Moving, job-hunting: which has priority?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I recently came to the decision that I need to leave Arizona. Try to get a new start on life, as it were. I want to move elsewhere in the US, preferably to the Midwest or even new England, somewhere with relatively decent housing prices. I haven’t made up my mind, but that’s not the point of this thread. That one will come later. :smiley:

Obviously, moving cross-country is a big deal, and not something to be taken lightly. My current plan is to continue living and working here for the next three years or so, paying down debt and saving up enough money to facilitate the move and rent an apartment in the new city for about 6 months. Once I have the money, I’ll quit my job, move, and search for a job while living in said apartment. Once I have a job secured and my house here in Arizona is sold, I’ll buy a new house.

This plan has one incredible, glaring flaw in it: if I can’t find a job before my savings run out, I’m screwed. No way to get back home, no way to pay for my rent. Boom, I’m homeless. I don’t think it’s likely to happen, but the risk is enormous.

Now, I could look for a job while still living in Arizona. The reason my current plan doesn’t involve that is because IMO, it would be even tougher to find a job while living cross-country. I’m only four years out of college, and as far as I’m really aware, I’m a good employee but I have no special qualities that would make an employer eager enough to bring me in from out of state, even if I’m willing to pay relocation and travel expenses.

This limits my job prospects, as I’d have to find someone willing to look past that and also give me enough time to look for an apartment and get settled into the new town. I must admit that the prospect of having a month or two of working for myself is enormously appealing, even if it’s all spent relocating and job-hunting.

So the question that this backstory boils down to is: is it better to relocate then find a job, or find a job then relocate? Remember, we’re talking about cross-country relocation here. I want out of the Southwest entirely.

2

When I moved from Texas to NYC about 9 months ago I took a year before I moved and saved up a bunch of money to cover about 4 months worth of living expenses. I was looking on monster and stuff for jobs in New York while I was doing this but it is next to impossible to get an interview somewhere when you currently live more than 1000 miles away. I moved with my savings hoarde and started applying for jobs. I moved on June 1st and started my first day at the job I have now July 6th.

That was my experience. I can’t claim it will be the same for you but at least you know someone else has done it and survived.

3

Spend the next two years fixing this, and you’ll find relocating a lot easier.

4

I appreciate it. I spent a month of intensive job-hunting as soon as I graduated in May '04 and landed my current job mid-July '04, so I know it can move pretty quickly. I also know that my dad spent over a year job-hunting after he was laid off before he found a new one. No two experiences are really ever the same.

…Good point. :stuck_out_tongue:

5

When I did this right out of college, I moved first then found a job. However, I had one specific place I wanted to move to. You can vastly improve your potential selection of jobs by doing the job search first, because any place that has jobs will have houses. Not every place with houses will have a job for you.

You are right that it is hard to get interest as a remote jobseeker. However, that will be to some extent offset by the expanded pool of jobs.

The specific field you are in will have an impact on how to go about the job search. Any info? Does your current employer have branches around the company? How about their main vendors, customers, competitors? Is there a professional association for what you do? Check out their job search resources. Some of the national temp agencies may have the ability to search for openings nationwide, some of which may be direct hire or temp to perm.

Your credit, whether buying or renting, will be a lot harder to establish if you are unemployed or temporarily employed. Keep that in mind, too. It definitely works in favor of finding a permanent job in the place you will be living before you move.

6

You are in a much better position to find a job when you have a job, as opposed to looking while you are unemployed. So my suggestion is that you find the job before actually quitting and relocating.

7

You didn’t indicate what kind of profession you’re in or what kind of job you currently have, and I think this is a factor. Some tongue in cheek exampes of either end of the spectrum: if you’re moving to an area that is well-populated and you’re looking for a job that there are many of, for example, a waiter or cab-driver in New York, if I were you, I’d move first. If you’re an astronaut, and wanting to live in upstate Vermont, well, I think it might be advisable to find the job first.

In short, in making the decision, I’d be considering the job market of where I want to move in deciding which comes first, the job or the move.

8

I’ve just done what you’re asking about so, while acknowledging that your experience will certainly be different, here’s what I did.

I was living in the north east, and knew I wanted to move back to the west coast. I started reading jobs listings in the on-line versions of the cities that interested in me and, whenever I found something for which I was qualified, submitted an on-line application.

I got a lot of “thanks for applying, we may be in touch” auto-emails. But I also got one phone interview, a couple of email sorta-kinda-interviews, and eventually, an organization asked me to come interview in person. That led to a second interview, and job offer.

Part of the negotiation of start date included time for me to finish out my former job, finish packing my stuff, loading said stuff into a POD, driving across the country, and have a couple of days to settle in before starting the new job.

I’ve now been in my new (dream!) job for two weeks. I’ve got an offer in on a house, and may be closing (please, oh please!) at the end of this month.

All in all, the long-distance job search to offer to new job took seven months.

Note: Save as much money as you possibly can! I paid my own way to the job interviews – and I wasn’t about to ask for reimbursement because there were plenty of local applicants that wanted the same job.

9

Absolutely! One reason I’m trying to pay down my credit card debt first, so I’m not bleeding money through the interest.

My profession is…niche, unfortunately. I’m a transcript proofreader/editor, and as far as I can determine the skills necessary for handling simple transcripts don’t really translate well to editing positions for other forms of media. I don’t want to stay in transcription, and am in fact getting rather sick of it and my current company, which is spurring this decision in part. I’ve had some minor management experience, though, and I’m hoping to parlay that into at least a junior editing position with a print or internet media company. There’s some call for it locally, but not much, and I’m afraid the same will be true in just about any city that’s not one of the major coastal cities.

It sounds like the wisest course of action is to hunt for a job remotely and be as utterly accomodating as possible so the potential employer doesn’t have to go out of their way to work with me.

10

I am in HR and read lots of resumes. Living out-of-state is a huge burden to overcome for many employers. There are usually dozens of other applicants for the same job who don’t have to relocate. Here is my suggestion:

  1. Apply to jobs in areas that you’d consider moving. Maybe pick 2-3 areas. Make sure when you submit your resume that you use an address that is local to that area, even if you have to use a friend’s address or PO Box.

  2. If someone calls you for an interview, fly out to that area without mentioning it. If it comes up, tell them that you had already planned to relocate to the area on whatever date.

In other words, do whatever you can to avoid making your location a reason to deny you. As an employer, I really would feel awful if someone relocated for a job at my company, and then 2 months later it didn’t work out.

11

since it’s a three year in the future thing, I would also do the remote job search and take a job hunting “vacation” to where you’d like to relocate.

Also if you want to get into editing for other media, maybe you can try get some free lance projects to a) see if you like it and b) have some sort of track record.

12

There is one thing that in retrospect I would have done differently, when I moved to Boston first and then job-hunted, way back in 1989:

I would have taken a part-time job flipping burgers, or signed up with a temporary agency, or something, anything, that would have provided a bit of extra cash while still leaving a lot of free time for job-hunting. Of course, you can’t support yourself on a part-time minimum wage job. But it means that your savings go down more slowly, so you have more time to look before your money runs out.

13

I appreciate the responses. They all sound like good ideas. It’s all still a long ways away, but I need to have as much planned as possible if I’m going to pull this off.

14

I have been looking for a job for 6 months now. When I began, I had about $15k in savings. Now, it’s all gone. That being said, my living expenses are very high, being in NYC. My suggestion is to live as cheaply as humanly possible-- even stretching out ONE more month of rent by eating ramen every day is one more month, perhaps all the extra time you need, to find a job. For me, I have no more money, and now I’m forced to move back home. It sucks.

15

You generally want to have the job lined up before you move someplace, unless it’s the kind of job where you need to be in that particular city and you plan to stay until you find work (say…moving to NYC to work in finance or LA to work in movies).

I would recommend at the very least, you start making contacts at companies that do whatever it is you want to do. See if you can schedule some informational interviews around the same period of time and make a trip out there. Basically, if you move someplace with no job, you want to have laid as much ground work as possible.

16

I found a job, then moved. We were looking to relocate to Florida, so I applied for positions in my field in the Orlando(ish) area. Got the job, then found the apartment.

I think there’s less stress finding a place to live than there is finding a job. While you’re job hunting, you can also be scoping out areas to live and prices.

17

You might want to check those housing prices too. Some parts of New England are relatively inexpensive, but they also are not very close to major cities which means not so many jobs. There are more jobs the closer you get to Boston or New York, but the housing prices also go up significantly.