Job search abroad. Try number one

Hi all. In the fall of 2022, I started looking for a job in Portugal. In the article I will share how it was and how it ended. Disclaimer: I deliberately omitted many details, if you have any questions – ask in the comments.

introductory

About me: 33 years old, for the last 11 years I have been working as a tester, I can do manual and automation in C#. I have team management experience and a basic level ISTQB certificate.

Search criteria: relocation to any city in Portugal. The position of a tester, preferably with automation. Salary from 3500 euros.

Dry numbers:

  • 1.5 months

  • 31 responses from my side

  • 17 resume rejections

  • 3 invitations to an interview with HR

  • 1 invitation to a technical interview

Here is about this 1 invitation and I will tell further.

Interviews and other pleasures

All interviews with HR were the same – a story about my experience, basic tools, expected salary and visa situation.

I managed to charm one recruiter, and a few days later she called me for a technical interview. It was attended by two Portuguese engineers – as I understood, both were team leads of testers. There were no questions “as in the exam”, mostly they asked about my experience with tools. For example, what tests she wrote in C#, what libraries she used, what element expectations, etc. Since my resume says that I conduct interviews, at the end they asked what I would suggest changing in their interview. Nice guys, the meeting was not stressful at all, despite the fact that it was my first interview experience in English.

Literally on the same day, HR contacted me again and asked me to complete a test task. It consisted of online tasks, 60 minutes are given for everything about everything. Of course, I was very nervous because of the ticking timer, but in the end I did well. Special preparation for such a test is not needed, a confident middle engineer will cope with the tasks without any problems. I would divide the tasks into the following groups:

  • for test design: count how many test cases are needed to test all equivalence classes

  • DB: Write a query to select all red-haired cats residing in Lisbon

  • Code (in C#): write tests for function X. Auto-checking how many bugs your tests can find worked here, the result is “4 out of 5 bugs found”.

A couple of hours after completing the task, I received an invitation to another interview, this time with representatives of the customer. HR worried about this interview more than me: periodically reminded me about it, asked if the Internet was stable and if it was quiet in the room where I was. “Serious customer”, I thought.

The second technical lasted about 1.5 hours, this time it was carried out by engineers from the UK. I got the most stress from not understanding their accent. In the first 20 minutes of the meeting, I had to constantly ask again, because It was extremely difficult to understand the question the first time. But then I got used to it and the conversation went faster. They had no difficulty with my pronunciation, they even managed to joke once. At this interview, there were fewer questions about experience, it seemed that the interviewers were more interested in my knowledge. What surprised me the most were questions based on ISTQB, for example, “what are the basic principles of testing for ISTQB”. I do not welcome questions on memorized knowledge in interviews, so I mentally gave them a C grade for this approach.

Of the technical issues, the British were most interested in design patterns, the organization of the work of autotesters and the nuances of conducting a review. There were practically no questions about manual. As I found out later, they were looking for a full automator, and not fullstack, as was originally stated in the vacancy.

Offer

I was amazed at the speed at which interview decisions were made. The very next morning, HR called me and happily informed me that they were ready to accept me into the team. The stage of offers has come, which turned out to be somewhat more difficult than in Russia.

Firstly, the employer did not want to wait for the visas to be issued, and we agreed that I would work as a remote contractor for several months. Therefore, there were always two offers – one for the period of remote work, the second for official employment in Portugal. There are no taxes in the offer for remote work (you have to pay them yourself), and the payment is charged for each day of work. The permanent offer already takes into account local taxes, there is a salary, as well as various bonuses, divided into categories. In Russia, many people call these guaranteed bonuses a premium. It was quite difficult to figure it all out, it took several calls to the recruiter. In order for you to understand my difficulties, the financial part of the offer looks like this (of course, explanations are attached to it, which only confuse the beginner):

Secondly, there were also two types of offers. First they send a pre-offer. As I understand it, this is a document that has not been agreed with the top management. Three working days later, a full-fledged offer was sent, the content was no different from the first version.

Surprise

I decided to decline the offer. The salary did not correspond to the level of assigned tasks and responsibilities. The current work in this regard has greatly benefited. And then a surprise awaited me. When I told HR my refusal, he offered to call. Will convince to accept the offer, I decided. But no. The recruiter told me that even if I accepted the offer, they still wouldn’t hire me. The legal department has just answered him, saying that it is forbidden to hire Russians. A curtain.

conclusions

I did not get a job, but I made some conclusions for myself. I will share with you:

  1. I made the mistake of applying to all tester jobs in a row, even the ones I wasn’t particularly interested in. For example, where only manual testing is required. Or where the company is so small that it clearly does not want to relocate a person from another country. What I will change: I will be more careful in screening vacancies. Search only for the duties that interest me and the product company, no outsourcing.

  2. You have to learn how to negotiate salary. Initially, I asked for little money (by European standards), because. was set “just to move.” As a result, the offer disappointed, which I directly told HR. It took one call and two minutes to increase the salary by 1.6 times. The strategy “I will indicate modest expectations so as not to scare away” did not work very well, I don’t want to use it anymore.

  3. Interviewing in English is not so scary. If a company is ready to transport you to another country, then they are interested in your professional experience and are ready to forgive flaws in pronunciation and grammar.

That’s all for now.

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