12 designer steps to move to USA

Designer Denis Nevozhay told my history about moving to work in the US.

People don't often ask me how I left, perhaps because it’s not interesting to anyone, but maybe because they’re embarrassed to ask or because they think it is unrealistic. I do not know.

But, despite the lack of demand, I still decided to submit a proposal and share my knowledge, until someone else did.

To make my recommendations more credible, you need a short presentation.

Hello! I am Denis, a grocery (UX) designer from Kiev. I managed to work in China and now I live in Cupertino, California.

Decide which way you want to go to the USA

All my life I have been squeezed by the desire to have more than I have, the same applies to the place of residence. At first, by some miracle, I made the whole family move to Kiev from Sumy to 2000 (moral pressure), then, having been on a business trip to San Francisco to 2013, I began plotting the next goal.

There are many ways to go to the USA and have the opportunity to work there, for example:

• obtain refugee status (convincing history of infringement of rights, $ 5 thousand for a lawyer and a lot of dollars before obtaining a work permit);
• marry or marry a US citizen (this is a whole underground industry);
• invest $ 500 thousand— $ 1 million in local business;
• open your own business in the United States, providing a convincing business plan, investing at least $ 50 thousands and hiring at least 2 Americans (I don’t vouch for this option, but there are friends who did it);
• work illegally on a tourist visa (unless a waiter);
• win green art (I know a lot of people who won, but I have already been unsuccessfully playing 6 year);
• study in the USA and in a year, under certain circumstances, obtain a work permit outside the university
• reunite with family;
• Perhaps there are other options.

I will describe my path, namely obtaining a work visa.

Visa entitling to work, there are different

H1B, O1, L1, J1. I will not compare them in detail, for this there is Google. I’ll just say that H1B is a very unreliable option in connection with the lottery (a limited number of visas + increasing number of applicants every year) and a long wait from the moment of submission of documents for consideration until obtaining a visa (6 months), if lucky. It makes no sense for companies to take risks and wait.

L1 - for me was not the best option, since it was necessary to work 1 for a year in the representative office of the company that agrees to transfer you to their American office. This office can be in any country where it is easier to get a work visa. For example, Facebook often hires people in the London office only to transport them to the USA on a L1 visa a year later. The option is closer and simpler - Epam.

J1 is not an option because my studies are long over. Although I heard that there is a scheme according to which companies bring employees on this visa.

Photo: depositphotos

By process of elimination, my choice fell on the O1 visa, for which I had nothing and which seemed unattainable. The O-1 visa is given to people with extraordinary abilities that must be proven by meeting a number of criteria, such as:
- awards of local and international level;
- participation in conferences as a speaker;
- The press about you and your works;
- participation in design competitions as a member of the jury;
- letters of recommendation from famous people in the world of design.

So I decided to work on my track record and prepare to get an O-1 when the time comes. In the meantime, I went to work in Shanghai.

12 + 0 designer steps on the road to relocation

Step 0. Is it worth mentioning that for hiring in the USA you need very decent English? If you are not there yet, start working now.

The best methods of learning the language in order of effectiveness for me:

• work in a foreign company or for English-speaking clients;
• communicate in English, if there is anyone. If not, google about how to find.
• Read articles on design. Fortunately, there are so many of them now that it is physically impossible to read everything;
• think in English, if you don’t know a word, immediately watch the translation and write down;
• Get a personal dictionary. For example, in the Abbyy Lingvo application, you can save words, which can then be displayed in random order in the form of cards and thus effectively memorize the contents of the dictionary. For a long time I wrote the words in a notebook;
• listen to the music, read and translate the lyrics, understand and later confidently sing along;
• Watch movies in English, with English subtitles, pause and translate words that are used more than 2 times.

Step 1

Forget about your Russian / Ukrainian-speaking public network life. Now everything is only in English. You can leave your native language on social networks that are inaccessible to foreign eycharam (vkotnatke + odnoklassniki?), But I would advise you to think about the need to spend time on such networks.

Step 2

Do a good job, which literally translates as “do a good job.” But if the stars are not used to standing in front of you in the correct position in life, you will not have to do a good job, but an awesome job, which can be translated as “awesome work”.

If you are a product designer, you must act as an “attorney for the user” of the product you are working on. You need to be firm with other teams that are always trying to sacrifice design for their pitiful goals. But we know that at the head of any product and its success are the needs of the user.

Step 3

You must be extremely detail oriented, that is, be a perfectionist. For example, if you think that pixel perfection in iconography is a lot of losers, then you have to disappoint, the high-level managers and designers on Facebook or Google do not think so.

Make sure there are no grammatical errors not only on LinkedIn and the resume, but also on your designs. This is a great indicator of attention to detail, which can immediately send you to the basket.

Photo: depositphotos.com

Step 4

Work only on projects honed under the American market, even if for some reason it is currently paying less for it. If you design products with interfaces in Russian and even for local companies, the chances that your dream company from Silicon Valley will notice you will sharply approach zero.

Tackle not for those projects that bring more money, but for those that will bring more customers, future work or get more publicity in the Western media.

Step 5

Create your own personal brand, make the world (design) know about you as soon as possible.

• Open accounts on popular platforms to show your work (Behance.net и dribbble.com). Study the work of the most successful designers, make the right conclusions and regularly share your best work.
• Start a Medium and try to write something clever about design, case studies, some finds, tutorials ...
• Start using Twitter, tweet and retweet only that it will not be embarrassing to show the recruiter of a dream company, and what will make them understand that design is a big part of your life. Follow industry leaders, participate in discussions.
• Accumulate professional contacts, attend design meetings and conferences and meet people, add designers to friends in social networks.
• Add to designer Slack-communities, for example Russian-speaking creativerussia.co or western Spec.fm и Designer Hangout.
• Participate in design competitions, send your running work to sites like awwwards.com or cssdesignawards.comThere are many similar sites. These awards will be your trump cards in the O-1 petition.
• When you have achievements, try to become a member of the jury at least a local competition.

Step 6

If it so happens that everything that you have been working on over the past few years is embarrassing to show (as I had during my work on the Paymentwall 4 of the year), then you will either have to quickly catch up and work on something worthwhile (long and unreliable), either create a portfolio from scratch with unsolicited or concept projects that solve specific problems (quickly, efficiently and usefully). For example, the solution of a problem that has sore for you is in a product known on the world market for quickly attracting attention.

Give your work a bright title (for example, Facebook App Redesign) and place it in the form of a beautifully designed graphic presentation on Behance.net, single pictures (also with description) in dribbble.com and share it all where possible. When you fumble your work, mention the company's account (even better its design department) over the product you worked for, for example @Facebook и @facebookdesign. Don't forget to ask design friends to do the same.

If you are applying for a position as a product designer, then pictures will not be enough. Write an article with a detailed description of the problem - how you realized that this problem exists (it is useful to conduct minimal research, also known as user research), and the actual step-by-step solution to the problem, starting from research and sketches on paper to information architecture, visual designs and interactive prototypes .

If you post work on a popular blogging platform like Medium.comThis will attract more readers. The article will attract even more attention if it is in a popular design publication, for example UX Design. To do this, you need to contact the admins of the publication and show them a draft.

If all collected huskies and sheyrs during a week or two came only from your friends, go back to item number XXUMX.

If your work has acquired virality (i.e., by some miracle, it began to spread itself over the Internet), start contacting people from companies for which you tried, and hinting at an interview. Do not forget to prepare a touching cover letter, in which you describe how you cannot live without this company and how much benefit you will bring to it.

More specifically on my examples. The first thing I started when I left the Paymentwall was to start aBehance account and did unsolicited project for GoPro. At that time, I never even used an iPhone and had no idea about its features and UX-patterns, so if you look at this project now, many questions arise. Anyway, as soon as I saw that the project generates quite a lot (compared to nothing) likes, I did everything to interest GoPro in my candidacy, namely:

• zaplapilsya on the position of the designer through the company's website;
• wrote a letter to CEO Nicholas Woodman on all the boxes that made sense - from [email protected] to [email protected] , one of them did not return an error;
• paid $ 15 to Facebook for sending a personal message to Nick, who is guaranteed to get into the Inbox box, and Facebook did not deceive. Nick answered and said that everything is cool and I need to sign in on the company's website :);
• wrote messages to eycharam, designers and design managers on LinkedIn. In the end, the design director replied that he was enthusiastic, but the negotiations ended in the fact that they did not sponsor work visas. Later he gave me a tour of the GoPro office in Sunnyvale, which is also nice.

2 example. Thanks to my unsolicited project Bmw dashboard I was noticed by the design director of Alcatel Onetouch, and I got a job without even going through a technical interview.

3 example. Thanks to a pretty successful article. Car Dashboard UI Collection on Medium, I received an offer from a company that exclusively designs tool clusters for most car companies. For a number of reasons, the offer was uncompetitive, and I refused.

Step 7

Always respond to offers of freelancing, even if you are sure that you will not take it, you never know where this person will be tomorrow. Be interested in the details, help even for free, if this is an interesting project or idea that you believe in. It is more valuable than money.

Step 8

Get yourself a beautiful site. If there is no time to fill in content and show the portfolio, there is nothing wrong with one minimal, but stylish page. By the way, here is my dnevozhai.com

Step 9

Keep your LinkedIn-Profile fresh, write an introduction that will put you in a good light, upload your fresh resume in the form of a PDF-file, pictures of projects, links to social networks and website, what you have worked on in each company and what you achieved, all awards , freelance projects, get recommendations from customers and employees (in English, of course). An example of my LinkedIn.

In addition to LinkedIn, it will not be harmful to have an account on angel.co

Step 10

Do not be afraid to go to the vacancies of top companies, it won't be worse. It is more efficient to go through the recommendation of a company employee, so try to find friends or friends of friends in this company and ask for their recommendations.

Never eep without a link to a portfolio or an attached PDF portfolio.

If no company responds:

• Go back to item # 2;
• try to move to second-tier companies.

If you are answered and scheduled an interview, keep calm :).

The first interview is always a call or a video call with a design recruiter or designer. Get ready to explain the smallest details of the projects in your portfolio. To the question “what would you change?” Never answer “nothing, and everything is so cool”. You may also be asked to criticize some well-known product on the market or explain how to make shit from candy. At the second stage, you usually solve some specific tasks. How to hire designers on Facebook, you can read here, here more insights from the other side.

I came to the second stage of the interview in Facebook and Google, when I did not have a single real product launched in the portfolio.

The Palantir company, known for its super-selective recruitment, after 3 calls invited me to its office in Palo Alto for the final interview, having paid for the tickets and all the expenses, but I never received the offer.

When I was in the states, I didn’t waste my time, met people and had interviews in several start-ups, one of whom had made an offer, but later fell through because of the difficulties in obtaining an H-1B visa.

All the setbacks with finding a job in the USA on 2014 forced me to accept an offer from China, which I now have no regrets about.

Step 11

Learn all the time, try out new design disciplines, new drawing styles, new tools. Accustomed to Photoshop? Step over yourself and go to Sketch, you can always go back, but would you like?

In addition to new skills, it is possible to write an article with a potentially successful headline like “10 things to PS Sketch”.

By the way, along with finding a permanent job and freelancing, I also took a course Human-Computer Interaction from UC San Diego on Coursera. Now, it seems, it was renamed Human-Centered Design and broken into many little kursik. My project was in the top three of the course (achievement for O-1) and moreover, now it is shown as a sample of work for new students. Trifle, but nice.

Step 12

Do not give up! If you decide that all this is worth a try, write a step-by-step plan (preferably with indicative dates) for each step and constantly look at it and update it as you reach your goals. This helps not to lose focus and retain motivation.

If you have an idea to write or design something that can get viral, immediately put it in the to-do-list, so as not to forget.

So how did I get to America?

In 2015, I finally launched my own website. dnevozhai.comreceived an award package and wrote case study on the creation of UX-design for Alcatel smart watches. The article quite successfully likes and shakes.

I made a new list of interesting companies for me and began to spread to open positions.

For some reason, this time neither Google nor Facebook responded, although my experience grew at times, I had awards, cool projects, experience abroad, a site, dribbble and even a summary.

Also did not answer Apple, Dropbox, Lyft and many others. I negotiated with Uber, Twitter, Box, WhatsApp, but rested on either a visa problem, mass layoffs during interviews, or I was in a wrong state for the interview and I was distressed by a recruiter, or the company was in no hurry to make a decision.

I was desperate when I noticed the post of designer Mikhail Belstar about how he moved to New York with the help of an immigration lawyer. I contacted a lawyer and found out that it is possible to get O-1 even without the sponsorship of the company, but for this you will have to open your company (about $ 1 thousand) + a lawyer for issuing a visa for another $ 5 thousand.

Only I decided to take this step, as I contacted @leonovco from Huami with a proposal that could not be refused and which covered all these costs. And he found me thanks to my PR activity in social networks, namely article on creating a UX for Alcatel watches on Medium and pictures on Behance and dribbble. Having accepted the offer, I talked to the lawyer given to me, expressed disbelief, and we transferred the case to the lawyer.

It took me a month to prepare documents, and another month to prepare everything on the side of a lawyer. By the accelerated procedure (+ $ 1,5 thousands) we received confirmation of the petition in a week and a half. I just had to come to Kiev to paste a visa into my passport and go to sunny California.

In conclusion

Arriving in the states and having met many other visitors, I got the impression that I was the most difficult and winding route. For many, this is much easier. Perhaps you will succeed.

Good luck!

UPDATE. Remember, the younger you are, the easier it is to decide and move.
Why?
• more time and energy to fulfill the crazy plan described above;
• better learning and openness to the new;
• age matters when hiring;
• acquired things, flat, car will inspire doubts;
• aging parents are a serious factor. The sooner you leave, the sooner you will transport them to yourself;
• wife + child = additional risk and financial costs in a new place.

If you still have questions, ask in the form of a comment to the post or write on [email protected]. I also share interesting on Twitter @dnevozhai.

I and maybe other guys who want to try themselves abroad, will be grateful for the sheir of this article in social networks.

Read also on ForumDaily:

How to Get a Talented O1 Visa: USCIS Releases New Requirements

No bribes and no personal talk: how an immigrant can succeed in the USA

How to get a visa for talented people and move to the USA

Immigrants founded half of US billionaire startups: the most inspirational stories

What to do if you won the green card: 5 required steps

Green card "for talented": how easy is it to emigrate to the USA, having outstanding achievements?

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