What to consider when looking at work locations

What to consider when looking at work locations

If you are on the market and relatively unattached to a geographic area this can be seriously advantageous. However speaking with our candidates experiences it also can be a bit like nailing jelly to the wall! Here is a few points to consider when embarking on a geographic-open search:

• 1) Consider do you need to move or are you just looking in the wrong places?

This comes up a lot, people look on LinkedIn and Indeed and why wouldn’t you. However this limits what you see massively and some decide a bit prematurely it’s time to pack up the house grab the cat and leave town. It rarely is in our experience. You may just need to look deeper into the market. Map our your local area which prospective employers are there. Local science parks, UKAS website, Google map searches, local business directories such as Yell.com you can read a deeper blog on market access here

• 2) Accept that relocation has low credibility… until it does

Put yourself in the shoes of the employer. The success of employing you will, in part, be affected by how well you settle into the area. Perhaps with another candidate it won’t. This impacts on the credibility with which the idea will be taken and is an immediate disadvantage. You can quickly get around this using a cover letter to the application to emphasise their location, and tangibly a few points on why it works for you. You’ll immediately emphasise the positives and show commitment to the employer to boot.

• 3) Some geographic areas will be better for you than others

It’s impossible to approach every single part of the market and you’ll naturally be happier in an area where you have some kind of connection. Be this friends, family, having lived there before etc. If you are relocating it’s better to pick somewhere with a bit of familiarity, we all have a bad day/week at work. It can get tough, a few connections in the area that are separate to work can really help get through a tricky patch.

• 4) Feasibility check the area

Some areas are surprisingly easy to move to even though on face value they look difficult and vice versa. We work with a client in a nice fishing village in Devon for example, if you read the paper you’ve think is impossible given the press it gets. It is actually cheaper than our part of Manchester where the office is, and very doable for relocation. Jump onto a property website and check the area for yourself. Equally if you need to be considering school places this is one area, some locations are not well provisioned for education do check the school places as early as you can!  

• 5) Use time as a resource

You don’t always have time I know. But an analogy I use with some candidates I work with is this:

Imagine it’s a dark night and you have lost your keys in your house. The light will only work for 20 seconds. Will you find your keys? What if we could make the light work for 1 hour? Far more likely. Bear in mind this job is going to define big aspects of your life, it’s worth using time well.

The market (online) works in a similar way to the above analogy. Most of the content you see by way of adverts and feeds etc is created in the last 48 hours before you read it and will be gone in another 48 hours. Not long and in some ways highly dependant on luck.

This leads to two things, one can be a feeling of short termism in the market two is a sense of low possibilities. Both are negative and both are untrue.

Some of the companies we work with at LiCa are literally 200 years old and you can network over a long period outside of these companies’ recruitment drives if you have the time.

Emails to info@ or enquiries@ emails in the ‘contact us’ pages on their website are always welcomed. Pick up on who is nearby over say 2-3 months, build LinkedIn connections with them, follow their websites, maybe subscribe to their emails about annual reports etc. Time is overlooked as a job-hunting resource but if you have it - use it. As with most endeavours I imagine you will be frustrated by how far you get in 1 week, but pleasantly surprised how far you get in 3 months.

We hope this helps and if we can assist with your job move please contact us at admin@licasci.com