In 3 months from Egypt to Amazon in Germany

Hi everyone. Greetings from sunny Berlin. Let me tell you a story today.

It was Spring 2021 and I made a decision to travel to Brazil to meet my family and get that extra amount of energy we all need from time to time to feel happy and glorious once again. What I didn’t expect was that the energy boost I needed would come to me in the form of an email from Ahmed.

A bit more about Ahmed. He took the Bootcamp at Imagine in December 2019 when he was working in the public sector in Kuwait as a Backend Engineer and had a dream similar to most of you, Imagine Fellows who read us now: find a job in Europe. More than a year had passed. He kept growing through the ranks, he was patient and became a senior engineer. Still, no job abroad materialized, and he could have just given up. The beautiful thing is: he didn’t!

As if not seeing your dream come true for a year wasn’t tough enough, things got a little worse. Ahmed quit his job for another job offer, but then he lost the job offer as well. The rejections could have made him feel that he was not good enough to get a job in an international company. Being unemployed could have made him feel desperate. It would be easier to simply give up on his goals and accept the first job opportunity to knock on the door. He didn’t.

Ahmed didn’t doubt himself and nor his chances to achieve what he wanted. Instead, this is what he did. If he did them, I’m sure you can as well:

• He finished the Bootcamp at Imagine and shaped his LinkedIn profile and CV according to the advice he received from his mentor. That’s how he was found by a recruiter at Amazon.

• Before each interview (7 in total), he carefully read the emails he received and followed the instructions to prepare for the tests and chats.

• By reading the emails and studying the company’s culture, he understood that his interviewers didn’t care about his tech stacks. They were actually interested in the theoretical concepts behind coding. Realizing this defined the direction of his preparation prior to the interviews.

• He studied the Amazon Leadership Principles and the STARR method to reply to the behavioral questions. Maybe the company you are interviewing at doesn’t focus on leadership principles but it’s very likely that they ask you behavioral questions.

• He took online courses on topics like algorithms (you might like this AlgoExpert), data structure, and systems design interviews.

• He also used free-of-charge resources to study the technical topics, for example, videos on YouTube about code challenges and technical interviews.

If you are curious to know some platforms that can help you prepare for the technical interviews here are some suggestions from Ahmed and our Fellows.

After 3 months of self-study and 7 interviews later, boom! The offer came. Ahmed was already in Berlin when we spoke and now he is about to meet the whole Imagine Team at Treptower Park for our Summer Party.

We hope you’ll be the next one to meet us in person.

Fingers crossed, we’re rooting for *you*.

Becoming an Imagine Fellow

When it was graduation time, we invited Mahmoud to join our cohort of Imagine Fellows. We put his profile in front of our network of German recruiters, and we also gave him a personal letter of recommendation. And more. Did this make a difference? Here is his take:

A lot! I was now more trusted and more respected than before. People said “you are an experienced engineer, you’ll figure this out” when I didn’t know the answer to a tricky question. Before that, they would’ve just kicked me out. Now I have a job in Berlin!!

That’s it. Where is Mahmoud now? He’s currently preparing his visa application. He will arrive in Berlin in the next weeks. We will greet him at the airport and give him a lift into his soon-to-be new hometown: Berlin.

That’s it. We hope you enjoyed the read. Now it’s time for action. As always, we are rooting for you. Keep us posted.

— Your friends at Imagine

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