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My friends in West Virginia are arguing with my wife and I every day about our plan to move to the Greater Washington DC area once we close on our home in a few weeks. Both my wife and I lost our job in cutback in West Virginia State Government. We will have over $100,000 in the bank after we get the profits from our home and are both collecting jobless benefits.
We tried to get a good job in the wonderful State of West Virginia but were just unsuccessful. 95% of the jobs in small town West Virginia are low wage service sector positions, there are very few office jobs. Both my wife and I are Accountants and have college degrees and 20 years of experience.
Originally I was going to rent an apartment in West Virginia, where rent is cheap, and then apply for jobs in both Pittsburgh and Washington and just drive back and forth to the interview. Though a friend from college did that and after a year of driving through the mountains to interviews he got no where but a burned out car and lots of bills. The employers wanted a local candidate. Another friend who wanted to move to New York City just moved there after a year of fruitless cross country trips to interviews, but after actually moving to NYC, he got a good job in a few months because he was now a local.
If you are a transplant to DC what did you do to get a job in the area? Tell us your stories!
I moved here for an internship, but not a job. I quickly turned the internship into a job. Had I not gotten my foot in the door with the internship, there is way I would have been hired into a professional job in the area. But I also was straight out of college with pretty much no experience.
I know a few people who started with internships in the DC area then found full-time jobs... either that internship turned into a job, or they kept applying during/afterwards. I have one friend who did an internship, but it took him almost 10 months to land a full-time job after that internship. Another person I know had a 3 month gap between her internship and full-time job. She waited tables in the meantime to help with rent. I myself had over a 2 month gap between my first and second job (both in the DC area). I had used up all my paid time off to interview and I just wanted out by that point hoping something would work out. I'm younger/less experienced though, and most of my friends are only a few years out of school so I can't speak to how it might be for more experienced people.
I do think it helps if you're a local though. When I was interviewing all over the DC area I met a couple of out of state candidates at some places where they didn't even compensate them for gas money or travel or anything! (I think really big companies will always pay for that, but smaller ones not always). Talk about cheap. So unless the position requires a lot of specialty/experience they'd probably opt for a local over out-of-state candidate most of the time. Just my two cents.
I moved to the DC area decades ago from a foreign country when my father was hired for a teaching position at a university here. The rest, as they say, is history.
26/male, with a few years of experience as an IT 'Business Analyst' (though no hard programming skills), and a bachelor's and master's in economics. Fluent in Spanish. US citizen.
Hoping to move to the area this spring. A decent amount of savings (~7k). Will rent a cheap room to start, and do any job possible (even if just part-time retail, etc.) while trying to land an office job. Will take a temp office job to start. I make $30/hr now in FL, but my contract role is ending in a couple months.
If I find a $25/hr+ job within three months of moving there (even if it's just 'temp' for the time being), I'll be fine financially moving forward, though I'd obviously like to start working ASAP. Hope to be in the DC area long-term, so I don't mind take a less-than-desirable job to start, just to get settled.
26/male, with a few years of experience as an IT 'Business Analyst' (though no hard programming skills), and a bachelor's and master's in economics. Fluent in Spanish. US citizen.
Hoping to move to the area this spring. A decent amount of savings (~7k). Will rent a cheap room to start, and do any job possible (even if just part-time retail, etc.) while trying to land an office job. Will take a temp office job to start. I make $30/hr now in FL, but my contract role is ending in a couple months.
If I find a $25/hr+ job within three months of moving there (even if it's just 'temp' for the time being), I'll be fine financially moving forward, though I'd obviously like to start working ASAP. Hope to be in the DC area long-term, so I don't mind take a less-than-desirable job to start, just to get settled.
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Best of luck to you on your move.
You should be fine as soon as you put a DC address on your resume. There are a lot of short term IT jobs that you can qualify for.
People on the rental board are telling me to do a cross county job search and to do the six hour drive over the snowy mountains of WV every time I get an interview. I don't think that is going to work and if the interview goes poorly it is a terrible long drive and expense for a failure. If I am local it would be harder to shake off bad interviews. In most cases if both candidates are qualified the local candidate wins out, right?
I did not have a job before I moved to DC but found a job through a temp agency. They placed me at a nice spot. I had a friend up here living in VA who I roomed with until I got on my feet and I put his address on my resume. (I know that's rare and trust me it didn't work out BUT...) once I got on my feet I was able to move to another place. It IS possible. Good luck with moving!
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