So I’m looking to move from my home in the Cayman Islands back the the United States and I’ve been sending out my résumé for positions for which I seem well qualified. And I’ve been sending and sending, tweaking the résumé and cover letter to customize it for each application.
Thing is I’ve not been getting any replies. Nada. Zip. Zilch. This has been going on nearly a year now.
I’m an American citizen so there are no visa issues. Most online application forms ask about this, so I wouldn’t think this would be the issue.
My mother seems to think that having an overseas postal address is killing any responses. I use my Cayman postal address and phone number on my applications as well as a reasonable free email address I set up (Firstname.Lastname@emailprovider.com) just for job hunting.
Hiring managers or others, is there anything to this? Do applications from overseas automatically get canned? Do they get filtered out by Taleo and other online application management systems? Would I be better off putting mom’s address and phone number as my point of contact?
I just went hiring and yeah. For me “local enough to commute” was a screening criteria. I went through something like 800 resumes in two days, I needed some things that just put you in the no pile and “doesn’t live locally” was one of the criteria the hiring team decided on.
We weren’t going to pay relocation expenses
We need to interview in person quickly and hire quickly
There were 30 perfectly feasible candidates living locally, we interviewed FOUR.
One of the four was perfect
The MAJORITY of international resumes I did peek at (I’m a compulsive reader) were from people not even qualified. Granted there were quite a few of those in the local resume pile as well, but not proportionally as many.
I’m in the middle of sorting through some applicants to call to interview, ‘too far away’ is a good reason to go on the ‘no’ pile - a pile that I’m looking for any excuse to put you on to try and thin the list down.
Actually (and this, I feel, is the important part), ‘too far away with no real explanation’ is a reason for the ‘no’ pile. I did have one that currently lives about 100 miles or so away, but they made it clear that they were looking to move to the area and were looking to secure work first - which, I assume, is the same thing you’re trying to do.
She ended up on the ‘no’ pile anyway as she wasn’t qualified, but the fact that she’d made the effort to explain her situation made me reconsider.
When you send out a covering letter, are you explaining this? If you make it clear to them that your living arrangements are your own problem and won’t affect your work, that should work in your favour.
Of course, they might not care and just reject you based on the address anyway, apart from moving back locally I can’t see much you can do about that. Unless you know someone in the area that could act as a mail forwarder for you?
I’d add that it should be in your objective as well.
“To secure a challenging position in the Chicago area where I can utilize my skills as a lion tamer.”
In your cover letter explain that you are looking to relocate to Chicago because that is where family/friends/the Cubs are.
(When you screen 800 resumes you aren’t looking at cover letters - this might still not get you past the address screening at the top of the resume, so don’t put an address there).
(And I agree, 100 miles away and looking to move closer, that’s fine. Relocating for THAT JOB across the country, nope. You’d be desperate or nuts. Neither which were on our list of hiring criteria. Although we were looking specifically for some desperation - we wanted a person “of a certain age” who’d been out of work for a bit. They were likely to stick in the insane job for not enough money that we had available, and be willing to spend the rest of their career (10 to 15 years) there - the company couldn’t afford an eighteen months and out climber and there wasn’t a ladder to climb. The guy we hired, to my delight, negotiated his salary into reasonable range - but as I said, he was PERFECT.)
We hire nationally. I’m in Silicon Valley, and a good candidate in Texas, say, would be no problem. But international candidates are just going to be too much bother unless they were so far above anyone else as to be must haves.
My daughter just got a job in Vegas while living in Germany, but she used our address, did the interview just before her wedding which was near us, and was applying for a job with an airline who probably gets long distance travel a bit more. Her husband didn’t get any bites until they had moved to Vegas.
This also bears investigation. Maybe said provider has a reputation for spam? Like Hotmail and Yahoo, for instance. It costs very little to buy and set up your own domain. Consider the difference between [noparse]Firstname.Lastname@emailprovider.com and Firstname@FirstnameLastname.org[/noparse].
Hmmm. May have to invest in a mail forwarding service. Don’t have other addresses I could use locally.
I’m relocating for personal reasons (immigration for fiance and step kid) and don’t really care where in the States I end up. I’m an American and good to go for employment. I can always make up some other reason for the destination for the move that avoids a lot of borderline improper questioning.
And I’m a bit surprised. Automatically rejecting foreign addresses would seem to me to open up a company to claims of discrimination based upon national origin under a disparate impact evaluation.
Agreed - the wording is fairly critical. ‘I’m moving to ________ for [reasons] and looking for work in the area’ is fine. ‘I want this job and am happy to relocate for it’ sounds a bit desperate.
It’s not rejecting applicants based on nationality; it’s rejecting them based on where they’re living. Big difference. As long as applicants can speak English and can legally work in the country, I won’t care where they were born. But if they’re living in a completely different country, and not explaining why? Nah, that sounds more problematic than it’s worth. It’s not discrimination, it’s making a reasonable (if hasty) decision on suitability.
Besides, I doubt you’ll find it on any official hiring policies.
A mail forwarding service may well be the way to go here.
I don’t think it is going to be hard to explain why you want to move back to the US.
You didn’t say what kind of jobs you are applying for. If they are the type that requires a face-to-face interview, and pay for travel, you’ll have to explain why you are somewhere other than what the mail forwarding service says. If you are applying for a job at a company that hires locally, you are limiting yourself only slightly less.
In Europe phone screens seem to be done on Skype. I use the regular phone, so though the cost of calling internationally is not an issue, the discrepancy between your country code and address might be.
International is a deal breaker. Plenty of local candidates that would be easier for everything. Local is even better because it’s another lever over the candidate.
I’d be happy to do a first screening interview via Skype. If I could get a reply. Sigh.
I did have one offer for a position substantially similar to the one I have now. Three trips over a period of 10 weeks at my expense from Cayman to Seattle to go through the application process. One entire trip would have been for nothing more than a typing test. And that was their self described “streamlined” process for out-of-town applicants.
As to national origin discrimination… it’s a disparate impact issue. Presumably persons from a foreign country are more likely to have a foreign address.
*We’re not discriminating against Mexican Americans. We’re only removing from consideration anyone with a Mexican mailing address.
We’re not discriminating against Mexican Americans. We’re only removing from consideration anyone with a family name of Ramirez.*
I don’t think either would pass a sniff test by a court. Not that I want to make this an issue. I just want a reasonable job that I am well qualified for. I’ll take care of the relocation.
Some positions I’ve applied for cover relocation. Some don’t. Some pay for travel to the interview. Some don’t. Not a deal breaker, within reason.
I’ve mostly done various forms of training in my professional experience, within public safety in a 9-1-1 center and in other jobs. Software training and various forms of psycho-motor skill development.
I could claim a desire to be close to family in the Carolinas, Tennessee, Texas, and a few assorted other areas. A return to Wisconsin, or Utah would put me back in places I’ve lived before. But I’d rather be in Florida for ease of travel to fiance’s family and me to my family. More centrally located. Better access to preferred recreational activities. And so on.
If you have family in Florida, could you use their address and arrange to crash with them in case of interest, so that it seems local?
A lot of relocation assistance these days is in the form of a lump sum, so where you move from won’t matter. I don’t know if these jobs hire locally or nationally.
I know we all should be global enough so it doesn’t matter, but hiring managers want to minimize the hassle for them.
It is, and we certainly never stated it - but we did all know that was what we were doing when we described our ideal candidate.
(It was a law firm :))
(And since one of the guys we ended up interviewing was in his late 20s, it would be difficult to prove we weren’t considering candidates across all ages).
