Career Peace

A few days ago, I talked about the notion of finding a job in someplace other than your hometown. It’s not easy developing a network of contacts in a place you’ve never lived, and possibly only visited a few times. Yet, it can be done. If you do enough of the right things, you can develop a network of personal contacts in another city that can help you with your job search there.

Those right things involve researching the companies that can make the best use of your skills. Then identifying people that work in those jobs, making contact with them, and offering to take them to lunch in exchange for an “informational interview.”

Do enough of these and you’ll soon develop a core group of people willing to help you find jobs in their companies - jobs that you’ll have the inside track to get before anybody else even knows about them.

Personal Networking Pays Off, But It Takes Some Work

How hard will you have to work in order for this technique to pay off for you? I wish I could answer that one. I can’t. The answer is different for everybody. But I can tell you that it pays off in spades. Take Henry, for example.

Henry lived in Atlanta, and wanted to move to Phoenix, AZ. Phoenix is significantly smaller than Atlanta, but Henry desperately wanted to move there, so he started developing a long distance network of new acquaintances that could help him.

Through his research, Henry uncovered 108 places that sounded interesting enough to work for. Henry made a total of 127 phone calls to people who worked in Phoenix at those 108 companies. After all those calls, he narrowed down his list from 108 possible employers to 46.

Get This Many Job Offers, And All You Have To Do Is Cherry-Pick

He travelled to Phoenix to meet with some of the people he had called. When he returned home, he had narrowed the list down to 27 possible opportunities. Out of those 27, he got 12 job offers. 12 offers!

From there it was easy. Henry just picked the one that sounded most interesting with the people who seemed the most pleasant to work with. As far as I know he’s still there, and probably as happy as he’s ever been.

Now, will you have to do as much work to find a job in a new city as Henry did? Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll tell you what - when you’re facing the daunting task of moving to entirely new surroundings, it sure is nice to have a huge network of contacts who know you, and know how to get ahold of you if they want to hire you.

Conducting a job search in a far-away town is hard. But not impossible. What Henry did isn’t that hard. But he didn’t do it with 5 resumes and 2 phone calls. It will take some work. But if you’re willing to put in the effort, a job relocation like this can work for you, too.

Tags: Career Planning, Job Relocation