Heading back to Colorado! (Denver, Grand Junction: ski resorts, fit in, apartment)

[Spring Fed]

My girlfriend and I are moving back to Colorado within the next two years, and I'm starting to ask the age-old question of "where, oh where to go?"

We are both in our early 20s with Journalism/Advertising/Communications degrees and are gaining some professional experience in Austin, Texas while we scope the job market back in Colorado. Austin can be great for young professionals like us - the city is booming and jobs are abundant (but holy cow are they competitive!) in our area of work - but just not us.

We need to be in the mountains of Colorado. This so-called "Hill Country" of central Texas does nothing but make us yearn for the crisp mountain air even more, and honestly I don't even want to talk about the traffic.

So, to keep things short, we're looking for some useful information we don't already know.

What we already know: Denver, Denver...and Denver. With our degrees, this would make sense, right? Yes, and this is definitely a viable option. However, the purpose of this thread is to think outside the valley, so to speak. We have lived on the Front Range and loved it, but just for the purpose of argument, let's think of a world without it. The vast array of small mountain towns have always been alluring to us, and the ones we haven't already visited we've been researching on this forum and other sources. With that, we also know these towns are alluring to a lot of people, and we don't aim to make the mistake of moving to one for the beauty and activities without the proper means to live in the area.

Here's a short list of our favorite towns we've looked into so far: Montrose, Glenwood Springs, Carbondale, Buena Vista, and Gunnison. Idealistic? Maybe. That's why we're asking you. Of course, there are also the Summit County ski towns and Grand Junction, but those are secondary options.

Finding a job in our profession that can support us is the most important thing - We know what mountain living is like and we wouldn't shy away from a commute. We would also be renting at first no matter where we ended up.

So, does anyone have any thoughts, ideas, or good input? We have experience in marketing, advertising, journalism, and sales, so I'm confident we could fit in somewhere around those towns and make a decent living. What say you?

[jazzlover]

Bluntly, outside of the Front Range (and very possibly there, as well), you'll starve to death. Journalism/Advertising/Communication degrees are, sadly, one of those degrees that can be pretty close to worthless in the job market, ESPECIALLY in a rural area. There aren't very many jobs in the field and, compared to many other types of degrees, those kinds of degrees can be pretty easy to get. I know a number of people with those degrees and what they usually have to do to be viable in the job market is to go back to school and get a degree in another field that they can combine with a journalism degree. For example, a guy that I knew some years back struggled for years to make a living in journalism with a communications degree. Finally, in total frustration, he went back to college and got an engineering degree. Now he writes technical instruction and service manuals for a living and does quite well.

I've done all kinds of writing over the years (I'm a published author), but my degree was not in any of the communications fields and writing has always been more of a sideline than my main career. Like any other career, it's possible to find people who are very successful in journalism, etc., but they get there by being the absolute best at their work--anything less won't get you much. Plenty of "journalists" wind up waiting tables--it's just one of those fields where there are way more people than there are jobs for them. If anything, the job market would be 10 or 100 times more competitive in small town Colorado when compared to someplace like Austin.

[lurtsman]

If it feels like jobs in Austin are competitive, you might be in for a shock.

However, competition can be over rated. I interviewed and was unsuccessful for a position at one point. As it happened, since the job was in an area I frequented, I ran into the person that had been hired into the job. He had plenty of time to talk to me during one of his unscheduled paid breaks, so I learned a bit about him. It turned out he had no degree, no courses that were relevant to the job, and no experience that was relevant. The application process was not as "competitive" as I was lead to believe.

For comparison sake, I had a Bachelor's degree in the subject, several years of experience performing higher level jobs, and was working on a relevant Master's degree. In all effects and purposes, I was significantly more qualified than any of the people that were currently working in that position. (There were about 7 or 8) Needless to say, I found a much better position a few months later and was so grateful I hadn't wasted more time on them.

[Spring Fed]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

Plenty of "journalists" wind up waiting tables--it's just one of those fields where there are way more people than there are jobs for them. If anything, the job market would be 10 or 100 times more competitive in small town Colorado when compared to someplace like Austin.

Unfortunately, journalists seem to have this problem everywhere. I should clarify, though I'm not sure if it makes a difference: though we have journalism experience, we're mainly looking to use our advertising and marketing experience to make a living. We realized right away we would have an extremely hard time making decent money as journalists, but we love to write and would mainly do freelance work on the side of our actual career.

Also, we both have some good experience working in radio. However, after doing some preliminary research on the stations in the mountains, it seems they are all very small and don't hire often - let alone people they don't already know. What do you guys think?

As for our marketing and advertising experience - would the larger ski resorts need people like that? I imagine a large portion of that work is taken care of by agencies in Denver, but I'm just spit-ballin' here. Or what about the mountain music festivals, marathons, or even rafting companies?

Although I can't say I'm surprised by the answers thus far, I do appreciate them. Knowledge is power, eh?

[Dogmama50]

There are marketing jobs in the mountains, Eye Pieces of Vail is looking for a Marketing Director right now. There are just fewer jobs up here and many companies want people who do or have lived in a similar area so they understand the demographic better. Check the local papers and sites like Indeed for positions and maybe something will come up that you're excited about.

[Spring Fed]

Indeed! My eyes are glued to that site at least once a day. I have noticed some positions that we would definitely be qualified for, though most of them (if not all) have been in Vail, Breck, or that surrounding region.

We wouldn't have a problem working for one of the resorts, but I don't think we would want to live in those towns. With that said, what are areas like Minturn, Silverthorne, Frisco, and Edwards like in terms of rentals?

[Dogmama50]

The rental market is tight right now. Most people who work in Vail don't live there, Avon, Edwards, Minturn, Eagle, Gypsum are more popular. Expect $1500-$3000 for a 2 bedroom condo to a 3 bedroom house. Long commutes are not advisable in the mountains, I live 10 minutes from work and on a bad snow day it can easily take 30 minutes. Working in Vail and living in Frisco is a nightmare of a commute over Vail Pass, so the moral is, if you work in a mountain community, live in that mountain community.

[Spring Fed]

Originally Posted by Dogmama50

Working in Vail and living in Frisco is a nightmare of a commute over Vail Pass, so the moral is, if you work in a mountain community, live in that mountain community.

Agreed! We wouldn't want to make that commute - I guess it really depends on where we can find jobs, and then we'll worry about the living situation. As far as rentals go, we were thinking either a studio apartment or 1 bedroom, and in an ideal world we'd be able to move in during the "off" season, after all the seasonal employees have scooted out.

Surely there are some more reasonable studios or one bedrooms in that area? Reasonable, as in below $1,000/month.

We aren't in any extreme hurry, which is nice. We have about another year and a half to keep our eyes peeled, but it'd be nice to narrow down our best options instead of cruising through all these forums and all the local papers'/Indeed listings on a daily basis. It's time consuming work to find work!

Thanks for the feedback! We really appreciate it

[jazzlover]

Radio in small markets is DEAD. Sirius took care of that. What few local stations are left generally run "canned" programming, running a few local ads at the break. Some of them that I know are actually just one-person operations and that guy isn't making much of a living.

I deal with marketing people pretty often, and my opinion of them is that few are very good at what they do. First and foremost, most of them do not have the knowledge or ambition to really know the product that they are supposedly marketing, and they aren't very good most of the time at figuring out who their target customer is. When they don't produce results, they get busy blaming everything except their ignorance of what they are trying to sell and of who is supposedly the person who will buy it. I see the same mentality in most "journalists"--they're too lazy or uneducated (in anything besides journalism) to do the research necessary to know what they are writing about. Not surprisingly, they turn out a lot of crap journalism. As I said, I used to do a lot of writing. The writing was the easy part. I usually spent 10 or 20 hours of research for every hour I spent writing. Few people want to put in that kind of effort, anymore. Sadly, those lazy people give their whole professions a bad image.

Communications--written and oral--are absolute essentials tools for anyone who intends to be successful in a profession, but--for most people--they can't be an end in itself. As I've said many times before, the key to being able to make a living in a place like Colorado where scads of people want to be is to have skills that are in demand and be the very best in one's given profession.

[Spring Fed]

Jazzlover.. as unpleasant your experiences with marketing people may have been, this response does nothing in the way of good input. In fact, the only shred of helpful information I can find in this entire post is that radio in those small markets is "DEAD." Everything else in here smells like, "Don't come here with your lame degree; it's worthless and so are you."

Here's the thing - We are good at our jobs. For being in our early 20s, we are doing very well. We both busted our butts in school while we worked at our respective newspapers and radio stations. Meanwhile, we also worked part time jobs and completed internships in order to have those "skills that are in demand." We aren't the best yet, but we are aspiring to be.

We know what the stigma is for people with our degrees, but we are doing everything in our power to maintain an extraordinary level of professionalism; if we take a job, we are going to do the absolute best we can. There's no laziness here - only drive and ambition.

I get it - you're just "telling me like it is," in your eyes. However, for being such an intelligent writer who conducts the proper amount of research, this post certainly has the air of judgement from someone with a chip on their shoulder.

That being said, I do appreciate your thoughts. I created this thread to have people's opinions, and I certainly didn't expect EVERYTHING to be positive.