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Can anyone lend me their experience on this? I haven't looked into it yet as I'm just considering the possibility.
My concern is, obviously the employer sees all the work history is from a different state. How do you deal with answering that?
Are employers pretty good about understanding the need to do this in order to transition? It would take a little while to get travel set up for an interview and such as well. How has your experience been?
I'm not in management so I would be looking at a middle of the road type job situation. I've been stuck in MI for years, recently completed 2 business degrees and started working on my MBA. There is so little here in the way of work I think it may be time to finally try and move on.
Forget the PO Box and simply use your address. I would think a potential out of state employer wouldn’t care if you wanted relocate for the job. It shows you’re willing to make a change and looking for improvement over what you have and where you are.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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PO Boxes raise a red flag, use your address and make it clear in the cover letter that you want to relocate there. If they like your qualifications/experience they will do a phone interview and/or pay for you to come out for an interview, but that happens a lot less these days with so many qualified local applicants. If you want to get out you should move then look for a job, just choose a place you would enjoy living, with potential for hiring.
I've been writing in my cover letters that I currently live in ____, but am willing to relocate to ______ at my own expense, and that seems to be working pretty well.
Can anyone lend me their experience on this? I haven't looked into it yet as I'm just considering the possibility.
My concern is, obviously the employer sees all the work history is from a different state. How do you deal with answering that?
Are employers pretty good about understanding the need to do this in order to transition? It would take a little while to get travel set up for an interview and such as well. How has your experience been?
I'm not in management so I would be looking at a middle of the road type job situation. I've been stuck in MI for years, recently completed 2 business degrees and started working on my MBA. There is so little here in the way of work I think it may be time to finally try and move on.
There is the moving allowance issue when you apply from out of state. In this economy, most employers don't want to have that conversation. You know how it is. Therefore, they will tend to favor local candidates. Heavily.
You can rent mailboxes that provide you with an actual street address, I'm told, rather than a PO Box number. Mail forwarding services also provide an actual street address. To me, this would be preferable to relocating ahead of time, renting while looking, and going through the nightly anxiety of checkbook balancing.
If you go that route, you will want an area code that roughly matches your mailing address. Google Phone can accomplish this, I am told. Alternatively, my son got one of those prepaid phones from a big box store, and he was able to pick his area code. He picked his sister's, as he would rather settle in central VA than in DC when he gets out of the service.
If you have the opportunity, the least stressful alternative would be to camp out on somebody's couch, either physically or virtually, for a couple months while you get your momentum going. This is the golden avenue - a local friend will help you get your search going. Even one friend can introduce you to another, and that is how jobs are gotten these days. If you have a friend in your target area, you are fortunate indeed!
It would be better to either leave the address blank or buy a private post office box with a street address- like a mailbox etc. Then get a low cost voice mail or Google Voice with the area code of the town you want to move to.
Regardless of the advice of some of the other posters, employers do greatly prefer local candidates so you want to give the impression you have already moved to the community you are living in. If you are still working in your old town make a white lie and say that you have moved there on weekends to join your wife or husband.
Because they won't write you anyway some people use the address of a large high rise apartment complex in the town you want to move to as their new address, just leave off the apartment number.
If I saw a resume with a PO Box address I would wonder what the applicant was trying to hide. Just pick an address at an apartment building...they're not going to be sending you anything in the mail anyway.
It's an idea, but many hiring managers know that people have P.O. boxes for this reason. You'd probably be better off, along with that, to emphasize how you are willing to relocate if hired.
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