Meet the employer: ABBYY
About the company
- ABBYY is a Digital Intelligence company. We provide a Digital Intelligence platform that enables our customers to gain a complete understanding of their business processes and the documents and other data that fuel them.
- ABBYY technologies are used by thousands of companies, including many of the Fortune 500.
- ABBYY has offices in 14 countries and over 1,200 regular employees.
- ABBYY has a proven track record of technological innovation with over 400 patents and patent applications. The company invests nearly 15% of its revenue in research and development.
- ABBYY team took part in the latest prestigious International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR) in Australia and presented FaSTExt: Fast and Small Text Extractor – a neural network for text detection on any surface.
What do you believe people need to think about when job hunting?
First, think about what exactly you want to fill your working day with. Do you want to interact with people? Or maybe you only want to do programming? Or both? Tasks for people with the same hard skills, but different temperaments and interests, can vary a great deal. When you have a clear idea of what precisely you enjoy doing, you will be able to analyze the vacancies in more detailed way.
Second, think about the results of your activities, what in particular and in which form you would like to see them. This depends greatly on the department and position, for example, if you work in a research department, you might be doing things that no one else has done before. It can take a huge amount of time from the moment you have decided to trial something to the moment you have created something. On the contrary, there are sales engineers or customer support specialists, for instance, who adapt products to the needs of a particular client. What they are working on now can already be delivered to the customer in an hour.
Third, think about what is important to you at work apart from your immediate work tasks. Maybe you need a comfortable office or, quite the reverse, you prefer working from home and want a lifetime of remote work. You probably want to be as flexible as possible or follow a clear work schedule. Perhaps you want maximum autonomy or you need constant interaction with your manager. The choice rests on the company's corporate culture, which in turn depends heavily on the size, age, industry and global reach of the company, and even the people who lead it and their views. For example, at ABBYY, we try to be as flexible as possible; in agreement with their manager, employees can work remotely and define their schedule
Second, think about the results of your activities, what in particular and in which form you would like to see them. This depends greatly on the department and position, for example, if you work in a research department, you might be doing things that no one else has done before. It can take a huge amount of time from the moment you have decided to trial something to the moment you have created something. On the contrary, there are sales engineers or customer support specialists, for instance, who adapt products to the needs of a particular client. What they are working on now can already be delivered to the customer in an hour.
Third, think about what is important to you at work apart from your immediate work tasks. Maybe you need a comfortable office or, quite the reverse, you prefer working from home and want a lifetime of remote work. You probably want to be as flexible as possible or follow a clear work schedule. Perhaps you want maximum autonomy or you need constant interaction with your manager. The choice rests on the company's corporate culture, which in turn depends heavily on the size, age, industry and global reach of the company, and even the people who lead it and their views. For example, at ABBYY, we try to be as flexible as possible; in agreement with their manager, employees can work remotely and define their schedule
What skills are necessary to get a job at ABBYY?
It depends greatly on the sphere. If we are talking about software development, we can distinguish 5 areas in our company:
In addition to software development, ABBYY also engages in business development, sales and customer support. We have large teams in finance, internal IT, HR, etc. Therefore, we have a wide range of vacancies, from marketers to analysts and from technical consultants to customer service and technical sales managers. In such areas, we expect candidates to be ready to understand the customer's task (external and/or internal) and make every effort to solve it effectively.
Needless to say, so-called soft skills are also important for us; regardless of the area, a person has to be able to work in a team and communicate with internal customers. To be able to work independently and take responsibility is critical along with not concealing problems and difficulties and not hesitating to ask for help from your colleagues. To be able and willing to learn quickly is important because technologies are changing rapidly and an IT specialist has to develop constantly and expand their horizons. In addition, a high level of English language proficiency is vital for us as an international company.
- development of core technologies,
- web development,
- mobile development,
- development of product solutions,
- testing.
In addition to software development, ABBYY also engages in business development, sales and customer support. We have large teams in finance, internal IT, HR, etc. Therefore, we have a wide range of vacancies, from marketers to analysts and from technical consultants to customer service and technical sales managers. In such areas, we expect candidates to be ready to understand the customer's task (external and/or internal) and make every effort to solve it effectively.
Needless to say, so-called soft skills are also important for us; regardless of the area, a person has to be able to work in a team and communicate with internal customers. To be able to work independently and take responsibility is critical along with not concealing problems and difficulties and not hesitating to ask for help from your colleagues. To be able and willing to learn quickly is important because technologies are changing rapidly and an IT specialist has to develop constantly and expand their horizons. In addition, a high level of English language proficiency is vital for us as an international company.
What internship programs do you have and how to join them?
Right now, there are no such programs available due to the remote work mode. But we regularly have positions available for senior students with little or no experience. On some of them it is even possible to work less than 40 hours a week. We would recommend monitoring our opportunities at our Russian career page and international career page.
What can I do right now to get a job in ABBYY in the future?
You could review the list of the ABBYY career opportunities mentioned above, as well as jobs on our career pages and think which ones would be of the biggest interest to you. When you decide on that part, make a list of your hard and soft skills relevant for the chosen field(s) and decide which of those are your strengths and which are areas for improvement. Remember that perfect candidates do not exist, so even if you believe you lack some of the job description requirements consider applying for the vacancy anyway and think of having a plan how to work on your areas of improvement. Of course, interviewers will respect the fact that you openly acknowledge things you don't know yet and have a plan how to learn these things. Ultimately, you should already start executing this learning plan before you apply for the job :)
If you have any questions regarding the skills necessary for particular positions or need advice, feel free to e-mail us or message us on our Russian Facebook, or Instagram pages, and we will try to answer your questions with the help of our colleagues as soon as possible.
Another tip: there are plenty of articles and presentations from ABBYY employees in Russian and English available online. You could go through them to understand our business and technologies better as well as get insights on our corporate culture and values and also gain extra points showing your knowledge at a job interview :)
If you have any questions regarding the skills necessary for particular positions or need advice, feel free to e-mail us or message us on our Russian Facebook, or Instagram pages, and we will try to answer your questions with the help of our colleagues as soon as possible.
Another tip: there are plenty of articles and presentations from ABBYY employees in Russian and English available online. You could go through them to understand our business and technologies better as well as get insights on our corporate culture and values and also gain extra points showing your knowledge at a job interview :)
The Skoltech Career Center thanks Elina Mukhametdinova and Svetlana Zolotova for this interview and support.
Want more information on career planning?
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