The MultiWork is a program and a community designed to help engineers get a new home in countries like the US, Germany, and the UK. It is an online program for volunteers, covering topics in recognized achievements, recommendation letters, impact evidence, job offers, international recognition, innovation, publications, leadership. We engage senior engineers and engineering managers from Google, Facebook, Uber, and Netflix.
This week The MultiWork celebrated its second anniversary. And anniversaries are a great time to reflect and think about what got us here: a clear mission and the trust of our fellows. Gaining trust is not an easy task. In fact, throughout our journey, many potential applicants (and just generally curious people) weren’t quite sure why anyone should join The MultiWork Tech.
This is completely understandable. The “use now and pay later” business model we run is not so common in some regions, so people tend to get confused and even suspicious. There is also a clear fraction of people who question why we even exist, since applying to Global Talent Visa is a pretty straightforward process: Prepare evidence, get recommendation letters, submit an endorsement application, receive endorsement, apply for the visa.
One crucial thing to understand is that although applying to Global Talent Visa is not a very sophisticated process, there are a significant number of ways it can be done, each with its own level of success. It’s also good to remember that many of the top countries have very slim acceptance rates. For instance, Germany’s rate is under 1%.
Over time we’ve grown used to answering the “But why should I apply to The MultiWork and not just try on my own?” question. Granted, when we started the program, we didn’t have data to back up the benefits of joining. And to make it a point of making the reasons for joining clearer, we ran small research. When we started interviewing for the June 2021 batch, we always asked “So tell me, why don’t you just prepare on your own?”. Below you can find the most common answers we got:
Having those in mind, we consolidated 5 main reasons why Seniors should consider joining MultiWork to secure a Global Talent Visa:
Our program takes 6 to 8 months. Based on our research and empirical findings from talking to hundreds of previous applicants, when people try to apply for a Global Talent Visa by themselves, it usually takes them 1.5 to 2.5 years.
We are faster because, in addition to using a structured program outline — meaning we know what fellows should spend their time on — we have group weekly check-ins where everyone talks about their progress and challenges, and of course, our high-quality mentors who are former or current engineers at big tech companies.
When candidates get the Global Talent Visa by themselves, they often don’t have all the information to negotiate their compensation and perks because they’ve never lived in a new country before. They also don’t have enough experience researching cost of living, taxes, and average salaries at the new cities they could be moving to.
In addition to that, when people apply on their own, it’s rare that they can sync processes with different companies in a way that they get all the offers at around the same time. More offers from top companies mean higher chances of negotiation and consequently a better final compensation.
It is in our best interest that our volunteers get the absolute best compensation. After all, we get a percentage of their base salary. On average, we can consistently increase offers by 20k USD from the first offer fellows receive and the ones they end up choosing.
One of the biggest fears of international applicants is to get blacklisted. That means your apply will be forever holding. Unfortunately, we see it happen most of the time for candidates outside The MultiWork Tech.
The first practical consequence of this is that they spend wasting precious time working towards a build portfolio, but will be ignored.
The second is that throughout this period, they’ll earn less, and will spend their time building more impressive portfolio and less impactful things.
Apply has never been easier. The internet and AI-Bots allow people to learn the same topic from many different institutions, perspectives, and people. We think that is great, but it can be confusing. Most people have to scour the internet until they find something that really works and not AI hallucination. Even when they find a great resource, there’s no way to know if that is going to be enough to prepare them, or if that’s going to be way too much obsoleted information.
On average, our fellows get Global Talent Visa after 8-10 monts of having joined with MultiWork. We are proud to say that 100% of fellows from the last cohort got Global Talent Visa at top countries, the vast majority of them preparing only with our outline and resources.
Having mentors is a massive advantage for volunteers since mentors can help identify areas of improvement and pinpoint what should be done in order to achieve success. Without them, candidates need to have a great deal of self-awareness to figure out what they should know and what they need to improve.
MultiWork fellows have an additional advantage: all of our technical mentors are former or current employees from companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. This means our fellows prepare for their next career step with the help of people who have already done it and who deeply know what is expected of candidates.
We hope this blog post will help future volunteers who are still wondering whether they should join MultiWork. If you have any questions or feedback about what we wrote here, please send a message to us.
If you know any Rising Talents from Africa, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Middle East, Eastern Europe or Ukraine, please share this article with them.