A few years back I moved to West Virginia for cheap housing but work across the border in another state (where the jobs are, no jobs on WV side). If my current employment ever is uncertain, I realized I will have “West Virginia” on my resume as my address. Does this cripple me severely (especially since I work white-collar)? How powerful is the WV stereotype?
In my experience, little.
No employer worth working for is going to give a damn about such things.
Don’t sweat it and stay on top of your game.
Don’t go into your next interview sans shirt with a Budweiser in your hand, and you’ll be just fine.
Nobody with any sense at all is gonna throw away your resume only because it says WV in your past experience.
Sorry, my post was a little misleading… I still live in WV so it will be my current address. Beautiful here, but maybe I shot myself in the foot. I am currently in a position that I can move across the border out of WV, if I wait, the window of opportunity may close.
You are still way off base. It won’t make one iota of difference.
I would call anybody who thought so an idiot, but that would reflect on the OP as well.
I think you’re making too much of this. Sensible people aren’t going to judge you just for living in WV.
As a West Virginian, born and bred, I agree. I also work across the state line (in Ohio, if anyone cares). Aside from the occasional "inbred" jokes, usally given in good spirits by people who already know me, I have found living in W. Va. makes no difference. When applying for jobs I have found that employers looked at my work experience, education, and past job performance.
The idea that any employer would consider if a person had lived in W.Va. is...
well…
You can figure out what I was going to say.
Montani semper liberi
As a Chicagoan recently transplanted to Mississippi, let me say something else.
First of all, I’m not really aware of any WV stereotype, even though I inferred from your OP enough to crack wise about going shirtless and drinking beer. Is this stereotype synonymous with “hicks”, “hillbillies”, “rednecks”, “trailer trash” and/or the “deep south”? If so, the WV stereotype therefore includes Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Oklahoma, and parts of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Florida, etc, etc, etc. No company or hiring manager in their right mind would exclude anybody from any state, based merely on that fact.
I think more derision is placed upon Arkansas and Texas than WV, and our last two presidents have had those states on their resume.
Boss to Secretary: * “YOU’RE FIRED!!! I TOLD YOU!!! Throw out all the resumes from West Virginia! We aren’t hiring any inbred hicks!”*
Just as an aside, I worked with an engineer who graduated from WV Tech with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He was embarrassed to tell people where he went to school, and he began wearing his father’s U of Florida ring. No, it wasn’t in dad’s memory - his father was quite alive and still a contributing member of society.
So, there’s at least one guy out there who has issues with WV. I can say that he’s an idiot, but it has nothing to do with being from WV. He’s just an idiot.
Based on the hundreds of people commuting from WV to places like Winchester and Loudon County, the effect might not be as bad as you think.
Another lifelong West Virginian here. I’ve travelled around the country to various schooling and training seminars as student and instructor, and have not encountered any problems with the stereotype. Lots of jokes and kidding, but all in good fun. I have a friend who goes to Mexico occasionally as an instructor and a consultant to police and fire agencies. He gets treated like royalty.
Thanks for the input… maybe I am being a little too cautious.
I think you’re being overly-sensitive. Sure, you’ll probably have to listen to all the jokes from your co-workers, but anyone in a hiring position is going to realize that having WV in your address is not a problem at all.
Eleusis, yep, the hick/inbred/redneck/dumber than dirt stereotypes belong to WV. Sample WV joke: How do we know that a West Virginian invented the toothbrush? Because if it had been anyone else, it would have been called a teethbrush!
Recently I heard of young go getters in Sydney taking steps to overcome these problems. Some graduates who live in less salubrious parts of Sydney acquire a Post Office box in a more upmarket suburb (only costs about $60 a year) and only quote there mobile phone number. Most people assume they live where the PO box is.
Well, considering I’m going to WVU next year (pursuing a Masters in Computer Science), I really hope not too much!
(I’ve taken it with good humor…actually, tell people to tell me their best jokes, and other than my brother, nobody’s whistled Dueling Banjos)
I ran into problems with dating when I lived in Orlando, because of my address.
I lived in Ocoee, a comfortable, middle to upper middle-class suburb that happened to be west of the city. Most young professionals lived north, south and east of downtown Orlando. The western suburbs still had a very Confederate cultural orientation. The area was ethnically Southern, and most transplants living there were from other Southern states, as opposed to the Northeast and Midwest. Although Ocoee was middle-class, it was very Southern and blue-collar, so I was labeled a “redneck” by many for my address. Many local businesses won’t branch out in the western suburbs, because the area seen as someplace that really isn’t part of Orlando; it’s a whole different world.
That was a local thing, though. My Ocoee address just said “Orlando suburb” to the outside world, and little more.
I doubt it’ll make much difference on a resume, or to an employer in general. In private you’ll probably be asked stupid questions like “So are you inbred?” and God forbid you are the least bit conservative, then you’re just a backwards hick from the hills.