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Job Search recommendations when Relocating?

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by evinjhill

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When some of you IT/Hiring Managers receive resumes from people who are not local to your area and are thinking of relocating there, what "catches" your eye to even give them a phone interview? Is it a well written cover letter that explains that they will be relocating to your area soon? Is it a good resume? I am going to be relocating to the NYC area and I have sent out my resume using Monster.com to various employers for positions that I feel I am qualified to do. A majority of these have just been "feelers" to see if I could even compete in that market with the experience I have. I do not have a degree or certs, but have been doing low level system admin on and off for 7 years. My "confidence" in my abilities to land a job in that market are shakey right now, due to the fact that I have not received any responses from some of the companies. What kind of recommendations do any of you have to get looked at for jobs not in your area?

6 replies

by beads

Having been on both sides of the equation I can tell you what I have found.

Hiring side: I cannot find the talent I need locally. Otherwise, I wouldn't need to import help from out of the region. This is very true of our new soon to be HQ office. Lots of people want to live there but finding a job can be difficult, especially IT where there aren't alot of positions opening up annually.

Can I find someone with the skills and talent I need for less money? Whose the most hungry? How much can I get for my development or support buck? If someone is local but wants 20k more a year than someone willing to relocate. There probably going to get atleast a phone interview.

A sloppy resume or cover letter is a sure fire way of ensuring an early disposal or quickly filed into the back of a drawer. Same is true for local or non-local help.

What I found when I was interviewing accross state lines.

What motivated you to apply for this job? Really?!? I want to live and work in this area enough to move here and drive 7 hours for an interview.

Would be/how much less would you be willing to accept as far as salary goes? Another no kidding moment.

Those are the most common motivations from both sides that I have seen personally.

- beads

by av .

A well written resume and cover letter makes a great impression. If you have typos, bad format, canned cover letter, etc., I would be more likely to toss yours in the round file.

Many resumes I've seen are terrible. The cover letters are copied and pasted together, and look like it. Most of them have typos. It says to me that they didn't bother to proofread it before sending it out. If thats how they present themselves in a resume, it doesn't bode well for their work product.

Regardless of the level of your job, you will be way ahead of other people if you have a great resume and cover letter that sells you. Its worth it to hire someone to write it if you don't get the response you want.

Competition is fierce today and especially in the Northern NJ/NYC area. Employers are outsourcing everything they can to cheaper countries, but there are niche industries.

I think today you need to know tech and have business knowledge. Relocating or not.

by dmambo

There are jobs in a lot of smaller companies where the hiring manager might not consider Monster or other national recruiting tools. Use the classifieds of local papers available on-line to look for openings. Smaller firms may not expect to attract someone relocating, but since you'll be heading that way anyway, they may take a look at you.

Other than that, AmericanVoter hit the nail on the head. Ask a friend to proofread your resume to find errors that your eyes have missed. Express enthusiasm in your cover letters and try to customize it to the specific position.

Good Luck!!

by rb_itprofessional

I recently went through this very same situation while relocating. I will offer as many suggestions as I can. While the ideal situation is to have a job in hand BEFORE you leave, realistically it may not be possible due to the limitations you mentioned in your post. What I have found is that a lot of companies won't even look at a resume from an out of state candidate. There a couple of approaches here.

1) Get a local cell phone number and mailbox address to use on your resumes. With this option you have to be prepared to handle interview and relocation expenses completely out of your own pocket as companies will assume that you are a local candidate. The other drawback to this is that you must truly consider how quickly you can get to an interview should you be called for one. Being out of state, short notice airline tickets will be expensive unless you have some frequent flyer miles banked. I used this option when I started my out of state job search and started receiving many calls. I later moved on to option 2 below.

2)Move to your new state and stay in a hotel or other temporary living situation and search for a job full time. I moved to my new state and searched for a new job from 8AM-7PM everday for one month before I got my new job.

3)Consider contracting. I targeted both in my job search and got more interviews for contract positions than fulltime positions. I ultimately ended up taking a contract position and I am very happy.

I would also agree with another poster that mentioned targeting a niche market. What industry are you currently working in? That could play a large part in your search strategy. When I moved, I generated a lot of interest from the banks due to my IT Banking background. Consider what technologies you have experience with that would be attractive in various markets and highlight those.

All in all, I wish you the best. Keep us updated on your progress.

by rb_itprofessional

To tag on to the comment about a well written resume. I also enlisted the help of a professional resume writer to finesse my resume. It was WELL worth the investment. She was able to take my background and skills and market them on paper in such a way that drammatically increased my earning potential and resulted in more than a 25% pay increase. While these results may be extreme, the point is to enlist the help of someone who's sole purpose is to create professional, well-written, and marketable resumes.

by evinjhill

Thanks for the replies. Those are some outstanding ideas. I have been leaning to have my resume professionally done. I am in a niche market right now. For the last two years I've been working in the Mortgage industry and have been doing both processing and IT work. So I figured I would target some of the mortgage brokers that were looking for IT help because I have knowledge on both sides. I did change my address to a local NY address and actually got a call back. I explained the situation and my timeline for moving, and they were accepting of that. Since I am going to NY for the 4th of July weekend, I asked if it would be okay to set up an interview for that week and the contact person was okay with that. So that's a positive start! Again, I thank all of you who responded and I will keep you updated.

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