really nice big property. To counteract how reasonable the rents are for lovely areas and huge homes and yards is that the cost of electric and water are high. Air-conditioning is on 24/7 in the summer and even though we did not make the mistake others have done where they run the aircon so cold that when going outside seems like stepping into an oven by comparison, the cost was still high. We were required by our rental agreement to keep the concrete foundation pad (to prevent cracking apparently) around the house watered twice a week and the yard watered. That meant a lot of water was used but not as much as my English friends who had a pool and her monthly water bill was around $600!
We liked TX fine and met some really nice people with whom we are still friends. However the image we had in our heads when contemplating the move from UK wasn't quite how it turned out because the heat/humidity in TX in the summer means people stay indoors and rush between an air-conditioned home to an air-conditioned office/shopping mall etc. We envisaged BBQs every day and sitting out at a bar enjoying the sunshine but found that the locals hide out of the heat!
When we moved to Irvine (the office was is Irvine but we lived waterside at Lake Forest) - we rented a much smaller house (1860sqft versus 2400sqft in TX) with negligible yard (just a large patio and a couple of balconies) albeit in an awesome location facing the lake, and paid twice as much rent. However other things like the cost of aircon and water was vastly reduced and the cost of food, drink, eating out etc was not much different. Also coming from the UK to CA people often remarked how cheap things were - eating out, clothing, home appliances etc etc so while CA is undoubtedly more expensive than TX (and has a 10% State tax) I don't think the sticker shock for you, used to UK prices, will be that great at all.
The weather was also a lot more conducive to being outside (and as a few locals told me that is one reason people don't mind the smaller homes as they are never in them) and the local HOAs all have lovely pools, sports facilities etc so we got to meet a lot more people more easily.
We would go back to Irvine area in a heartbeat, TX we would have to think harder about knowing what we know from our own experience and what we like.
TX has no State tax and it is very cheap to rent a really nice big property. To counteract how reasonable the rents are for lovely areas and huge homes and yards is that the cost of electric and water are high. Air-conditioning is on 24/7 in the summer and even though we did not make the mistake others have done where they run the aircon so cold that when going outside seems like stepping into an oven by comparison, the cost was still high. We were required by our rental agreement to keep the concrete foundation pad (to prevent cracking apparently) around the house watered twice a week and the yard watered. That meant a lot of water was used but not as much as my English friends who had a pool and her monthly water bill was around $600!
We liked TX fine and met some really nice people with whom we are still friends. However the image we had in our heads when contemplating the move from UK wasn't quite how it turned out because the heat/humidity in TX in the summer means people stay indoors and rush between an air-conditioned home to an air-conditioned office/shopping mall etc. We envisaged BBQs every day and sitting out at a bar enjoying the sunshine but found that the locals hide out of the heat!
When we moved to Irvine (the office was is Irvine but we lived waterside at Lake Forest) - we rented a much smaller house (1860sqft versus 2400sqft in TX) with negligible yard (just a large patio and a couple of balconies) albeit in an awesome location facing the lake, and paid twice as much rent. However other things like the cost of aircon and water was vastly reduced and the cost of food, drink, eating out etc was not much different. Also coming from the UK to CA people often remarked how cheap things were - eating out, clothing, home appliances etc etc so while CA is undoubtedly more expensive than TX (and has a 10% State tax) I don't think the sticker shock for you, used to UK prices, will be that great at all.
The weather was also a lot more conducive to being outside (and as a few locals told me that is one reason people don't mind the smaller homes as they are never in them) and the local HOAs all have lovely pools, sports facilities etc so we got to meet a lot more people more easily.
We would go back to Irvine area in a heartbeat, TX we would have to think harder about knowing what we know from our own experience and what we like.
Sep 13th 2016, 12:56 pm
#36
Just Joined
Thread Starter
Joined: Mar 2016
Posts: 11
Re: Getting a job in Texas/California from the UK
I relocated with my job from UK to Ft. Worth, TX in 2011 and lived there just over a year before being relocated again by my employer to Irvine, CA where I was for 3 years till Nov. 2014 when I was relocated to Australia, where I am coming up to 2 years residing here.
TX has no State tax and it is very cheap to rent a really nice big property. To counteract how reasonable the rents are for lovely areas and huge homes and yards is that the cost of electric and water are high. Air-conditioning is on 24/7 in the summer and even though we did not make the mistake others have done where they run the aircon so cold that when going outside seems like stepping into an oven by comparison, the cost was still high. We were required by our rental agreement to keep the concrete foundation pad (to prevent cracking apparently) around the house watered twice a week and the yard watered. That meant a lot of water was used but not as much as my English friends who had a pool and her monthly water bill was around $600!
We liked TX fine and met some really nice people with whom we are still friends. However the image we had in our heads when contemplating the move from UK wasn't quite how it turned out because the heat/humidity in TX in the summer means people stay indoors and rush between an air-conditioned home to an air-conditioned office/shopping mall etc. We envisaged BBQs every day and sitting out at a bar enjoying the sunshine but found that the locals hide out of the heat!
When we moved to Irvine (the office was is Irvine but we lived waterside at Lake Forest) - we rented a much smaller house (1860sqft versus 2400sqft in TX) with negligible yard (just a large patio and a couple of balconies) albeit in an awesome location facing the lake, and paid twice as much rent. However other things like the cost of aircon and water was vastly reduced and the cost of food, drink, eating out etc was not much different. Also coming from the UK to CA people often remarked how cheap things were - eating out, clothing, home appliances etc etc so while CA is undoubtedly more expensive than TX (and has a 10% State tax) I don't think the sticker shock for you, used to UK prices, will be that great at all.
The weather was also a lot more conducive to being outside (and as a few locals told me that is one reason people don't mind the smaller homes as they are never in them) and the local HOAs all have lovely pools, sports facilities etc so we got to meet a lot more people more easily.
We would go back to Irvine area in a heartbeat, TX we would have to think harder about knowing what we know from our own experience and what we like.
TX has no State tax and it is very cheap to rent a really nice big property. To counteract how reasonable the rents are for lovely areas and huge homes and yards is that the cost of electric and water are high. Air-conditioning is on 24/7 in the summer and even though we did not make the mistake others have done where they run the aircon so cold that when going outside seems like stepping into an oven by comparison, the cost was still high. We were required by our rental agreement to keep the concrete foundation pad (to prevent cracking apparently) around the house watered twice a week and the yard watered. That meant a lot of water was used but not as much as my English friends who had a pool and her monthly water bill was around $600!
We liked TX fine and met some really nice people with whom we are still friends. However the image we had in our heads when contemplating the move from UK wasn't quite how it turned out because the heat/humidity in TX in the summer means people stay indoors and rush between an air-conditioned home to an air-conditioned office/shopping mall etc. We envisaged BBQs every day and sitting out at a bar enjoying the sunshine but found that the locals hide out of the heat!
When we moved to Irvine (the office was is Irvine but we lived waterside at Lake Forest) - we rented a much smaller house (1860sqft versus 2400sqft in TX) with negligible yard (just a large patio and a couple of balconies) albeit in an awesome location facing the lake, and paid twice as much rent. However other things like the cost of aircon and water was vastly reduced and the cost of food, drink, eating out etc was not much different. Also coming from the UK to CA people often remarked how cheap things were - eating out, clothing, home appliances etc etc so while CA is undoubtedly more expensive than TX (and has a 10% State tax) I don't think the sticker shock for you, used to UK prices, will be that great at all.
The weather was also a lot more conducive to being outside (and as a few locals told me that is one reason people don't mind the smaller homes as they are never in them) and the local HOAs all have lovely pools, sports facilities etc so we got to meet a lot more people more easily.
We would go back to Irvine area in a heartbeat, TX we would have to think harder about knowing what we know from our own experience and what we like.
Sep 13th 2016, 1:02 pm
#37
Just Joined
Thread Starter
Joined: Mar 2016
Posts: 11
Re: Getting a job in Texas/California from the UK
I think this is *exactly* where I've had the biggest difficulties. Getting through to a recruiter is tough enough, but on the few occasions I've had so far to be called in for an interview (and I can count them on one hand), in retrospect I feel I definitely fell victim to this. Mainly as it goes against everything that's been drilled into me from the UK.
Do you have any tips on U.S interview techniques? I've got RBF (resting b***h face), so have been working hard on that and 'bigging myself up' more to run against the competition.
Talking of interviews; other than being expected to have unfettered confidence, do interviews follow a fairly standard format?
Sep 13th 2016, 1:26 pm
#38
Sasstronaut
Joined: Aug 2016
Location: Manhattan, NYC
Posts: 1,304
Re: Getting a job in Texas/California from the UK
I've only got extremely limited experience, so there are people on this forum than me to answer this question however what I've found as far....
The general format is this, with minor nuances -
Stage 1 - email from recruiter inviting you to a screening call
Stage 2 - Screening call with recruiter (5-10 mins tops),
Stage 3 - Invitation to skills-test, either in person or on call (30mins+),
Stage 4 - Invitation to interview in person, usually lots of small interviews with different people - I'm yet to have multiple interviewers in one session like I've had in the UK.
The time taken from initially applying to getting a screening call have ranged from 24 hours to 1 month.
Stage 3 & 4 for me have been the most volatile, going between extreme-minutia to work out how deep your knowledge of your field goes, through to a casual chat throwing in some lingo to see how you fair.
I've been at Stage 4 twice now. The first time, I struggled to get a word in edge-wise. Literally, the interviewer talked for a good 30 mins about himself, his background, his role, his power.etc before I had a chance to talk.
- Still unsure if the guy was expecting me to interrupt him or if he was just stroking his own ego. Security also sent me up to the 7th floor by myself in a pretty major NY building rather than either sending someone down or escorting me up, I could have literally wandered anywhere.
Second time, it was the other way around - I did most of the talking whilst the other guy listened and challenged me on certain points (which is more what I'm used to).
The one thing I have found the whole way through - everyone is super friendly & typically relaxed.
The general format is this, with minor nuances -
Stage 1 - email from recruiter inviting you to a screening call
Stage 2 - Screening call with recruiter (5-10 mins tops),
Stage 3 - Invitation to skills-test, either in person or on call (30mins+),
Stage 4 - Invitation to interview in person, usually lots of small interviews with different people - I'm yet to have multiple interviewers in one session like I've had in the UK.
The time taken from initially applying to getting a screening call have ranged from 24 hours to 1 month.
Stage 3 & 4 for me have been the most volatile, going between extreme-minutia to work out how deep your knowledge of your field goes, through to a casual chat throwing in some lingo to see how you fair.
I've been at Stage 4 twice now. The first time, I struggled to get a word in edge-wise. Literally, the interviewer talked for a good 30 mins about himself, his background, his role, his power.etc before I had a chance to talk.
- Still unsure if the guy was expecting me to interrupt him or if he was just stroking his own ego. Security also sent me up to the 7th floor by myself in a pretty major NY building rather than either sending someone down or escorting me up, I could have literally wandered anywhere.
Second time, it was the other way around - I did most of the talking whilst the other guy listened and challenged me on certain points (which is more what I'm used to).
The one thing I have found the whole way through - everyone is super friendly & typically relaxed.
Sep 13th 2016, 1:27 pm
#39
Sasstronaut
Joined: Aug 2016
Location: Manhattan, NYC
Posts: 1,304
Re: Getting a job in Texas/California from the UK
Oh and before i forget - Check out the companies profile on Glassdoor, if they are moderately large. Lots of reviews from interviewees as well as employees including samples of questions they use!
Sep 13th 2016, 3:16 pm
#40
BE Site Lead
Joined: Aug 2004
Location: MA, USA
Posts: 92,170
Re: Getting a job in Texas/California from the UK
You either get a offer or they become a black hole and you won't find out you've been rejected, even if you've had 3 or 4 rounds of interviews.
Sep 13th 2016, 11:47 pm
#42
Austin. TX.
Joined: Sep 2013
Posts: 5,930
Re: Getting a job in Texas/California from the UK
You have to regard july/august as you would the winter in Europe when the weather is not conducive to outside activities. The sports teams and events are now ramping up and we will have rather nice weather with the odd cold/wintry day. During the summer months most people will get up before dawn to run/bike anyway.
This is my 3rd Summer in Austin and I feel much more acclimated now. I';ve been rowing on the lake at dawn and it's lovely. Having a pool in the garden helps with the heat too.
I was in Dallas today - and although the weather was similar to Austin, the lack of hills seems to make it feel hotter. Maybe it's less humid here.
