Multi-City Job Hunt?

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I thought I could throw this idea around. I live on the East Coast, don't have a job, and am sick of this place anyways. The climate here is way too competitive, and I never really liked it here, anyways. I thinking of launching a multi-city job hunt, encompassing a few select cities in the Midwest (and one in the South). There are two, Columbus and Pittsburgh, where I have friends willing to introduce me to some people.

I am not prepared to move to either of those cities until I see tangible signs of economic improvement. Nevertheless, I can only spend so much time and money running between cities for interviews.

So how should I pursue a multi-city job hunt? Should I sit tight and just send out a few applications for jobs in those cities? Should I move there and see if I can get anything in four or five months?

Having watched my (now 30 year old daughter) job hunt on & off for the last 8 years since her college graduation, this is my conclusion (her's actually). You need to be local to the job hunt.

She wants to live in Charleston SC. After graduation, she moved home (CT) and spent her 1st summer sending resumes to Charleston, NYC & Wash DC. She never landed so much as an interview. She moved to Charleston and got a cheap, shared rental, off season (9 mo lease). She worked part time at a couple low paying, non career jobs. One of those jobs evolved into a full time position with responsibility, but not in her area of career interest.

After 3 years of looking she got a career position in her area of interest there in Charleston. That company went out of business 1 year later. She took a 4 month project here in CT because it was available immediately. That resulted in full time employment in her area of interest but here in CT. The company turned out to have an insane corporate culture (lots of crying executives, literally). She was beyond unhappy at that job and it wasn't in Charleston either.

During that year she spent the equivalent of a second part time job; applying for jobs in Charleston and flew down there @ 3 times for interviews, but wasn't hired anywhere; she felt that applicants who lived in the area had an edge.

She got a low paying job offer (receptionist at a boat locker) through a friend in Charleston and took it. Nine months later she landed her 2nd career position in Charleston. Good job, good company, lots of pressure, but she likes it.

Unless you are a mega bucks type top executive, with a top executive employment agency helping you look for an out of state job, you must live in the area where you are job hunting. Employers don't want to hire out of state people, because the out of stater is not settled there, has no local history, has no vested interest in the area (like a local apartment, and local bills to pay) and can't immediately start work, so they won't take your application seriously.

What you need to do is save up some money while you figure out where you want to live, and then move there. Then you can live on your savings, and get a room or small apartment while you job hunt in your new community.

Also, don't hold your breath waiting for the economy to improve. The people who have the power over our economy are both the Senate and the House of Congress, and the President. They are the ones who decide what to spend our tax dollars on, and how much of it to spend. They can decide to cut the waste out of the budget, but they have not done so in many years. They use the pork barrel projects, and the our tax dollars that fund them, to buy votes. They like to lie to the people by saying that they have cut the budget, when what they have really done is instead of over spending by, say, 1 trillion dollars, they have only over spent by 750 billion dollars. It is not a cut if it is still over spending. Both major parties are guilty of this lie. Until we replace these crooks with people who will really cut the waste, our economy will continue to go down the tubes. If you put off looking for a job until things get better, you will end up homeless, and will starve.

Remember, we on the spectrum are all:

A Different Drummer

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
Perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
However measured or far away.

--Henry David Thoreau

I lived in Germany when job hunting, so what I say might not apply to you. I would suggest you do go for it. I applied for jobs nationwide but also wrote UK and Ireland in my monster preferences. Comparatively soon I landed an interview in Karlsruhe (4 train hours away), went there, missed the last train home, slept in the train station and didn't get the job, the next one I got was even further (tiny city even more south of Karlsruhe), next one was in Aachen (just one hour, yay!), then a recruiter offered me a position in Ireland. And, well, I got that one. So it does help to indicate that you are ready to leave everything behind you and move there when asked, as well as be informed about the city and if required country you'd relocate to, as well as get a rebate card for the train company it will probably pay off.

There's some truth to the statement that employers do look to the local pool of talent, but I've also seen that people do hire from out of town. The last job hunt I did involved applying at jobs in more than eight countries. (Hey, I was desperate!) In the end I moved overseas. Since then we've hired at this place, and every single one of our applicant pools involved people from out of town. Most involved people from out of state and out of country. Each one got equal consideration.

Not every job will supply transportation for your interview, though. So think carefully before applying for out of town jobs. Be willing to go that distance, or be willing to say that you aren't willing to pay your way to the interview. (Be forewarned that this may constitute a "no" in their book.)

But I can say first hand that it does work sometimes.

And seriously, why is everyone so glum about the economy? I know it seems bad now, and I will grant this is a structural recession (virtually all other recessions are merely cyclical|). But the signs of a sustained economic recovery are in place. Buying a home now is far cheaper than renting. Interest rates are lower than at any time in history. Most importantly, corporations are very lean and flush with cash ($2.5 trillion, more than ever both in absolute terms and as a percentage of corporate America's collective balance sheet). That money is sidelined for now, but once someone starts investing, the rest must invest just to stay competitive.
I will grant that political instability in the West probably holds back corporate investment, but it's not as disruptive as, say, total war. In fact, the situation may even help, given how deflationary it is.