This always tends to be a person’s first question and was indeed mine when searching for a full time role where a company would willing sponsor my visa as well.
As I said in earlier posts, this is not easy and there are things you need to consider as far as job interviews are concerned as well but today I will just focus on the places you can search to find a position rather than the actual appication, resumes, interviews and other important factors about US Job Hunting.

Today I will really focus on the H1B visa and E3 visas, as things vary slightly when you are talking about H2B visa, J1 visa and L1 visas and they need a different explanation and context which I promise I will talk about as well in the future.

The H1B and E3 visas are in many ways just like a job hunt you would do in your home countries with online and offline resources, referrals/word of mouth, head hunters/recruiters and internal transfers. The only fundamental difference being that unlike regular job hunting in your home country, you have to convince a company twice;

1. To Hire You
2. To Sponsor You

Often the more difficult part is part 2 as many companies will reject you from the outset based on the fact you are not a US Citizen or resident able to work without sponsorship. So it is my advice to be honest from the outset in your resumes and cover letters as there is nothing worse as getting far down a process only for them to discover they need to sponsor you and then exclude you crushing your hopes in the process. (I will talk about the best ways I think to do this in a future post)

By far internal transfer offers and word of mouth  are the best as chances are you have already achieved the second part of the convincing already as people in charge are aware that sponsoring you is part of the package. Also as with applying at home, it probably means you are coming highly recommended, and thus seen to be less risky therby increasing your generalhiring chances.
The only tips I have hear are to keep your eyes and ears open at the company you work at if they have a US office or the stakeholder companies you deal with and also talking constantly to your management, colleagues and HR people. Otherwise try and join as many networking and business groups that Americans are a part of in your area. Rotary groups usually attract expat US people as do religious and cultural organizations. Similarly tap every relative or friend you may have with any connection to the US as well. Online groups like LinkedIn can help to a limited degree as well but usually in conjunction with another suggestion above.

If you are at a certain level and/or you are of high ability in your field of expertise, head hunters and recruiters may come knocking. They are a big part of US work life in all industries and for almost all levels of career probably bar entry level positions. If you are in a position where you think you have these sort of abilities or even if you haven’t, it can’t hurt to contact head hunters and recruiters in the US directly describing your expertise and unique selling points. REMEMBER this is the US, Sell Sell Sell Yourself!!

There are many job sites all over the place and many good ones catering to specific fields but my favourite and I think by far the best ones covering all fields are;

1. Monster.com
2. LinkedIn.com
3. Craigslist.org

These sites are the easiest to use and apply from, have the least SPAM and crap to your email and have constant stream of positions every day. There is another site call TheLadders.com for positions only with salaries above $100K USD that you have to pay to see the jobs so would recommend if you are in this sphere.

The other sites Career Builder has so much spam that fill your email with and the jobs and site ease of use is very frustrating and limited I believe. Yahoo Hot Jobs and Google Jobs just don’t have the volume of roles although are fairly easy to use and then all the big newspapers in the country have their own offerings.

In general my advice is to stay focused on niche industry segment and apply like crazy with the 3 sites I mention. If you spread yourself across many industry segments like I initally did you get lost and you get little return. By focussing, you almost own and industry and know all about it and every position and company that may be in a hiring phase putting you at great advantag for every company you apply too. I only did this much later in my search and it was only then I started to get a flood of interview instead of just a trickle here and there and actually get some traction.

I hope this helps….and Happy Hunting 🙂

CJ