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Ask HN: Looking For Work: Move First, or Wait For Offer

7 points by Davertron ↗ HN
I would just like to hear, from both an employer's perspective and from people who have been hired who were in this same position, what your opinion is on trying to find work in a new state or country.

Just for some background: I currently live in Vermont, U.S.A., which isn't exactly teeming with tech/programming jobs. I subscribe to a couple of job board feeds, and it seems like a fair number of jobs which seem exciting to me are based out of (surprise surprise) the bay area or other parts of California.

My question is, what is your opinion about trying to get hired (or hiring) for jobs that are outside of your country or state? On the one hand, it's a big risk to quit my job and move out west with my wife with no guarantee of a position. However, I realize that if I were trying to hire for a position, I would probably look at local candidates before considering out-of-staters or people from outside the country, unless they looked like stellar candidates. Is it your experience that people from out-of-state are considered equally with people in-state, given the same skill sets, or do you think they usually end up on the bottom of the pile, so to speak?

I should also mention that, given an opportunity to take an exciting position, I would not expect to have my move costs covered by the company, and would, for the right position, be willing to travel to visit the company, meet face-to-face, check out the offices, etc. Basically, I wouldn't be looking for a free ride out to California, as obviously I wouldn't be the only person taking the risk.

5 comments

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maxdemarzi
Unless you are very specialized and find a job posting that matches your skill and industry specialization, it is hard to get flown across the country for an interview.

It has happened, and a unaccepted lowball offer is all that came out of it. Then I decided screw it, we're moving. I took 6 months to find a job, she took 2 months (more specialized than I am).

Both happy we made the move, but we could have lived off savings for years so it was a low stress move for us.

YMMV

Davertron
I find that, for a lot of the job postings I read, my skillset is a pretty good match (probably because I'm subscribed to relevant job boards). However, in the past, my experience has been that people won't even bother getting back to me if I'm not in the area (I've applied to jobs in other states before). Now, it could be that I'm just not qualified for the job; I'm not ruling that out. But it would be nice to know if I was completely out of consideration simply for being on the other side of the country.

As I mentioned in the description, I would be willing to fly myself out to visit the right company (I would probably set up multiple interviews at once if possible to maximize the value of the trip), as I would really like for that not to affect my chances vs. someone local.

Maybe that's the kind of thing that I have to make abundantly clear in my cover letter, so it doesn't take me completely out of the running.

Or, maybe people think us Vermonters are a bunch of dumb hicks :p

mattm
I think you should definitely make it as clear as possible in the cover letter that you are looking to move and what concessions you would be willing to make.
NonEUCitizen
Another option: take a 1-2 week "vacation" in California and interview fulltime during that period. Set up the interviews before your vacation. After the interviews each day, in the evenings, go to meetups.
Davertron
I'd definitely like to visit the Bay Area anyway, so this is probably the option to go with. Do you think that companies are receptive to the "I'm only going to be in town for x number of days, so if we could meet then that would be great" approach?