Recruitment Form B - Approval To Interview: Fill & Download for Free

Previous responses link to helpful information that explains how green card can be obtained from the legal standpoint and are much more precise than I will ever be, but let me describe my experience of going through employer sponsored green card application which is very similar to thousands of people who obtain EB-2 or EB-3 (employment-based green cards).First, I want to start by saying that in most cases you will have to be already on a visa (typically H1-B) that allows you to work in the U.S. at the time when your employer will petition for your green card. Also, typically if your employer decides to apply for your green card s/he will do so on the 4th-5th year of your H-1B so that there is enough time for you to receive EAD card (authorization to work) while your green card is pending.First step is PERM (Labor Certification Application). This is the hardest and the most time-consuming part (at least in my experience). This is where your employer has to basically prove that s/he cannot find a U.S. person for your job and you are that unicorn who can do it for the salary offered. Typically the employer will create a job post, advertise it for a few weeks and will have to interview american candidates to then “reject” them which will prove that you are the one. The trick here is to document everything because if you get RFE (request for evidence) the employer will have to provide detailed explanation as to why you were selected. The cost for PERM is mostly advertising plus salary your employer is paying HR and lawyers to go through recruitment. It usually takes 8 - 12 months for PERM to be approved. If you got RFE be prepared for a longer period of time.Second step is I-140 and I-485 application. These two applications can be filed concurrently if you priority date is current (meaning you don’t have to wait for others from your country to get their green cards before you get it). I-140 filing fee is around ~$700 but for additional ~$1,600 you can get it premium processed. Premium processing doesn’t mean you are more likely to be approved, it just means that it will be process in 2 weeks instead of 4–6 months. I-485 filing fee is around ~$1,700 and cannot be premium processed. It also takes 4–6 to be processed. There are a few other forms but these 3 steps are the most important ones.While you are waiting for your green card an EAD (authorization to work) will also be issued to you so you can continue working without interruption. Your employer will also have to pay attorney legal fees which heavily depend on the lawyer but in total should not exceed $15K - $18K.MOST IMPORTANTLY: before you even go through the application make sure you have all the documents needed for for I-140 and I-485. It is a pretty long list which includes things like you birth certificate, diploma, transcripts, etc. Make sure you have them all in your native language and translated in English. I’ve seen many people experiencing delays because they couldn’t gather documents for a long time. Do your homework and don’t rely on other people’s opinion 100%, not even mine. Always double check. It is YOUR green card and at the end of the day you will be the one getting or not getting it. So be empowered and know what you can do to become a permanent resident.

“This looks pretty startup friendly,” Marsha, our attorney, said to me when I sent her our term sheet. “There are no crazy terms, and the board composition looks reasonable.“I think this is pretty clean,” Marsha concluded.“What about the board composition?” I asked.“This is pretty standard. A five man board. One seat for you, one seat for each of your investors, and two independent board seats.”“Great,” I responded.Your investors will likely be in no hurry for you to fill the independent board seats.We started operational life as a company with a three man board consisting of me and my two investors (Gill and “Raul”). And this may surprise you, but my investors weren’t exactly pushing me to fill the empty board seats.The issue never came up in those early months. And the more board meetings we had, the more irrelevant the issue became to me. The reason was…Early on, your board really doesn’t have much to do.I know this may be a surprise, but your board doesn’t really control the company, you do. You’re not going to have long strategy sessions with your board. In fact, early on your board members are there to provide oversight and not much else.We would start our board meetings on Thursday at 9AM. The agenda was pretty straightforward. You should probably follow a similar agenda:A. CEO’s Summary.This should be in bullet form. I would go through the highlights, lowlights, end market update, and any M&A activity.B. Marketing and Sales.If you have a VP of Marketing, then this person should give the marketing update. The same for if you have a VP Sales.This is a time for your board to get to know your executive team. Your executive team should have goals they are committed to achieving, and their report should be an update on their performance to their goals.Then they should detail what the next set of goals are before the next board meeting. The goals should be important enough to share with your board.C. Engineering Status.This is probably the most important update early on in your company’s life. If you’re having trouble executing your engineering plan, then your board is going to start asking lots of questions. Again, your VP Engineering or CTO should present this update.The update should be a detailed review of the engineering schedule. Plus an update on the engineering VP’s goals including recruitingD. Operations Status.You may not have an operations update if you are a software company, but, for a hardware company like us an operations update was mandatory. Operations for a semiconductor company is the “backend,” or the the manufacturing, testing, and quality assurance part of your company.Again your VP Operations, if you have one, should present the update.Now that your team has updated the board on the company’s status, the meeting turns back to you.E. Finance Status.I liked to do the financial update in the closed, private, session of the board meeting. I would go through the financials in detail with the board.I would share a detailed balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement with the board. I would update the revenue plan as well.Then I would go through the “waterfall” charts of the various areas of the company. Here’s what a waterfall chart looks like if you’ve never seen one:The one above is for our operational expenses. The top line is the original budget. The gold boxes going diagonally are the actual numbers. The rows are the monthly plan for the year, and the columns are the month for the plan.The idea is that your board gets to see how your plan has evolved for the various areas of the company over time. You can see here that we started with a plan of spending $3.233M for the year, and we are going to spend around $3M.You should do waterfalls for the following areas of your company:HeadcountOpExCash Balance (kind of an important one)RevenueNow your board has a complete view of the financial status of your company and the individual areas that influence the finances.F. Executive BOD Private SessionThis is your board’s time to give you feedback on how things are going. Now, if you’re following best practices, then you’re already having 1:1 meetings with each board member before the board meeting.These 1:1 meetings are where the real feedback will come. Yet, your board may want to weigh in on things that happened during the meeting. This is their chance to do so.The private session is also the time to get your board to approve any stock option requests you have. I liked to present the grant amount, and then contrast that with the market rate for the role, so the board could understand whether we were at the high end or the low end of the range.G. Non-Executive BOD Private SessionI like the idea of having a non-executive private session on the agenda because you are indicating to your board that you are okay with them asking you to leave the meeting, so they can talk about you. The reality is your board will have no problem asking you to do this, but I like the idea of adding this section to agenda for the reason I stated above.Usually, the board meeting at the end of the executive private session. The goal should be to complete your board meetings in under two hours.You’ll need your board to approve any independent board members you add.We went about one year with the three man board. I started feeling like it might be advantageous to add an independent board member.Gill was fine with the idea. Raul pushed back. He was fine operating as a three man board, but he said, “If this is what you want to do, then I’ll support you.”I came up with two candidates for the open board seat (Cathal and Bill), and Gill suggested Barry for the open board seat. Yes, you’re going to have to interview candidates your board suggests too.Raul didn’t like Bill, so he was out. I really liked Barry, but I wanted an ally, so I pushed for Cathal, who was a friend and CTO of Cypress Semiconductor at the time. Gill liked Cathal, and Raul liked Cathal too.Cathal joined the board about one year after we started operations. We ran as a four man board for about another year. Then I needed someone with a deep sales background, and I added Barry who had run sales organizations for Intel.So, no you can’t just add anyone you want to your board. You actually do have to get the approval of your board members. More importantly, if you want to have a good relationship with your board, never surprise your board. But that’s another story…For more, read: How Should You Manage Your Board Of Directors? - Brett J. Fox

I am a graduate from one of the IITs and am currently working at SRI-B. The company has one of the worst work cultures, the compulsory 9 hours and the unavailability of any opportunity for relief from work(except for the smoking zone) inclusive. TT tables after 5.30PM don't help.The bureaucracy is so deep in the company that it becomes very difficult to make the higher officials listen to your ideas and get them approved. If you are not persistent, you will get frustrated and most likely give up. The work done mostly supplements the HQ in a very laborious way. Like, some UI changes or small but many bug fixes. Well, atleast in most of the teams.Up until recently, the company is considered as an outsourced division of Samsung, Korea which does the software labour work for them. It has been renamed to Samsung Research India recently and is hopeful of getting better projects, having been perceived to have proven its mettle with the HQ. Wait, it doesn't end there. It still has to deliver a high pass percentage in a certain software competency test conducted for every overseas division of Samsung to prove that it has competent developers capable of handling development jobs.The off-campus drives mostly acquire engineers when needed and might not test an engineer much if the requirement is high and graduates from NITs and IITs seemingly are not showing much interest in appearing for the company's recruitment off-campus. They would have to offer a ridiculously high package to hire graduates on-campus from IITs and NITs or else they would be allotted, say, 10th day of placements and would mostly miss out on students with high pointers. Yes, that's what they still think. Higher pointer, better student. Because, the interviews are still taken by those out-sourced division's employees, recruited way back, who haven't seen the world much. Sorry for the candor.They have caught up on the trend that interns most likely accept PPOs out of fear if limited by a deadline and if the package is okay-ish. And they don't even have to spend so much in the form of stipends. That seems a decent deal now. Doesn't it?So, this is us, ahem, them, trying to hire the best that they possibly can to prove to the HQ that they have capable developers. It's good for the company that this is happening. Not so good for the graduates. It's like a start-up filled up with mad bureaucracy and not a good work culture. If it fails to deliver on some projects, it's highly likely to revert back to doing the labour work again.It has a motivated Dy. MD. in Dipesh Shah who is trying his best to do justice to its name, i.e, an "R & D" center.