Ep.16 What it takes to get hired abroad - Koji Pereira

Introduction

0:00hello people uh welcome to the first uh meetup of the world class designer and uh this is a experiment we've never done this before so like sorry for any inconvenience in the future and we we're gonna we expect to get better after hearing your guys feedback uh with us today we have koji pareda a designer originally from brazil had experienced like in a lot of companies

0:34including google on lyft but i will let koji to introduce himself hello koji and please say hi to the world class designer community hi gideoni uh first of all thanks for the invite very excited to share a little bit of things i've learned here um being hired but also hiring people uh in u.s um okay just short story about my my journey i moved to u.s seven years ago i am from brazil in the city called valorizonti um started and product design very early i joined

1:12a startup in early 2000 we're building products for desktop internet back then then i joined google uh in 2008 that was back in brazil then i got transferred to google in u.s where i worked in total for about nine years then i moved to lyft which is a ride-sharing company and i've been there for one year and nine months and i i manage a team called lyft business and we build products for

1:46companies and organizations to get transportation for their employees collaborators and patients and that's it i'm excited to chat oh nice nice nice question like a really really interesting

Meetup Goal

1:58uh like background uh so like the idea of the of the of this meetup it's for us to learn with people like you what it takes to work like for world-class uh tech uh plus design companies in the world because we know a lot of people want to know how to do that and mostly we know from people who got there and we don't know much from the hiring manager's perspective because like if if if you want to

2:29like if you if you're young and you decide to want to work at google like the basic questions that you you you you ask is how do i get hired by google and you're going to start like looking for articles that teach that and you're not you end up not knowing not asking the right questions about like the hiring managed perspective so to start this i will i will i'll go with the first question

Hiring Process

2:52of the set of questions that we have here uh could you walk us through the hiring process uh like of a remote worker for your designs for your design team doesn't have to be specific for the your current design team but like overall uh doesn't have to be also remote but uh like in in location yeah of course but how how does it work like what what the company needs to do like how do you guys identify that uh like that you need to hire someone uh how do you pose the position like who do you talk to

3:25until you hire the person sounds good so well first of all in a team you have to have that uh head count open basically you have a space for someone to join and work in your team um so when you open a role uh that role gets published in a website let's say lift careers or google careers whatever company careers page and also publish on linkedin so those are the two places i would look for roles to begin with then in terms of process the first thing you have to go through is a triage

4:02uh through a call from a recruiter so recruiter will call you based on the resume that you sent and what the recruiter will look for is first does this person have experience on being a product designer and being a product designer as you may know it's slightly different from being a graphic designer or visual designer right so you have to have the experience of actually working with a

4:34product team that means a pm an engineer uh at the very least um so the second thing they would look for is like does this person have if not the uh experience working with tech does this person have the background uh academic background that will uh you know set them for success and then they will look for any experience on uh related areas it could doesn't necessarily need to be product design as we

5:05know there's not many universities that teach interaction design product design but it could be interaction design it could be even graphic design so what i would say then for you you to pass that first step you have to have a very clear resume with experience and a portfolio that highlights your work and i can't talk about portfolio more later so that's the first step right then the second step is you're gonna get an interview from either the hiring manager or from someone in the team

5:41to just like know you a little bit see if you're a good candidate for that role and this step is optional it really depends on the company again it's gonna be a call they're gonna ask you a little bit of your experience they're gonna maybe ask you to talk through your resume or talk through your experience in your portfolio um and really try to understand like how's your thought process what's your role as a designer were you able to actually influence product direction uh are you

6:15a very good designer on visuals versus are you a very good designer on interaction design so that's step number two if you pass that step then you get to the on-site interview which right now we do virtually too so basically you present your work to a room of people um this could uh vary from like three people to five people so three or five people will be in the same room seeing your presentation in your presentation you're gonna present um typically one uh case one project that

6:51you worked on um maybe a second project that you worked on and just a little bit about you so introducing yourself what makes you unique what are the things you care about and then two uh cases that you worked on so that's the third step um and then during that same day some of the people that interview you during the presentation they're gonna have one-on-ones of you and ask you questions usually what happens there each person will ask questions related to a category let's say uh cross

7:26functional collaboration or creativity or uh user-centric design and on those one-on-ones they're gonna probe you questions they may ask you uh questions about your techniques and the type of things that you like to do in your design process and they're gonna also open for questions from you and it's very important that you actually have questions in that at that point uh so that finished the process uh once you get through all the stages they're gonna send you some feedback either it's like you know

7:59unfortunately you didn't make true usually companies they don't necessarily like explain why and there are some legal reasons in us why they don't want to do that uh and if you pass they're

Hiring Process Outcome

8:11gonna extend you an offer so they send you a pdf you can sign the offer if you want and then you start your job so again all of these steps i can't talk about the details but overall this is the high level what are the legal reasons why they can't tell you that can you explain the legal reasons why they can't talk about yeah why did you know yes um i don't necessarily have all the uh tools here to answer you on that but high level what i see is that it's a common practice here in us that companies won't

8:46necessarily give you the feedback on why you failed sometimes they will give you like a very high level type of feedback what i would recommend though is try to present use the same presentation to present to your mentor and get feedback so you know like maybe where you failed or what are the things you can improve okay so it's unfortunate but it's something that happens and um it does make a little harder

9:16to understand where you failed but you know just be prepared because that happens okay and uh jumping

Hiring Remotely

9:24to the next question what will be the difference hiring someone from home and uh for example hiring someone in the us and hiring someone from abroad so i don't think there's many differences i think um the differences i see is one the type of company like you you have to look for companies that are open to hire remotely fully remotely there are companies and there are companies that are like 100 remote everyone is working from home and they don't have any plans to have a physical office

9:59so an example of those type of companies are envision and hop in the event uh startup another category are companies who actually have an office but they hire people to work remotely for certain roles an example of this is shopify and even twitter and then there's another category of companies that don't necessarily hire remotely but they do have offices in many parts of the world so google is an

10:32example of that uh they do have offices pretty much uh in all continents right now so you can look for that specific office and maybe think about like uh transferring or moving to a different sea or different country that earth goes by to you so in general what i would say though is that uh all of these cases you're gonna have different challenges for the companies that are fully remote uh everyone is remote so everyone is in the same boat right like it's not uh you won't be the different person who is working remotely and

11:09everyone will have different time zones so the con of that is that you know maybe you're gonna have meetings where like time will be a little bit off your working time and you're gonna have to figure out more flexible times uh for the second type of company um i think the challenge is you might be the only remote person in that team right so you might not necessarily have the same access or the same type of channels for communication that someone who is in person when that team will be

11:44and it's similar to the third type of company where sometimes the teams that are not in the main campus they have to work or they take in projects that are not necessarily the most exciting or the project you want to work on so it's something that i saw often uh and what are the some common misconceptions

Common Misconceptions

12:09about the process of the hiring process yeah so going back to the the steps that i talk um i think one thing people maybe um sometimes they over index on portfolio i think portfolio is important but at the same time it's like table stake because something you have to have everyone have it um but it's not necessarily the thing that will get you higher and i'll explain why i think we are in a

12:40point of the evolution of design where you can find very very good portfolios and you can find people who can design and can craft very well um i think where many people fail is on the collaboration side or on the strategy side can you actually make that beautiful design that you publish on dribble something that will be launched it's something that people will like to use and it's something that you can actually collaborate with engineers and explain why it's important and how it's important to implement that

13:16and make sure that it's implemented in the right way in the right quality so those things are harder than actually design something beautiful or something interesting and put on dribble so i think that's a one of the top misconceptions in general i coming from brazil um another thing that um to me personally was a misconception i had this idea that maybe if i apply to a hundred rows i will get like one offer

13:48some one reply the reality is is way better if you can get a referral um because when i talk about those four steps of an interview the very first one um a recruiter reaching out to you that one can be ditched if you get a referral so for instance if someone uh make a referral for you at google then you don't have necessary to go through a recruiter anymore or to a um machine that will read resumes automatically

14:24you're gonna get to a human directly and you may actually get to the higher manager directly so with that you kind of reduce some of the chances of not being selected especially because some of these algorithms that automatically select resumes sometimes they are biased they are not like looking at the right signals they are looking for i don't know right universities or right places you work for and as we all know like i i made my graduation was back in brazil and my university is not known here

15:00although it was one of the best universities in brazil so it's very important to understand all the logistics all the things that happen in the background and look up for those networks and reaching out to people that can support you and referral you and what i would say don't feel afraid to even like send a cold email to someone or send a message on linkedin if you do have a story and if you

15:30have a strong uh reason why that person could be your uh your mentor or your um supporter your sponsor people will reply back and you're gonna be surprised of how many people actually be able to support you so make sure you have a strong story reach out to people that maybe you feel like it's you have some connection you know like oh this person has the same background as i do or this person work with

16:02something that i'm very excited about tell your story try to establish some level of connection with that person first and then you know ask for a referral and uh for people who work in these companies it's actually good for them too because first i get to hire help my company to hire a good candidate but also i do sometimes get uh you know a bonus out of that referral so make sure that you don't feel afraid you reach out to people you make a connection and don't look for numbers look for quality and reach out to the right people

16:39reach out to the right companies that you feel connected and and use that network okay fantastic uh there are costs involved like for both company and the applicant yeah i think it really depends now that um most of the companies are doing interviews remotely and uh so there's no costs involved in the interview process i think what really becomes an issue is when a company says like oh i want to hire

17:09you know gideoni and i want to sponsor a visa right like if they sponsor a visa to us then yes there's a lot of costs involved and right now just to talk a little bit about the visa issue well first i'm not like a immigration uh specialist so take my advice with a grain of salt but uh in us there's multiple types of visas um i got here through the l1 so via transfer so when you get transfer from a multinational company from one location to another one uh there is a series of advantages you don't

17:46have to look up for a job uh to get your visa um and then your spouse can actually work which is very good um and then the other type of visas that i see people getting here one is h1 which is a visa that a company in us will give you if you get higher directly from your original country to be relocated to us and there is a variation called all um uh all visa so all visa is the same thing but then you

18:22have like special achievements and maybe you want like multiple prizes and awards and all that so if you can prove that then um you know you can get a no visa the problem with h1 is that it's lottery based so meaning that the company will have to spend thousands of dollars to try to get you a visa and in the end of the day you might not get the visa um so there is a lot of risks and a lot of

18:53companies decided to not do h1 anymore especially after the last demonstration that really changed a lot of the rules um so h1 harder possible yes but harder oh it's not a lottery based you just have to really prove that you have the track record and you have all this like extraordinary accomplishments if the company is willing to give you that type of visa then yes you you know you're more likely to

19:26to get the visa and be able to move to us and then the last type of uh visas that i i know i don't know a lot is the student visa but a lot of people get here through student visas so you basically move as a student you do have to have cash so you have money to uh you know sustain yourself here which is very expensive but then after you can get a extension where it can work for another six months so now after this set that six months then you can get a sponsor uh through an h1 or a o1 visa and continue

20:04to work in us like really really nice to know about all those things so those are the type of information that i said that probably is not available or is not public information per se so thanks thanks for sharing this um so are there any more obligations uh when you arrived when the example like when uh when the candidate like move from one country to another and get there there is anything that he might have to do yeah i mean technically not that i remember um there are some uh contracts that

20:42some companies do that i i heard of like i never went through this type of contract but you know again the company does expand a lot of money when um they get you a visa right like and if you get the visa some companies will say will have like a contract that says if you leave the company before you know x months then you have to repay the cost for your visa um so that happens never happened to me but i i heard of cases like that um also once you're here and you're through a visa you do have to stay

21:19depending on your visa you have to stay within the same company until you get upgraded to a green card um so what happens sometimes is that people move like very excited like oh yeah gonna move to us it's gonna be great gonna have great opportunities uh but then you become almost like in jail for like few years um in that company and if you don't like the company then you have to go back to your country

21:51uh so it's a very difficult position to be and a lot of people don't think about the consequences of that um meaning that sometimes you join a company that um you know all companies have issues and that maybe the type of issue that you're gonna face there is not something you're very comfortable with uh and then you you see yourself in this position where you have to stay uh until you get your green card so something to consider it is very important that uh you make sure that you understand the type of visa

22:26you're gonna get um the type of um contract you're signing to make sure that uh you're doing the right thing and you're you're making the right choice again now the companies are hiring remotely um what i would personally try to do first is like try to work remotely for a while or try to work from that company in your city for a while and then do the transfer later you know because moving to a new country is hard and uh with all the advantages and privileges that we have in california um there's

23:04a lot of problems and you're going to be far away from your family friends so there's definitely like a lot of uh trade-offs and things to consider nice uh like this is a very very important aspect about the contract and being locked in and not being able to move anymore uh so like uh about the selection about this jumping to the selection process kashi so like how do how how can a candidate stand out

23:35during the hiring process yeah so i i think um again first make sure you have your network wait let me add here especially especially especially when you are competing with us citizens yes very good point

23:55so again first what i would say make sure you have your support network you have people who are so how do you stand out you know mentors uh supporters of your work people who know you people who understand that you are an important you know addition to any team right like adplist.org i think it's a great place for you to connect with people in a very deep level and again try to do that not of a lot of people

24:30pick the right people that you have a lot of commonalities and just dipping that connection like make it very strong over the time so that's number one number two create your story you know like craft your story and try to understand how that story is useful for a specific type of company so in my case for instance when i moved to here i didn't have anything in mind i was like i'm a designer you

25:01know i'm a product designer who likes to do work and that's it right like uh what else should i say then over time i discovered that well i'm actually not like my manager or any other design leaders here they're mostly like uh white men and you know um and and that's not to take for granted like it was very hard for me to get here and i came from like a poor neighborhood in brazil so my story counts and

25:33it's important because what the companies are trying to do now most of the the good ones is to build diversity and inclusion and equity and make sure that different voices are heard and that my experience is actually one of the reasons why we build such a successful product like files by google which was a file manager built for uh emerging markets like brazil and india and africa you know and because i knew the pain of having like a cheap android phone i could actually uh help the team to build this amazing

26:08product that just crossed one billion installs right like what's your story what's the thing that you will leave it's gonna be very remarkable about you and how do you think you can actually add uh a lot of things to the company don't think about like feeding only think about adding like what you can add um and then try to look at your past as part of the learning process even the things that feel painful you know like i've been through a lot of things that uh hiked from myself for a pretty long time

26:44um i didn't want to talk about it you know the fact that um i grew up without a father you know my my dad is japanese and he was visiting brazil my mom you know she uh took care of uh five children by herself and being a single mother is hard but i learned a lot with her so you know like everything is a learning process and being able to learn from that type of experience is very unique and it's not like uh for good and for bad and not everyone that has that experience and that experience is

27:21definitely going to be adding to a team who are maybe like thinking about you know healthcare thinking about like women who are you know suffering from sexism you know there's so many things you can bring to the table if you think about your your own personal experience so try to be yourself try to talk about the things are hard and uh make that unique you know like that's what makes you you and uh i think therapy does help a lot to just like think about that and own that in a very intentional way and then

27:55the second step to me is just like how you want to tell the story to the world and uh make sure that uh that differentiates you from uh you know everyone is different basically okay fantastic like uh that actually i ended up answering uh the question that i was about to ask uh so like jumping to the next

Standing Out

28:16one do you have uh any requirements when you're hiring someone from abroad uh and who do hiring international junior designers interns again i think it all depends from that three types of companies right depending on the type of company you are you're more likely to hire junior designers remotely right like if you're full remote for instance it's not a problem right like you're gonna hire pretty much everyone remotely uh so if you are a junior designer intern designer looking for a job

28:52do some research um you know i mentioned two companies envision and uh hopping but i'm pretty sure there's way more company especially during covid that started to be fully fully remote um so look up for those companies see if they have any opening and then what i would say for companies that are more of the flavor number two where you know there are some people remote but they still have an office what i see generally is that they want to hire more senior uh you know mid-level type of designers not

29:30necessarily junior designers to be fully remote and the main reason is because they want to make sure that junior interns have the support they need to be successful because i think the flip side of it is that um and i've been there before like i was a fully remote designer working from brazil and my whole team was in us and it was difficult because my manager was not with me uh day to day so he didn't necessarily knew all the things all my contacts that i was working on and even with the you know vc and video chat and all

30:07of those things is still not the same experience as being the same so what are the some some deal breakers when hiring someone from abroad like the red flags i i don't know if there's like something specific um but again the the things that i just mentioned on being very uh dependent uh or junior or intern where you need support from someone in the daily basis someone close very close to you that makes very

30:39difficult to hire remotely um and yeah that that's the one thing i would say uh especially if you are if you are a junior designer i think things will be a little harder uh once i would say once you get your first job with a company that is international or us-based or european-based it's going to be easier for you to find new opportunities so maybe in the first one it's not a perfect one you know like

31:13maybe work for a startup very early stage uh maybe compensation is not perfect uh but then that will make you more visible outside us and outside your country and in us or europe and that the things will be easier uh moving forward so uh make sure that you you look up for something that makes sense for you on the stage you are and the level you are okay fantastic and uh like about jumping to a very

31:44delicate topic how do one negotiate a fair salary and don't have experience in the country yeah i i do love to talk about this because um i think in general my experience with designers is that we are not very good at negotiation because we are so deep into passion and you know designing things that are meaningful and we forget about negotiation sometimes um again also as a latino as someone you know from a

32:21colonized country you have this idea that you're here to serve people right you're here to you know do your work and and nothing else but in reality is that if you if we don't negotiate our salaries will be uh hard to compare with engineers or uh product managers so it is important that we uh demonstrate our value not only with our work but also with negotiation what i usually like to say to people who

32:53are looking for a new job is never look for never put all your energy in one company because you're gonna you're gonna be frustrated uh you know the success rate is never a hundred percent even if uh you know in my case i have you know 20 years of experience and i never put all my cards in one company uh when i am interviewing i try to interview you know first i make a list of companies that um match my uh my intentions

33:29or my um the qualities that i'm looking for and i know you know just to contextualize i i have more experience and maybe i can choose more but also you can just put things that uh maybe are connected to the things you can offer right like so maybe the company company a they're doing uh five stars in terms of the diversity inclusion there are four stars in terms of um product and three stars in terms

34:02of collaboration maybe five stars in terms of design um mature in terms of being mature in the design side so i put all of those things together and then i select at least five companies that i'll try to interview during the same window right meaning like not more than two weeks of difference right so once you finish that then hopefully you have some offers right and then once you have if you don't have some

34:36offers then you close this uh you close this chapter and then you start again with another five companies next month or so and then once you have a few offers then you can actually compare so um when it comes to negotiation here in us you cannot just say like oh you know they're gonna ask you like what's your ballpark or how much do you make today and you can say um you can say what's your ballpark is but ideally

35:09you would like to have multiple offers so if you have for instance three officer offers you can go to company number a and say like hey um i really like here this is the place i want to be of course this is not not fake this is really what you want to do you know but then then you can say like hey but the other offer i got x in salary or x in equity can can we beat that right so this is good for you because you're gonna get better compensation in the place you like but it's also good for the market on other product

35:44designers because you're elevating you know what what is a real value in the market for product designers so make sure you do that um especially as immigrants as uh latinx people i'm pretty sure for you know africa or southeast asia people also do that we usually don't negotiate that much and that puts us in a position where uh we are underpaid so we don't want to be there so make sure you you do your your homework and as much as you can as much as you have access to um try to compare

36:23offers um and and make sure you you share that with the uh the company you want to join fantastic uh i think that was my kind of my my my last question so because you tell me uh there is something that uh you'd uh you expect me to ask but i didn't and you think it's critical for for this process yeah i think we can go back to the cultural uh backgrounds because i feel uh one of the hardest things here for

36:57me moving to us was just the the cultural adaptation right like there's multiple levels um about culture one is the country level culture right like is it like us is it uh brazil is it like um you know mozzambique all of these countries they have different cultures right uh then you have like religion uh differences like um i am not religious at all but certain countries they have more traditional

37:34um cultures in terms of religion you know us is you know judaic christian and that influence a culture for sure versus like a culture maybe like it's hindu from india um so that's another thing to consider um other things are maybe less um clear but you have like music you have pop culture that is different then you have the company culture like each company within the same uh country they

38:06will have different cultures different states and different cities in the same country will have different cultures um in different teams in the same company might have different cultures so it's very important to understand that it's not necessarily wrong or right um when you go to a different country a different culture it's more like okay what are the things that i care about that identifies me as a person and i want

38:37to make sure that i i i keep versus what are the things that although yes i want to keep my identity what are the things that i can adapt and try to understand other people build empathy and communicate better right and i think for me for instance one of the things that was hard is to realize that my accent was really hard for some people to understand when i moved to us you know like some people would

39:09not really understand or they would not necessarily pay attention to the things i was saying or maybe people like cut me off and start to speak over the things i was speaking to um so i did a class uh called um accent reduction and accent reduction was not the the intent was not to like erase my accent or make me look more american but more to like uh improve my communication skills and actually reduce my

39:43accent but not necessarily like delete my accent because that's impossible so i i did a class at pronunciation product pro.com which helped me a lot in that regard um and uh my manager was very supportive of that and it did make a difference um i see that in a lot of people who have english as a second language we struggle to communicate sometimes we don't feel confident and when we present sometimes again we're not confident

40:17so confidence is actually more than accent reduction i think it's the root of the problem right because if you don't think you can communicate well in english then you're gonna look you're gonna come across as a person who is not confident who doesn't necessarily like feel uh have the experience you're telling you have so making sure that you build that confidence in a language that's not yours it's very important that's that's fantastic uh like uh like uh learn definitely learned a lot uh yeah like i've been

40:54i've been thinking about everything you said and i think it's a very very important points that you mentioned here uh so tell me koji where can people find online if someone wants to ask you to be a mentor or want to connect or want to learn more about you yes so people can reach me out on koji k-o-j-i pereira p-e-r-e-i-r-a dot com and also uh on my podcast if you want to listen some of the episodes i talk

41:28with gideoni i talk with joe maeda a lot of interesting people in the industry uh it's uh cellsandpixels.com and i also started a podcast in portuguese nice zirigidumpec.com uh which i talk with michelle another designer brazilian designer who lives in uh in australia so yeah those are my contacts and

41:58uh reach me out i'll be able to happy to chat with uh anyone who is listening to us right now fantastic uh thanks thanks kobe and i hope people enjoyed this as much as i did so to you next time you