Let me tell you why I am here.

My correspondent in Bucksnort reached out with a question about relocation. While I addressed relocation in a general way in a post a few weeks ago, I think this question hits at a slightly different area. Bubba writes:

What are some tactics for a job search that will require relocation? It's not like Google is hosting a job fair in Bucksnort, TN any time soon.

Should I get a dummy phone line in every city in which I'm looking? Get a friend in that city to agree to let me use his address and have things forwarded?

With the job pool being what it is, it seems foolish to let the phrase "local candidates only" preclude my applying to an otherwise perfect position in terms of job requirements, description, and pay. But it also flies in the face of not applying for positions that don't allow me to meet the posted requirements.

Is this where you tell me that networking, online and personally, is vital?

Yes, Bubba this is where I tell you that networking is vital. In fact, I will not belabor that point and will assume that if you are interested enough in a career blog, you've probably adopted a "network first" mantra of some kind. Following are a few things that you should weigh when seeking work elsewhere.

As the blog's title suggests, it is important to let prospective employers know why one of their top applicants has an address in Uzbekistan... or Bucksnort. It has to be something other than "I really hate Tennessee and can't wait to leave this carnival of doom." If you don't like where you are now, what indication do I have that you will not ditch me the same way your did the Volunteer State? Likewise, you should probably not lead with "ailing parents." Does that mean that you will be completely consumed with their care until they pass, at which time you will move on? In short, your relocation should be based on positives about the organization and not negatives about your current life.

Likewise, you should cite your professional goals first and any connections to the area second to support the belief that you are a viable candidate. When I relocated to Alabama a few years ago, I shared that I loved California, but wanted the opportunity to be a part of a smaller university system that would allow me room for growth. I pointed out that I had family and friends in the area to make the transition smoother, but it was not given as a primary reason for my seeking employment there. From talking with one of the decision-makers in my hiring, I know that they chose me as a finalist because my goals were aligned with the position and only considered my attachments to the area as a secondary selection issue.

You're not from around these parts are you, stranger?

There are a number of reasons that a company might want to limit their recruitment to local candidates only, but most of them would violate some labor law or code somewhere. As a result, it is increasingly uncommon to see the "local candidate" restriction on job announcements. It sometimes cleverly masquerades under such guises as:

• Candidate must be familiar with Goosecreek County regulations regarding hamster tossing.
• Seeking applicants with a thorough background in Dutchess City renovation projects.
• Qualified candidates will have a well-established network of contacts in the Tri-City area.

Clearly, if such requirements are enforced, and you are hamsterless, you are not likely to be competitive in a job search in Goosecreek County, but making your case is an important step in getting past the screen. In the long run, one should not decide not to apply for a position simply because a job announcement seems to indicate provinciality as a requisite. The world has grown increasingly smaller and you may need to remind a prospective employer of that fact. In a difficult job market, it is too easy for an employer to be overwhelmed by marginal local talent that will not have to relocate, so your making it clear that you understand the "lay of the land" is vital to serious consideration.

I work in an industry (higher education) in which recommendations are part of the recruitment process from its earliest stages. It is not unusual at all for letters of recommendation to be a required part of an initial application. On the other hand, I know of students who are given job offers that are contingent on good recommendations, meaning that references are not even requested until there is an offer on the table. If you are applying outside of your home turf and you know someone in the vicinity of the "new job," consider having them submit a recommendation for you early in the process. Certainly if you know someone at the prospective workplace have them write or speak to someone on your behalf. (I am always surprised at the number of times I hear someone remark that they knew a supervisor or director at an organization at which they had applied and they never spoke with them about their application.)

The Proviso

After the forgoing, allow me to offer one proviso: Don't go any place where you feel unable to live for five or more years. Ironclad, lockdown rule. Five years minimum. Although most initial jobs seldom last more than two years, life becomes unbearable when you plan on sometime taking two years to mature and time conspires against you. Several years ago, I worked with a young couple whose job search was a massively huge net of openings that included literally all of the continental US of A. I will not get into the logic of why broad job searches work so poorly, but they do. He got an offer for a position in a portion of the South that I knew quite well. I cautioned him to tread lightly and get information about the surroundings, adding that it was a very rural area and would be much different than he was used to in Southern California and perhaps waiting for more familiar territory would make sense. Had he waited this would not be a compelling story at all because three weeks after he moved to the South, he had an offer closer to home. He felt (appropriately) that he should honor his commitment to the new organization and stay. A year into his time with them, while home on vacation, he paid me a visit and told me how miserable he was in the new place. The great irony was that as he looked for another job and was having difficulty for two reasons: employers on the West Coast were leery of hiring someone from Arkansas and concerned about the fact he was looking for another job so soon after starting.

Relocation signals flexibility, but it should be flexibility... not desperation.

I hear you knocking, but I'm pretty comfortable right now. So, come back later.

I am amazed at the speed with which the employment world has adapted to the digital world. Likewise, I am amused at the number of job candidates who are using tactics that are hold-overs from the pre-digital universe. Anyone following the job search etiquette of 1998 will be roller skating in a buffalo herd. Heck, for that matter, anyone following the job search etiquette of 2004 will be noticeably out of sync as well. Why do I bring this up? Well, this morning one of my "digital friends" sent me a Email or a TXT, hmm... maybe it was an IM. I don't remember, but he contacted me the way many 21st Century job seekers do with the following query.

So, I'm sending out resumes...What next? In the business world, it's not like I'd just send out a proposal when I see some company has an RFP out there, and just never follow up. I'd network, cold call before the RFP, talk to those who are reviewing competitors, get to know as much about what the person is looking for beyond the minimums, etc.

What's the etiquette for direct contact? And when you think about it, it's almost like HR departments are set up as buffers to keep you from doing that. I mean there's a reason that HR depts actually have telephones that accept inbound phone calls right?

I understand pro-activity is always best, but what level of pro-activity are we talking about here? When does pro-activity become obnoxious? When does aggressive become creepy?

Taking the questions one at a time, today's entry will be: How to harass, harangue, and harry hiring managers without crossing over into the "Stalker Zone."

I tried to call, but I kept getting a busy signal.

I really wish there was a science to follow up, but there just isn't. I will share what I usually tell students, but it is based on a very unscientific method, which is most of the people that I know that have used it have gotten jobs. Bear in mind, this does not account for their qualifications or the hiring manager's need. So, maybe they would have gotten the job without follow up. Anyway, here are the guidelines.

• Follow instructions. If the job announcement says, "Position open until 8/12/09" do not call on 08/05/09 or 08/06/09 or 08/07/09. My general rule of thumb is to allow about two weeks before inquiring and with the slow economy, three weeks is not outrageous. If you contact someone and they say that the manager or committee will be looking at applications in about two weeks, don't call in about three days. Be patient. Take up crossword puzzles or XBox or something.
  
  
• Create wiggle room. Contact as directly as you can, but leave folks space to hem and haw. My friend's supposition about HR people being a buffer is correct, so you don't really have to give them room. Don't get cheeky with them but you can be fairly pushy about when interviews are happening and stuff. With hiring managers you should really allow them the courtesy to ignore you. Back in the day, before email and text messages, if I were curious about a recruitment and I knew the manager's phone number, I would call after hours. This way I could be pretty certain that they would not be there and leave a voice mail that was less intrusive, giving them more control over a delicate situation. Email now replaces that late night call. A simple email inquiry that says something like: "Hello. I was curious about the timeline for your recruitment process. I am planning a trip out of town and wanted to be available should you need to speak with me during the next couple of weeks."
  
  
• Frequency. This is a more difficult one. It is the Stalker/Active Job Seeker dichotomy and while an exact answer if hard to craft, I can tell you that daily is too much. Weekly is probably too much. I was speaking with a student about this the other day and what I told her was that it is possible to follow-up too little and it is possible to follow-up too much. When in doubt err on the side of too much follow-up.
  
  
• Read the tea leaves. I realize that there are those of you out there that have difficulty with the nuances of human behavior. I think that a two minute rule will help you out here. If you do somehow manage to talk to a hiring manager directly, you really do not want to take more than two minutes of their time. I know that two minutes does not seem to be a long time, but try holding your breath for two minutes... it can be an eternity. Get in. Make your pitch. Get out. Accept the answer that they give you and thank them.
  
  
• Let them control their schedule. I have hired a couple hundred people over the years, so I have read a couple thousand cover letters and emails. One thing that turns me off completely is this paragraph at the end of a communique. "I appreciate your looking at my resume and qualifications. I will be calling you in next few days to discuss this further." I generally say to myself. "You might be calling, but I won't be answering." Much more appropriate is: "I appreciate your looking at my resume and qualifications. I hope you will find them of enough interest to contact me to discuss this further." I am not a very busy or important person, but I like to maintain the illusion that I am.
  

I know you are in there. I can see you moving around.
Here's the deal. If the fulcrum to your job search teeter-totter is the realization that the economy stinks, it will be hard for you to sally forth everyday. Remember that it's hard for everybody, and the fact that a prospective employer is not calling you probably has less to do with you than it does the stinking economy thing. Anytime you don't hear from an application, it is depressing. It is more depressing when somebody says, "We'll call you one way or the other in about a week," and you haven't heard from them in four weeks. The catch 22 is that an active job search is most likely to help you score a job, but an active job search will clearly expose you to more disappointments and disappointment tends to make you less inclined to search actively.

At some level, you have to hit the "Start Over" button everyday. If you want to feel sorry for yourself, do it on the weekends... seriously. You're more likely to find answers during the week than on a weekend. Find ways to continue to pursue jobs and opportunities without feeling like you have been reduced to begging for a chance.

Dignity is pretty hard to come by when times are good... it really stands out when times are bad.

Job? I'd suggest you start looking now.

Just to prove you never have a private moment, I was walking behind two students on the way to the Commons on Tuesday and they were talking about when they thought they should start looking for a job. Their general consensus was that since they were graduating in June and wanted a few weeks off before they started work, they would begin looking "around the middle of May... sometime." They went on to speculate that the internships that they had done would make them hot commodities and they really hoped that they could find a job close to home, so they wouldn't have to relocate right away.

Here's a newsflash. The economy is really bad! In fact, pardon my French, the economy sucks. For years I have been telling students to plan 3 to 5 months for a job search to mature enough to secure a decent career position. That meant that if the two guys above wanted to start work in July, they would have to start an organized, focused job search between March and April. In the current economy, I would say that the search is likely a 5 to 9 month process, so they should have started about three months ago. Following is a quick definition of what I mean by a mature organized, focused job search.

1. It takes about a month for a job aspirant to actually understand the language of recruitment. So, for the first four to six weeks, a job search is largely getting one's resume in order, learning how to read job announcements, and figuring out the best places to find job openings.

2. It is the rare candidate who gets an offer from their first interview. More likely, one will apply for 25 or 30 positions before getting even a nibble. One may have to go to three or four interviews before they become comfortable enough to properly represent their skills and abilities. (Do the math here, if you get one interview for every 25 applications, and you need three or four interviews to "look good," then you may need to apply for 80 or 90 positions... just to be a good candidate.)

3. Too often job candidates shotgun applications to anything and everything. If you really don't want to live in Sheboygan, then don't waste energy on filling out applications to jobs in Sheboygan. (No offense Sheboyganites, lot's of folks don't want to live in SoCal either!) Focus your energy on openings in the geographical area of choice. By the way, this also works for job classification. If you don't want a sales job, don't apply for them.

4. It takes several months to construct the sort of social web that results in folks knowing that you are looking for something and what that something might be. Reach out to family members, family friends, past associates, teachers, etc. Remind them that you are looking for a job and as you better define your career objective, keep them up to date. I'm sure I will write something in the next few days about networking.

5. Follow-up is a necessity. There is a fine line between being and energetic, enthusiastic candidate and being stalker. If you have to err between too little follow-up and too much follow-up, be a stalker.

The bottom line is that this thing is gonna take time and effort... a lot of time and effort.

That's it. All the stuff you should know about when to start a job search.

Passion is grossly over-rated.

I promise I'm gonna scream if I hear one more career guru say, "Follow your passion!" Aside from the fact that I don't have a clue what that actually means, it can be misleading, depressing, and downright dangerous for the job seeker who doesn't have it. We see hundreds of students every quarter (sometimes thousands) and it is as predictable as sunrise that several times a day we will have the following conversation with a student.

Student: I'm so confused. I just don't know what I want to do with my life.

Counselor: What do you enjoy?

Student: Well, I enjoy some stuff, but I'm just not passionate about anything.

Counselor: That's okay. Tell me what you enjoy.

Student: Mmmm. You know... stuff, but I don't have a passion and my [insert parents, professors, friends, etc.] tell me that I should only do things that I am passionate about.

Counselor: I understand, but let's start with things you enjoy and are good at.

Student: Okay, maybe, but I'm not passionate about any of those things.

Here's the deal. I am actually pretty passionate about my job. I love working with bright young people. I get stoked when I present a workshop or seminar. I look forward to sitting with students from first years to post-grads as they unravel the mystery of career. When I started my PhD program several years ago, I was asked to be the teaching assistant in the Career Development Theory class. I whined, I moaned, I complained. I was not the least bit interested in career theory and when I had taken the class, it was like weekly root canals. There was, however, a new faculty person assigned to the class and I needed the money from the assistantship. Over the next 15 weeks, I went from absolute annoyance to moderately okay with the class. Ultimately, I TA'd the class two more times and grew certifiably intrigued with career development. In the past 20 years, I have become officially passionate about career development, career counseling, and most of the stuff that goes along with it.

Being excited and enthusiastic is also not being passionate, it's just being excited and enthusiastic. Passion is too often confused with feeling passionate, in the same that love is confused with the feeling of being in love. The take away here is that it is virtually impossible to be passionate about something until you have done it... a lot. For the record, taking a class in something is not the same as doing something. Don't assume that you will never be passionate about something simply because you are not passionate about it now.

That's it. All the stuff you should know about passion and finding it... or not.

Relocation, relocation, relocation.

Once, a long time ago, I had a job that I really liked, but it was in a place that I didn't like so much. Don't get me wrong, I really liked the folks with whom I worked. I really, really liked the job that I had. I really, really, really did not like mosquitos, black flies, 112% humidity, moss, fungus, lightning and other stuff that fell out of the sky. I landed there because I could not find the kind of job I wanted in Southern California.

In fact, the year that I applied for the best-job-I-ever-had-in-the-worst-place-I-ever-lived, I sent out about 40 applications to positions in California and an equal number to the Midwest and Southeast. I was offered exactly two interviews in the Golden State and got... well, zero offers. At the same time, I was constantly flying back to Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, and Alabama (among other places) to interview with prospective colleagues and employers and I got multiple offers before settling on the best-job-I-ever-had-in-the-worst-place-I-ever-lived.

The California the job market in higher education had been incredibly crowded and I had been consistently beaten out of jobs by more experienced candidates. Initially, I wanted something near my Orange County home. After a few months, I decided that I could commute 40 or 45 minutes for the right job, but that quickly gave way to 90 minutes. Eventually, I came to the realization that I was not going to be gainfully employed anywhere west of the Colorado River. I started to look over the horizon. The cool thing is that even though I left the best-job-I-ever-had-in-the-worst-place-I-ever-lived after only two years, I was interviewing in California again and I ended up 45 minutes away from my OC address.

This time I was the candidate with the experience and a new crop of recently graduated schmoes were getting the letters that told them how tough a decision it was not to hire them. So, since I am obviously in California at this time, did it do any good to leave? It turns out that one of the best ways to get a job where you are is to take one a long way away from where you are, but there are some provisos.

1. You have to accept the fact that you may not get back quickly. I was lucky. My wife had both a good job and a good deal of patience. When I moved 2500 miles away to the South, she stayed and maintained our homestead. When I returned, her income helped stabilize my readjustment and made it possible for me to be a bit "pickier" about a new job. Had I not had that cushion, it probably would have taken a bit longer to get back to where I wanted.

2. You have to really settle in. If you take the approach that you are just being there in order to get somewhere else, you will not connect with your colleagues, bosses, or job. Remember, I was actually sad to leave the best-job-I-ever-had-in-the-worst-place-I-ever-lived, and I think my friends were sad to see me go. I got sterling recommendations from them and still speak to them from time to time after being gone for many years. Find a permanent place to live, join a gym, connect with people in whatever way you can... church, community college, outdoors clubs, etc.

3. Don't look for another job. At least not right away. There will be plenty of time for that later and you need to be learning your craft now. I worked with a graduate six years ago who finally, reluctantly accepted a position in Maryland. About a year later, she called to say that she had been unexpectedly offered a position in Texas because her boss was so pleased with her work. Last year, she took me to lunch after being transferred to the Bay Area. The irony is that during the five years that she was out of California, her parents had moved to Northern California and because she moved to Maryland, she is now closer to her family than she would have been if she had stayed in Southern California. She is clear that this was possible because she sunk herself into her job and excelled at it.

4. Be adventurous. More than anything, this is about taking risks and taking risks is about leveraging the opportunity for success by creating the possibility for failure. In this day and age of cell phones, instant messages, and the internet, working 500 or 1000 miles away is really no big deal. Southwest will get you home in less than 2 hours for $59... and since you will have a good job, you'll be able to afford it.

That's it. All the stuff  you should know about relocating to enhance your career prospects.