Put Yourself on the Job Search Map: Strategies for Your Address on Your Resume
Put Yourself on the Job Search Map: Strategies for Your Address on Your Resume
Job search in your own region is difficult, but it is even harder and more complicated to succeed in a job search when you are looking to move to a new geography. You might not have the time to go on cross-country treks for interviews, or you might be excluded from the running because you’re not a ‘”local” candidate. Read on for important resume strategies to improve your odds of getting interviews and job offers for executive jobs outside of your region.
Targeting only Local Executive Positions
Your address on your resume clearly places you in a specific location. If you are searching for a new executive role in your region, hiring leaders are likely to believe that you have some flexibility around interview and start date timing. After all, in most cases, an interview day will not require the expenses and frustrations of overnight travel. If you are applying for local role, therefore, your local address can be one more data point that compels a hiring executive to invite you to continue in the interview process. Therefore, including your address on your resume can improve your chances of being selected for an interview simply based on the convenience factor, all else being equal among you and the other candidates for the position.
Targeting Right Executive Job Openings Regardless of Their Location
On the other hand, if your address on your resume indicates that you are applying from a distance of hundreds or even thousands of miles, then the hiring leader might choose to exclude you on the basis of the complexity of bringing you in and, ultimately, requiring a move across the country.
Therefore, you might choose to include only your name, phone number, and professional email on your resume. This practice has become much more standard. Unlike decades past, your hiring executive is more likely to call your mobile phone or email you than send you a letter via the U.S. Postal Service. For convenience, many people keep their longstanding mobile numbers no matter where they move. We have all encountered executives whose mobile phone area codes do not match their locations, and this practice currently raises few red flags.
Targeting Your Executive Job Search on a Specific Region
If you are targeting a specific location across the state or across the country, you can implement a different type of strategy that enables you to include a local address on your resume. You can successfully and legitimately claim a local address
If removing your address and using your nonlocal but permanent mobile phone number make you uncomfortable, consider the following strategies for your address on your executive resume:
1. Secure a local street address in the city or region that you are targeting. The simplest method of doing this is to use a mailbox service with a street address in the new city.
2. If you want to be completely up front about your move, include the words “Relocating to” with a temporary local address.
3. Get a telephone number with a local area code. Many inexpensive or free phone redirect services enable you to have a telephone number with a local area code that redirects to your existing home or mobile phone number.
Your Resume’s Address: The Bottom Line
Your location matters in your job search for several key reasons, all of them financial. On the one hand, your hiring executive might want to interview all candidates within a certain time span, which could make bringing candidates in from other regions difficult. On the other, the costs of moving a family across the country plus temporary housing, meals, and the search for a new home–called a “relocation package”– can be thousands of additional dollars added to the expenses of hiring a new executive.
Of course, a sufficiently unique skill set and the proof that you are truly the right one for the position for the long term can drive a hiring executive to seek you out and negotiate with you for the position. The terms of negotiation could include relocation services directly paid by the new employer or a one-time signing bonus intended to cover the costs of relocation.
Image courtesy of freeimages.com / Kolobsek
