Once upon a time I lived in NY with my girlfriend who was also an architect. We decided we wanted to do something different so we picked a city we both liked and started to apply from NY to firms in San Francisco. She already was employed by SOM manhattan office and had a garanteed job at the SF office but decided to persue other options as the economy was way better then it is now.

Before leaving for a long trip cross country(we took alot of senic routes - 4 weeks in all) G/F had a couple interviews lined up, one of them at HOK SF. I had 1 interview at some lame office in Walnut Creek. (Mind you she had been graduated for 2-3 years at this point and I was freshly wet behind the ears)

Once we got here - she immediately got the job at HOK. On her resume she used the address of the hotel we were staying at as our home. No one would know the difference. But said she had already lived in SF for the past month and stated that I had a job and we werent going anywhere. I did the same at my interviews. Security that you are going to stay is very important. What they always asked was, "you have alot of experience in NY, why nothing in California?" I however did not take the job I was offered at the lame office...it was way to far away. I interviewed the 2 weeks we were in SF but got nothing I really liked. We found an actual apartment before we officially left SF to head back to NY. Got to NY packed up our shit and drove back to our new home. Took me a month to find something I thought I liked. Worked there for a month and continued to interview cause the job I got turned out to suck big time. (I may have a thread I started a few years ago explaining that whole deal) Now I have the job I have now and I love it...my now ex g/f quit HOK and went to SOM SF. She was since laid off there and works at some hospitality firm in the city somewheres........

I think if you did a similar thing as we did your story would turn out completely different only because of the economy. I wouldnt of dared leave my solar job to move to California if there were no jobs to be had.

Hope this helps.....

to answer your thread question directly.....No, they dont. Out-of-state apps are too unstable.

Thanks! I actually have nothing to leave behind, job wise, which is probably pretty evident on the 1.5 year gap of experience on my resume.

I take it you had a hotel lined up and then sent the resumes? I tried using a friends address for a while, but that didn't turn out well- inevitably the offices wanted to interview someone immediately, in-person and then, like you mentioned, started questioning why the last job I had was in a different state. I guess though, there is something to be said about offices that wait until the last minute to schedule an interview- I can only imagine what deadlines must be like!

Done this twice, worked fine. To be fair however, although I was strictly honest in my interviews and discussions, I did list in-state contact addresses on the resume itself. To my thinking, a contact address is a contact address - it's a place to contact you at, it's not necessarily your exact abode. Lots of people have PO Boxes as their contact address, who cares. But as soon as I was contacted I was very up front about my situation.

In my case, however, it probably helped that a) it was a better job market and b) I had already decided to move to each city, so I was like "I'm moving for x,y,z reasons. The type of firm I'm hoping to join is..." instead of "you have a job! I'll move for it, whatever you want, I just want a job!" which is kind of a risky situation for a prospective employer to buy in to - because what if you move and end up hating the city? Then s/he's gone through all this effort to bring you in, when s/he could have just gotten someone local - and all for nothing if you end up hating the place b/c you weren't already dedicated to it before moving.

Does that make sense? I'm rambling.

For the last couple of years I have put resumes from out of state people to the back of the pile, simply because there are so many people available locally. HOWEVER, we have recently (in the last 18 months) hired two people from out of state. One has special expertise in an industry we were specifically looking for, and the other was moving no mater what because of a spouse, and a client knew her family, so we interviewed her, and ended up hiring her. So it is not impossible, but it is more difficult. Occasionally I have called someone about a resume, and they either expect us to foot the bill for them to come in for an interview, or they want the interview to wait for a month or so, and that is not a good sign.

archie I can see where someone in applicant is coming from in regards to paying for the interview transportation. I have paid to fly to several interviews this year, only to find out that the office was either not fully serious about hiring, didn't grasp that I was coming from out-of-town and acknowledged that they could have done this over the phone (even though I said as much in my initial response to them) or they just hired the local candidate anyway, which to me says they already knew they were not going to hire me. So from an applicant's perspective, it's as frustrating to us when offices don't commit either and paying for the flight (which is pretty inexpensive in the overall office budget) indicates to us that you are indeed serious about interviewing.

Cherith; All true, but when you have 150 resumes for an intern position, and 50 of them live in your community..... Unless you offer something very unique, you are not going to get an interview if you ask for money for travel. That was not true three or four years ago, but today, that is the reality. It would not be unreasonable to set up a video conference for the first interview, and then if both parties are serious, the employee would pay to come out for an in person interview if the firm will not pay.

everything is a negotiable. a few years ago, i was asked in for an interview across the country, and i remember plainly asking what my odds were should i fly over for the interview, 1 in 5 or 1 in 100? etc. and they were forthright about it. just be upfront and don't wait until after the interview to find out if they're serious.

it's ultimately your initiative to chase an interview or not, and i don't think you can really ask an interviewer to accommodate you or make the decision for you, but you can certainly ask for their honesty.

if the company can't front the airplane ticket then pass it up.....a company flew me out/picked me up/gave me lunch/ and flew back...when i got home i had an offer and that weekend drove out.... but this was in a arch/detail related field so it was a little more specialized i guess.

it isn't an issue of not being able to front the airline ticket. It is more of an issue of having 20 or 30 people to pick from locally who are already rooted in the community versus spending money to consider someone who might turn the job down, or leave town shortly after taking the job. Unless you are really special, it means it is going to be much more difficult for you to get a job out of your city unless you are willing to invest the cost of a trip there. As I said, we did hire someone from out of our city, but only because of an expertise we could not find locally. Otherwise, we would have preferred to hire someone from this community. With 15 to 20% of the architects out of work here, it only seems right.

I would say that actually not only should you apply 'outofstate', you should apply internationally. Talent is talent, work ethic is work ethic, geography is merely geography.

archie I hear you and that all make sense. My experience, thus far, has revealed as much. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

I should have listened much earlier in my education when they said that only the rich should pursue a degree in Architecture.

hey, we are still willingly paying for the milk, but we just aren't paying to ship the cow here from Texas!!

Cherith, I have been in this business a long time, and like most professions, it has its ups and downs. I have been through 5 major downturns, and this is the worst, but it will get better. But it is not just a field for the rich, and you can actually make an excellent living in this field. We as architects should spend less time bitching about how we;re underpaid as a profession, and we don't make as much as attorneys, and more time honing our business skills. i am an architect first, but i have spent considerable time studying (on my own, not in school) business so that I could run my firm effectively. I am proud to say we have had no layoffs, and my staff got raises and bonuses this year and last.
And by the way, my newly-minted-just-passed-the-bar-exam nephew can't find a job either. Law firms are not hiring.

"I should have listened much earlier in my education when they said that only the rich should pursue a degree in Architecture."

I only wish someone actually told me this like before I friggen graduated!

I first decided to persue architecture b/c I was working as a carpenter on Hi-End Res houses in Oyster Bay LI. The architect of the house was flush! - His family was flush I should say. So he naturally had money...but what I didnt know was that it wasnt from working as an architect...........

:facedesk:

yeah we had a friend who works for Sheraton so she was able to set us up with a couple cheap hotels around the country before we ever left NY the first time.

In this economy I wouldnt be driving around the country without a job sightseeing and wondering where Im going to live next.

If you can figure out a way to crash on someones couch in 1 city for a period of 2weeks to a mth then you could try and set up an interview from where u are now. Then goto the city you are thinking about and go nuts trying to get interviews.