Job Hunters, if you can: APPLY REMOTE!

There’ve been some absolutely disheartening numbers that have been coming out. Whether it’s the statistics on new jobs/lowered unemployment (spoiler: it’s lower than hoped for the USA) or the amount of applicants per job as reported via survey for businesses and job portals:

Information courtesy of Linkedin and Andrew Wadell: https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/trends-and-research/2020/job-viewing-returns-to-pre-coronavirus-rates

But unless you’ve been doing nothing but sitting on the sidelines — you already know this somehow. You’ve felt the hopelessness that settles in after pushing send on 50+ applications and not hearing even a peep back. You’ve gotten the despair and endless repetition that comes with waking up, reshaping your resume, typing some cover letter that’ll probably never seen human eyes, and then melancholically hitting send.

It’s so bad that you’ve probably started running out of jobs to apply to too.

Now you obviously read the title, because you’ve clicked into it. And what’s my answer to you? If you are someone in technology or can do their work through the internet, there is NO REASON TO NOT APPLY FOR OUT OF AREA JOBS. If you can work from home and you need a job, now is not the time to restrict yourself to solely your current city.

Here’s why:

1. You don’t actually need to be there: One of the good things to come out of this terrible situation is that almost all companies that can have implemented work-from-home measures. And because of that, recruiting has gotten a lot better for out-of-city/state applicants. There’s simply no expectation that you would move anytime soon. If you get the offer, they’ll send out a laptop and you can start immediately.
2. There’s not enough jobs near you: Less new jobs are coming out than are being snatched up and innudated with applications. And even if you are in a job-rich area like San Francisco or Manhattan, guess what? Even though you have more postings to apply to, you also have way more competition for each of them. Why not stretch your net a bit wider to areas with less visibility?
3. Moving is future you’s problem: Facebook and Google had set their return-to-office schedules to end of 2020 and already pushed it back to June 2021. Bill Gates estimate that the pandemic will be here until the end of 2021. If you started work now, that’s 1.5 years of working for the role before even needing to worry about moving. For some people pre-pandemic, that’s already about the time when they start to plan on changing companies.
4. You need a job NOW: Money. Boredom. A sense of stability. Getting that job to return a sense of normalcy back into your professional life. Not feeling like you’ve lost years of your career development because of some hideous draw of misfortune. Being able to afford the things that’ll keep you sane during these times or even helping your family that have suffered financially. Hell, maybe even just for the health insurance. It’s gross and inhumane — but there’s no time more important to have a job than during a crisis.
5. Everyone is hurting. But if you can avoid it, it means you’ll be streets ahead: Yes, recruiters and companies understand if your resume has a gap during 2020–2021. They’ll probably be sympathetic too. And so will the rest of your peers and friends. But you know what’s better than comraderie in pain? Being able to continue to climb and improve yourself while others can’t and making sure that you can come out of this black mark on the world primed and ready shoulders above others. Avoid years of sidetrack career progression, jobs you hate, or skills and knowledge rusting.

Things are different now. The job market is. Work is. Life is. And it makes no sense to restrict ourselves to these restrictions that we were following before that no longer make sense.

This applies to everything from titles and scope (maybe you have to settle for that office administrator title just to get the bit of marketing scope the team would offer) to benefits and culture (everyone has nothing but Zoom culture now). The focus now should be on nothing but to survive, and to survive in as best a way as possible. So that whenever all of this is over, even though it seems like it never will be, we’ll come out the other side in as best a position as possible.