Title: [Ireland] What I Did to Prepare for Job Hunting Abroad as a Software Engineer – and the Results [Work Visa]
I secured a software engineer role in Ireland with visa sponsorship. This record of around six months and over 100 applications is something I’m sharing in the hope it helps someone.
You can read all my posts from here.
In this post, I’ll share what I prepared while job hunting abroad.
Making the Most of LinkedIn
If you’re job hunting overseas, this is a must. Create an account without fail. Think of it as your online CV: you can list your career history, qualifications, and more on your profile. Recruiters view these profiles and sometimes reach out with opportunities. I was contacted a few times this way.
There’s also a connections feature that lets you follow people.
These connections actually matter.
According to rumours, having 500+ connections helps you ride LinkedIn’s algorithm and become more visible to recruiters. To reach this, I sent connection requests relentlessly to software engineers and recruiters based in Ireland.
Thanks to that, I now have over 500 connections, though most are people I’ve never met.
At first, sending requests to strangers took courage, but I got used to it and it stopped bothering me. Just in case, I kept a list to avoid sending multiple requests to the same person. Most people accepted and were kind and supportive.
That said, I think only Premium accounts let you send unlimited connection requests; free accounts have limits.
Incidentally, I had a Premium account during my job hunt. Things weren’t going well, so I wanted to boost my chances. Honestly, though, I didn’t feel Premium made job hunting noticeably easier, so it might not have been necessary.
Also, once I had interviews scheduled, I’d send connection requests to the interviewers as well. I hoped it might improve my first impression, so I sent them aggressively.
Tips for Creating Your CV
I used the following template. I needed to fit a lot of text onto a single page, so I chose something simple that allowed plenty of space. If you search for “CV template”, you’ll find many options, but I feel one-page layouts like the one below let you write more than two-column designs.
Reference: https://www.beamjobs.com/en-gb/resumes/accountant-resume-examples#accountant-resume
I’ll explain later why including lots of text matters.
Here’s what I focused on:
- Include achievements with numbers.
- Highlight anything you can showcase as much as possible.
- Tailor your CV for each job application.
Companies especially value data and figures, so use them extensively. Think back over past projects and quantify them with numbers and data.
The company I worked for in Japan developed well-known products, so I mentioned that everywhere I could. Since it’s a PDF, I also added links: to my GitHub, LinkedIn, and my previous company’s site. These served as additional proof points.
Once your CV is ready, ask someone to review it. I’ll cover this later under interview preparation.
Above all, the most important thing is to update your CV for every job you apply to.
To handle large volumes of CVs, companies use tools that calculate how well your CV matches the job description. They then contact candidates in order of match score. So you need to optimise your CV to rank highly in these systems.
You can do this with ATS checker tools. A quick Google search will show many options. These tools let you upload the job description and your CV, then calculate which keywords are missing. Most are paid, though.
Among them, this site is free (with some minor bugs) and I recommend it. I used it regularly.
It tells you which keywords are missing from your CV and gives you a match score between your CV and the job description. I refined my CV until this score reached 70 or above. Because I needed to include as many keywords as possible, I chose a template that allowed plenty of text. The site sometimes loads slowly, shows keywords I’d already added, or behaves oddly, but…
After I started doing this, my success rate improved to roughly one reply for every three or four applications.
By the way, don’t lie on your CV just to pack in keywords. You’ll fall apart if challenged. A cheat I often used, though, was to list tools or programming languages I hadn’t really used as “Beginner” level experience. As long as I’d done something like a Hello World beforehand, it wasn’t exactly a lie.
Also, quite a few people publish their CVs on LinkedIn, so looking at those for reference can help.
Side Note: Cover Letters
Many companies let you submit a cover letter in addition to your CV. This is where you explain how much you want to work for them and how your skills match the role.
Early on, I put effort into writing them, but later I stopped. They take a lot of time, and I figured ATS tools probably summarise everything anyway, so the CV alone should suffice.
Still, if a company is one you’re extremely keen on, it might be worth writing one.
Polishing Your GitHub
If you have a GitHub account, commit the projects you’ve built. Adding brief descriptions for each project is a good idea.
Few recruiters will look, but some do, so it’s unlikely to hurt.
Networking
People often say connections and networking are crucial abroad. So I used Meetup to attend local IT and tech meetups about once a week.
Most events start in the evening and include presentations. The rest of the time is for networking. Also, most meetups provide pizza for dinner – free of charge. Drinks are free too. Especially in Ireland, where many companies are based, you can sometimes enter offices of well-known firms. This was mainly what I enjoyed about attending.
Other benefits included gathering job-hunting information, practising English conversation, and making friends. I particularly wanted to talk about visas, so I often targeted people from the Middle East. I’m introverted and not great at approaching people, but they were genuinely kind, and I feel I managed to overcome my shyness.
This can also work in your favour during job hunting.
In one case, I met someone at a meetup from a company I’d applied to and been rejected by at the document screening stage. That person spoke to their manager, and I was reinstated in the process and moved on to interview. This kind of thing happens fairly often.
It’s also worth speaking to the organisers if you can muster the courage. They’re often in HR, and if you ask whether they’re hiring, they might tell you to send your CV via LinkedIn. In one instance, this led to an interview before the role was even publicly advertised.
So, participate actively in meetups. It will definitely pay off.
Interview Preparation and Practice
There are several types of interviews, and the flow is usually something like this:
Interview Flow
Step 1
Phone Screening – 30 minutes
A video or phone interview.
They explain the job description and the company. You’ll be asked to introduce yourself, explain your motivation, and discuss your expected salary.
If you’re a match, they’ll outline the next interview steps.
Step 2
Technical Interview – around 2 hours
This might involve a take-home coding task to be solved within a time limit,
or a live coding interview where you solve problems in front of the interviewer.
Step 3
Behavioural Interview – around 1 hour
You’ll be asked to describe your achievements at previous companies and talk about yourself.
More specifically, Steps 2 and 3 may be swapped, or there might be two or three technical interviews and two or three behavioural ones. It varies by company.
I prepared for both technical and behavioural interviews.
Technical Interviews
Take-home problems and live coding questions often resemble those on LeetCode. LeetCode is a site that collects problems similar to those used in competitive programming.
I focused mainly on the Top Interview 150 and Blind 75 lists, solving close to 160 problems.
Each has difficulty levels. After mastering Easy, I worked mainly on Medium, with only a few Hard problems. I didn’t target companies that typically ask Hard-level questions (GAFA?), so I didn’t do many of those. By the way, lists like Blind 75 or Grind 75 refer to around 75 questions frequently asked by top-tier companies.
As with exam preparation, I memorised solution patterns. Most problems were unsolvable at first sight, so I repeatedly solved the same ones and memorised the approaches. This helped me recognise patterns and apply that knowledge to new problems. I practised every single day.
leetcode
Take-home problems often come from the following sites. Creating an account usually lets you try demo problems, so it’s worth testing them out.
In live coding interviews, it’s crucial to verbalise your thinking. Interviewers are often assessing your approach as much as your solution. In one case, I didn’t fully solve the problem, but my approach was strong enough to progress to the next round.
This also requires practice. Doing this with a friend is ideal, but I used the following site:
It’s free and matches you with strangers for mock technical interviews. The site also offers practice for System Design interviews, which sometimes appear as part of technical rounds. These involve discussing system architecture with the interviewer.
Incidentally, for technical interviews, it helps to research other people’s interview experiences. Glassdoor lets you check past interview experiences and salary information.
I used it to look up problems asked in past technical interviews and prepared accordingly. In one case, a problem listed on Glassdoor appeared verbatim. Practising with past questions is important.
Behavioural Interviews
For preparation, I used a site called ADP List.
It’s a fantastic site where you can consult various mentors (like coaches) for free. I met several mentors there who helped me practise interviews and review my CV and LinkedIn profile. I’m not entirely sure how it works, but it’s free and great for practising English and interviewing.
What I particularly recommend is reflecting on past projects: identify challenging or difficult aspects and analyse them yourself. These questions always come up in behavioural interviews, so I prepared around three successful projects and practised talking about them.
Job Search and Applications
I mainly used LinkedIn and Indeed.
In Ireland, you’re competing with candidates from across the EU, so applying quickly is key. Turn on job alerts, and filter for roles posted in the last 24 hours.
job-linkedin-search
Check these daily, and if the job description matches your skills, tailor your CV and apply immediately.
I was looking for JavaScript, TypeScript, and React roles, so if those were mentioned even minimally in the job description, I applied aggressively. I also viewed this as extra interview practice.
Incidentally, it’s a good idea to track the companies and roles you’ve applied to in a spreadsheet. If you receive a rejection, you usually can’t reapply to the same role for about six months, but you can apply to different roles.
Using recruitment agencies is another option, but don’t expect too much. I sent my CV to dozens of local agencies and contacted more on LinkedIn, but received no replies from any. (It made me a bit disillusioned. I think it was probably due to the visa requirement.)
Only one agency replied, the one below, which specialises in overseas (European) placements for Japanese candidates. Their work was thorough, and I’d recommend them. (Though they seemed to have more London-based roles than Irish ones.)
Results
Over about six months, I applied to more than 100 companies. I received offers from three, two of which offered visa sponsorship. In the end, I accepted one offer.
Wrap-Up
I’ve shared what I prepared for interviews. For around six months, I studied daily, created CVs, applied, practised, and networked, submitting over 100 applications.
In the end, I secured a software engineer position in Ireland with visa sponsorship. I hope this helps!
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