Nope.

Even if it was, better to be working and gaining experience locally, no?

I think he means temporary one month type which isn't the case. There are certainly a lot of jobs being advertised for full time employees as well as long term contracts.

I didn't say you won't. The problem is relocation after the fact. You have to be here first. They call, ask you to come in at 5pm that night, and you better be ready to get your head smashed against a whiteboard.

There is over 10,000,000 people in the county. Something like 2,000 people move her every week.

For LA to look out, they have to be in desperate need of talent. With a glut of new faces from some of the most difficult schools to enter, there is no lack of talent here.

Sure, if you are *here* already, you can land a job as a front-end JS programmer within a few months, but if your application says "other side of town," it is getting tossed in the trash. Imagine how it looks when someone is sifting 100 or more resumes a day, and they see someone two states away.

If employers want to come up with some arbitrary set of rules so they can decrease the amount of resumes to comb through then so be it. The sort of employer that would do that is the same sort that would have an ill opinion of me simply because i don't have that piece of paper. Some people are so set in their ways that its a fruitless endeavor to try and knock any semblance of common sense into them.

I should also note that most of the job postings I come across make no mention of "local hire only". Some do but its very very few. This would also lead me to believe that current location isn't as important to employers as you make it out to be.

They don't write "local hire only" for the same reason they don't write "no gays." It is illegal.

You are looking at a person sitting across the table from you and you are looking at a resume from New York that's nearly a copy / paste. Who are you going to hire?

I'm going to hire the candidate that brings the most value to the company?

Well at least you're trying to be objective about this...

What sort of jobs are you after? If they are web related why not start e-mailing companies you're interested in simply to talk about the project and try to help create your job? It's like a potential PhD candidate simply submitting an application vs actively discussing the material with a prof over email months/years in advance.

I have been e-mailing startups am actually interested in to talk every week. Most are happy to reply if they think you genuinely care I guess - and I have been given personal emails for internship opportunities that might lead to remote positions later - or nothing might come of them, but at least you're adding a human element and not just another resume of someone who knows how to code and wants a job. If you're after bigger companies then that probably won't work?

If by "value" you mean paying upfront for moving expenses and taking a risk on someone who has a high possibility of getting homesick and leaving for home in 6 months, then I see your point.

Homesick... really? This isn't the 1700s.

Considering moving all the "Craggoo wants a job, sorta" posts to a new thread.

I don't see how you are missing the point so much.

Let's imagine you're a HR manager. You have two identical applicants, among hundreds of others. These two look great! Perfect for the open position! One is local, and can be there for an interview within the hour. One is across the country, and it'll cost at least a thousand $ to fly them in for an interview, which of course won't take place for at least a few days. The second applicant in addition to the higer cost of an in-person interview, will cost a lot more to actually employ, and has a higher likelyhood of jumping ship too (if they'll move for you, they'll move for a better offer too - even if "homesick" isn't a likely scenario).

Now, recall the two applicants on the surface are identical. Which would "bring the most value to the company" ? Who would you interview first? Would you even bother contacting the random on the other side of the country before completely ruling out the local with the same claimed skillset?

+1

+2

The whole "brings the most value to the company" line is only half the story, imo. Recruiting is about efficiency and not just the end results.

If we wanted to just hire the people that bring the most value to the company everybody would get a full multi-faceted interview so you could make a really informed decision every time. But that's not practical. So you come up with heuristics on what is likely/unlikely to work and go with that.

As a concrete thing, we don't look at location in terms of hiring someone or not - but we do require someone non-local to do our homework project before bringing them in for in-person interviews. If its someone local we'll often do the in-person interviews first. I think doing interview first is an advantage for a candidate.

@_dave_ - my vote is to move this stuff.

@Craggoo - What DaveT stated is valid. Companies will definitely try to assess the probability that they will be able to recoup their investment in moving a new employee to their new location. Some will obligate employees to work for a certain time period or be required to pay the moving costs.

Contracting gigs are different but still out of town folks are often not preferred.

Well, if someone told me they were quitting their job and moving because they were homesick my first thought would be that they are too embarrassed to tell me what the real reason is.

Well it doesn't go down like that but whatever.

Over 500,000 people leave California every year. I'm guessing a non-significant part of them are homesick. Others are sick of paying out the nose to live. Others are sick of being in a place full of antisocial people.

This state isn't for everyone. Just look how passionate people are about loving / hating any of the major cities. One thing is for certain: no city in CA is the "big easy."

Why don't you just lie on the cover letter or resume saying that you will be moving down to X location. Where X is the location of the job you are submitting your resume for.

Spineless!

It's the truth if he gets the job.

I read that advice from somewhere. And it makes sense. It will remove any concern or doubt from the hiring manager.

I can think of so many ways that this could go wrong and only a few where it actually works out.

Moved posts from "What do you do?" thread.

Craggoo if you have a better thread title please let me know and I'll rename it.

I should think this is valuable to others, and better as a standalone from the other thread.

Craggoo;

I'm the guy that had to sift resumes at the past few jobs I've had. Let me tell you what it's like.

I put up an ad.

I open up the inbox the next day and I have 100+ resumes. I know that, once I'm done going through these 100, I will look at my inbox and see another 100.

How much time do you think I take to look at each one? What would be my filtration system?

Anything that is on my pet peeve list is the first to go: bad grammar, poor layout, resumes over 2 pages, "skills" that are your personality traits, paragraphs instead of bullet points, too far away, too skilled (ie, the company can't afford you).

I don't have time to sit there and think about each resume, each person, each personality. I'm not going to search for your name, look at your facebook link, or anything. I'm just trying to narrow the block down to something manageable. Once I've pared the resumes down to, say 50, I can take a better look at the "probably" applicant pool.

At this point, I will look at the skills. I honestly don't give a **** because I know its probably bloated. I'm looking for an interesting conversation piece for when I call the applicant. An interesting conversation piece would be something that reveals their interests. For example, the person may have Gimp, Inkscape, and Photoshop. Why not Illustrator? What do they think of Gimp -vs- PS, etc. If they have Linux on their resume, what distro? If it is Kali, what's up with that, huh?

Next, I will generally read the first 2 bullets of the job description. Does the first 2 bullets say the same thing but in different wording? If so, trash. Sorry, pet peeve.

Finally, I have it pared down to 10 to 15 or so resumes. I start making phone calls. I may invite 2 to 5 of these people, but that is hard to judge. Sometimes one of us decides not to bother. This is actually the most difficult part of the process for me. I hate saying no to people, and when I first started I would invite everyone in I spoke to because I didn't like saying "no" at all. Well, a few evil glares and getting yelled at for wasting the interviewers time (and sitting in said waste of times) quickly taught me to learn to say no. It isn't personal. And don't get me started on the no-shows...

After I'm done with the whole process, I look at my inbox and there is another 50 resumes. Rinse repeat for the next few days.

It is tough work man, and I'm glad that I don't do this often. It is real grind of filter, filter, filter.

When you apply to anything, you want to minimize your odds of hitting the "no" pile. Applying cross country is placing yourself in the "no" pile every time *UNLESS* you have some serious skill that is lacking in the city you are applying in. I could apply to a Clojure in The Bay and get a phone call because I'm like one of 100 people in the country that can program in it. I still hit the rejection pile, so employers aren't even that desperate! How do you think you fare as an out-of-towner looking to move after you get a job doing JS when the company has 300 resumes sitting in their inbox?

First off, don't take any job seeking advice from daveT. No offense meant Dave, that side of things just isn't your strong suit. Edit: Your most recent post about resume screening is the exception

I think you're underestimating what a large barrier needing to relocate is for a junior position. It's especially hard to communicate that you're worth it via your resume and cover letter so I think it's best to save that disclosure for after a phone screen.

There are lots of startup jobs in Seattle and Portland. I imagine those are close enough that you can conduct interviews without needing travel expenses.

I'd have a separate resume for each location you're interested in, on each one indicating that you're local. Or at the very least remove any mention of your location. Once you get past the resume screen it's ok to tell people that you're currently in Washington and you are planning a move to X but need to secure a job first.

Don't worry about how that can go wrong. If it does go wrong they were going to throw your resume in the trash anyway.

Craigslist is a very good resource. Lots of jobs posted there every day. It's cheap and well known so most companies will post positions there. Indeed and Dice I've found to be decent too. Angel List is decent for reaching out to startups.

Since you've decided to specialize in Javascript you should look at front end positions too. If you're just looking for Node jobs I think you are narrowing the search too much.