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Sometimes what they really mean is they won't provide any financial help for moving, so don't bother asking.
It's been my experience that employers who insist on hiring locals have a Stalinistic attitude toward work times; when they say the work day starts at 8 AM they mean you better have your butt in the chair and be logged in at 7:59. And you're in trouble if you leave before 5:00:01 PM.
Some paranoid employers don't want to risk hiring someone who has to move to get the job. They figure that worker will start disgruntled because of the expense and difficulty of having to move in order to get hired. They also think someone who will up stakes and move a long way for a new job to be a risk for taking off too quickly if he gets a better offer.
Some people figure it's harder to fool them if you're a local candidate because it's easier for them to check your claims on your resume and to check your references. That feeling had some validity in the 1960s when long-distance calls cost a lot more and a lot of such checking had to be done by snail mail, but anyone who thinks that way these days is just badly out of touch.
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From: William Sherman <bsherman77 -at- embarqmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L -at- LISTS -dot- TECHWR-L -dot- COM" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 5:32 PM
Subject: Re: Back again.... looking...
For some inexplicable reason, I often see ads which request local candidates only. It is almost like the management thinks you must be local in case of being called out for work. One place years ago issued me a pager. A pager? Like they needed to get me in a hurry at night or a weekend for a rush document? Now I grew up in a town full of factories and being called out was a fact of life on some jobs, due to people not being able to make it in, such as sickness or bad weather (foot or two of snow, for example).
However, that is not a normal situation in technical writing and is something from a bygone era in much of America. So why the preference for the local person over the other one, I really don't have an answer. But sometimes, you unfortunately end up being the object of their irrational decisions.
Now that it is January, your chances are better again. No one hires at Christmas time in our field. But many times they open up immediately after when people don't come back, or use the holidays as an opportunity to chase something different.
Polish off the resume, and hit the usual places for sending it out. Good luck.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Robin Davidson" <robin -at- robinsdesigns -dot- net>
To: "Erika Yanovich" <ERIKA_y -at- rad -dot- com>
Cc: "TECHWR-L -at- LISTS -dot- TECHWR-L -dot- COM" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 6:44 AM
Subject: Re: Back again.... looking...
> Erika,
>
> They did keep the other writer in this case. They said financial, sales have been slow, and blamed the election. This is the other writer's first job and she's local where I drove 40 miles one way.
>
> Robin
>
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