My overseas work experience……..

How did I get job in Sydney?
I was in Sydney for almost a year or so. After initial struggle of finding job (because not having any local experience), I finally got the job in the Software company located at North Sydney. Thankfully this struggle was not so long and I managed to get used to new circumstances in that time span. I remembered that evening when I got a call from CTO of this company. He was looking for .NET, SQL Server professionals and hence called me for technical interview next day. Then I quickly analyzed the options to travel to North Sydney. By this time, I was familiar with Sydney city internals. I was lucky to have my best friends and relatives there for me. That helped me a lot for smooth transition. And I must say that everyone helped me in whichever way they can. But getting a job was my own battle, right? Okay, so next day I catch a train to North Sydney and was thrilled to know that this train would cross the harbor bridge. It was raining heavily that time. I entered the office premises. Again, thanks to accurate road maps and directions.
Can you imagine what was I thinking that time? My first overseas interview. Totally unfamiliar circumstances, unfamiliar people, unfamiliar places and so on. I must say that before leaving India, I was very much settled in my job. I was full of butterflies in my stomach. I was anxious. I was curious and I was also little bit nervous. One good looking receptionist politely asked me to have a seat and offered me a cup of coffee, which I politely refused. I was told to come there at 5 O’clock in the evening. And I reached there at 4.50. So, I waited, waited and waited for next 35 minutes. Obviously, the CTO was a busy man and was help up in some kind of conference. Finally, the wait was over and CTO himself came to see me. He apologized me 10 times for coming late. He started with informal chat and offered me a cup of coffee again. ;) I was amused by his personality and his manners. Then we went to the conference room and started the first part of interview.
First part was sort of generic. He asked me generic questions. He was basically trying to check if I could suit in his organization or not. First part was over and I though that I had performed well in the first part. In the second part, lots of techie questions/scenarios were discussed. I was really confident discussing these questions which ranged from ASP to .NET to BizTalk to XML to BPEL4WS. That was really good time of the interview. And I could feel that during this time my anxiety, butterflies were gone completely. After almost 1 hour, he finally told me to join his office from very next day. And all I could remember is that I was sitting in a train back to home. All the time I was thinking that people say that every dog has its own day. And yes, that was my day. ;) Getting job there in the IT Company (that is also purely development) was not an easy task. This is what I was told. I had met few people and everybody advised me to be patient as it was going to be a tough task. This is how I was in and I knew that half of the battle was won in one day.
My first day in office
Suit bute me aa kanhya..band bajane ko…:) No, no, I was not singing this song while going to office. ;) I was well dressed (as usual ;)) and entered the office premises. Then the formal round of introduction took place with all team members. Monday was the meeting time in the office. Everybody was served the coffee. And who do you think bought coffee for all team members from the coffee shop? It was MD of the company. He was more interested in the project I was about to join. That was a big account for the company and initially a team of 10 people was set up. I was now one of them.I was expecting formal round of induction for at least 2-3 days. That is what we do in domestic companies. So, I was in sort of holiday mood. I was also happy to know there were 2 Indians in the team. You know…mitti ki khushbu aayi :) Then I met this guy, my project leader. He handed me various print outs. It included a database diagram consisting 40 tables or so, functional specification and a very high-level technical specification. He welcomed me and then assigned me 30 ASP.NET pages to be completed in 40 hours. :) That was my first day. Later on he told me that he wanted to check my capabilities in the first week itself. ;)
Conclusion
My friends, my juniors, relatives….so many times ask me about what I learned there while working. Well, I can go on and on writing on this but this time I will keep it really short. WORK HARD AND PARTY HARD. You will be given lot of responsibilities if they think you are capable of doing.