The fear of taking risks put a lot of barriers on ourselves, making us sabotage everything we could accomplish if that fear weren’t there.
In March this year, VanHack did the first Recruiting Fair for professionals who want to immigrate to Canada – and I was accepted to be there. By this time I haven’t started to work on my insecurity problems, and when I got the invitation I felt a lot of fears: about my English (it’s been a while since I practiced), I didn’t feel technically ready, and I assumed I would embarrass myself. I didn’t go to the Recruiting Fair, and I regretted it because I started to think I lost my opportunity and, I have to confess, it made me cry the whole weekend because I always dreamed of living in Canada.
Days passed by and the beginning of June I went to the first DevJavaGirls Meetup, where I saw Cynthia Zanoni speech about the impostor syndrome. I know how toxic this syndrome is, but we don’t even realize when it’s happening to us until I understand that the impostor syndrome made me sabotage myself and don’t go to the first fair. But I was determined not to let it happen again.
Right after the Meetup, I saw that VanHack was doing a new Recruiting Fair at the end of June and I said: that’s it! I subscribed for VanHack Premium to be part of the English Classes (that happen almost daily), had a consulting about my resume and LinkedIn profile, and I applied for the jobs from the companies coming to Brazil.
Everyday VanHack posted new things on Slack to help us get prepared for the fair – stuff about the companies, about the Canadian job market, how to behave during the interview. I dug deep into all the preparation and enjoyed as much as I could I all the content they were offering. I even wrote the company’s values in my living room so I wouldn’t forget and, besides relate their values with mine, I had several interview practices with the VanHack team before the big day.
The Recruiting Fair experience was terrific – and in this video, I talked a little about it with Ilya, CEO at VanHack.
All the time we had a room where we could talk with people from the government of Saskatchewan and Manitoba – provinces where the companies from the fair are located – and I could fell in love with the place and the opportunity the region presented me. I cried watching a video of a fellow countryman saying it takes 15 minutes to get home from work – to whom had taken two and a half hours to do the same, I felt like heaven (just kidding…but it’s true).
Since I was called for the selection process with two companies, I ended up going to the fair on both days. The first day I was very anxious, scared to death to face to face with the interviewers – not to mention the coding challenge. This first company was doing two interviews – one in the beginning and another one if you passed the previous one.
The first interview went ok beside me being nervous I felt the interviewer trying to make me calm. The second one was the opposite, and I could barely look the guy in the eyes. I left the place knowing that, besides anything, I couldn’t face my fear that day.
On the second day of the interview, I almost didn’t go. I had to put together all my strength and remind myself that this was my dream and I needed to be fair with myself and all the work I’ve done so far. I stepped outside and had two anxiety crisis before going in. I wanted that – and I was already in love with the company I was going to interview that day – for its culture and all I’ve learned about them.
I tried to be on my top game and prioritize the coding challenge with what I thought would be interesting for the company to analyze. The interview was pretty smooth, and we did pair programming where they said: “just want to see if you are a nice person to work with.”
I’ve waited for very long two weeks until I got the news that the job was mine and now I just needed the IELTS to do the immigration process.
But why I’ve written all of this? To demystify a lot of stuff about the process of getting a job abroad:
The first thing to think is how the process can be similar to a selection process here in our country (at least for software developer position). You do a Skype or in-person interview (like my case), then a technical interview – that can be the person seeing you coding real-time (remote access or by sharing your screen) or you are asked to do a project and deliver, explain how you built it and so on. The only difference is that you’ll be speaking English – and my English is good enough to be understood, it’s not perfect with no accent and all. As Ricardo Jardin (VanHack) says: English is only a tool for you to communicate with someone.
The second thing is that if you plan correctly, immigrating won’t be this huge problem. I’ve been planning this for a long time – saving money and studying about the country I want to live. Above all things, if for some reason I don’t adapt to the new place, come back to Brazil will be easier.
So there is no reason to fear to risk it. What we can not do it not study, learn about the process and leave it all to fate or in someone else’s hand (like a partner, a person who already immigrate and became some guru on the topic) because it won’t give you the confidence you need to do it.
Last but not least, VanHack is doing a recruiting fair 100% for female developers where they will fly 20 developers to Canada (Calgary and Toronto/ Waterloo). Besides being a fantastic opportunity to meet the country, it’s an excellent opportunity to face your fears. 🙂