For the OP, I have heard a lot of companies here in Denver won't give you a strong consideration without a 303 or 720 area code (meaning Colorado area codes). Also, I have found the jobs listed on Linkened are generally days old with many applicants (I am not a premium subscriber). Personal contacts or head hunters are the way to go.

Also, you will find many many people doing jobs they would not normally do due to need work; i.e. there are at least 6 guys in my neighborhood doing handyman work.

72 colo ag said:

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For the OP, I have heard a lot of companies here in Denver won't give you a strong consideration without a 303 or 720 area code (meaning Colorado area codes).

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Millennials keep telling me that my advice is out of date and old fashioned and that nobody cares about area codes anymore... Thanks for backing me up on this one. I had a 303 cell phone which I used for work so nobody hassled me too much but, my wife got hassled a lot about having a 720 number which was a clear sign that you were a move-in. We would have never stood a chance though with a 512/713/214 number.

If there's any way you can obtain a 303 cell number - even if it's a prepaid $40/month plan or a Google voice number, that will help a lot.

Quote:

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Also, you will find many many people doing jobs they would not normally do due to need work; i.e. there are at least 6 guys in my neighborhood doing handyman work.

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This is exactly why I pulled the plug and bailed out and moved to California.

Interesting, do you think a local area code will help even if your address stated is in another state?

I feel like its something that is easily vetted out but then again, might make the difference if a hiring manager has a 5 second glance at your resume.

I think this is an interesting conversation, applicable to me since I actually tried to move out of Texas on two separate occasions.

AggieC07 said:

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Interesting, do you think a local area code will help even if your address stated is in another state?

I feel like its something that is easily vetted out but then again, might make the difference if a hiring manager has a 5 second glance at your resume.

I think this is an interesting conversation, applicable to me since I actually tried to move out of Texas on two separate occasions.

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Keep in mind in this case, I'm specifically talking about Denver, Colorado. So YES. I do. 303 or bust.

In Southern California, we used to have the same sort of screening process based on area codes because in places like LA, area codes were not overlaid until recently with the addition of 424 and 747. Since each area code represents a specific geographic area, it's much easier to quickly figure out if this person is going to be willing to commute to your office or not. So, I might not know where Rancho Santa Margarita is. But, as soon as I see the guy has a 949 number, I know that there's no way he's going to commute regularly to the 818 for work.

But, if I saw somebody with a 661, 805, 562, 909, I'd consider taking another look knowing that they're going to be an attendance problem. The area codes are much easier to figure out rather than learning where Canyon Country, Oxnard, Norwalk, Walnut, etc. are. When I was hiring in the 818, my bread and butter would be 818, 626, 323, 213 (I've never met anybody with a 213 number) and 310. 714 would be a reach and 949/951/760/858/619, forget about it.

As far as the address, it's easy enough to dummy up a local address. Use a friend/relative, UPS Store, etc. But, most people are unwilling to dummy up a local phone number because they don't want to spend $40.

Also, I ran into this in San Jose recently where they've just overlaid 669 over 408. The first time somebody gave me a 669 number, I was like, where the heck is that? In The SF Bay Area, 408, 650, 415, 510, 925, I know.

So, if you're in a new area code, even in the same city, if it's something us old folks who are probably the hiring managers don't recognize, you could be putting yourself at a disadvantage. Looking at this SoCal map, I've never heard of 657 or 442. So, I probably wouldn't give them a second look versus a more established area code that is in my recall set.

Case in point, I just met a guy from Houston with a 346 area code for his cell phone, and I was like, where's that? Did you just move to Texas from somewhere else? The guy turned out to be a lifelong Houstonian who got a new cell phone for work. Not his fault per se but, he wasn't getting the brand recognition that he deserved.

Good insight......

Funny because one of the places I was targeting previously was SoCal. Had a few interviews and managed to get an offer with my Texas area code (which I declined). Kind of makes me appreciate the fact I was able to get a few interviews and an offer with the disadvantage of being a life-long Texan.

I undoubtedly got asked (and sometimes asked repeatedly) why I wanted to move out west.

Currently my wife and I are in the process of relocating to the Twin Cities from OKC for our daughter's school, and while I've got a job with my current company in place, my wife is looking for something up there. She's got over 10 years of experience in communications and PR (director level) in the corporate world and for the last two years has ran a non-profit here. She's reached out to folks in PR orgs up there for tips (wife is currently PRSA president in OKC, so that helps), but how does one go about finding a headhunter to help her with her search?

LinkedIn to find the headhunters

That's what someone else told us, do you just search headhunters in that city or what?

ColinAggie said:

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LinkedIn to find the headhunters

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< I misread the original post and thought you were trying to move from MN to OK, I had to re-write to account for OK to MN >

The headhunters that are any good will find you. I get trolled on LinkedIn all the time and I'm not even looking (although that will be changing in about 6 months).

To get your foot in the door in a new area, consider part-time work or contracting. Once you're a little more established, you can move on to something better.

Make sure your LinkedIn Profile is up to date. Be sure the relevant keywords will show up in a search. Make sure your profile is visible to as many people as possible. Since you're living in OKC and are looking for a job in MSP, be sure that you've got a brief statement that explains why.

Otherwise, if you just say that you're available, looking, etc., you'll probably get a bunch of activity from recruiters in your local area in Oklahoma.

Sounds like you've already reached out to the relevant professional organizations. That's a good move.

Also, get a 952 number to show that you're committed to making the move. Otherwise, if you're expecting people to call you back at 405 whatever..., they might not be as keen to do that even though I realize nobody pays long-distance charges these days. Even if you just got a prepaid number for a few months, I think it would help.

There seems to be a lot of business growth in the Twin Cities during the past decade or so. Or, at least, I've had a number of work colleagues move there. And then, try to sell me on how great the Twin Cities are.

Be sure your wife is prepared to answer the questions about how she is going to deal with the winters. When people relocate from places that are warm to places that are cold, that's one of the top reasons why it doesn't work out. And the hiring employer isn't going to want to take a risk on somebody who might "Boogie Back to Texas" by April.

We custom built a house two years ago and are moving for our almost 7 year old to attend one of the best schools in the country, we are in it long term no matter the weather. Is the area code thing really that damn big a deal?

Pahdz said:

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We custom built a house two years ago and are moving for our almost 7 year old to attend one of the best schools in the country, we are in it long term no matter the weather. Is the area code thing really that damn big a deal?

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A pseudo mentor of mine talks about what he calls the "slight edge principle". Meaning that you don't have to win by a lot, but, anything you can do to help yourself win could make the difference.

I call it the HollywoodBQ, "leave no stone unturned policy". In otherwords, did I do everything within my power to give myself the best possible chance to win? There are some things you can control and some things you can't. Getting a new phone number in the area you're committed to living in is an easy one that you can control.

I'm most likely going to be looking for a job in LA in early 2018. I guarantee you I will get an 818 number to put on my resume.

So get a 763 area code number, but still have the OK address on the resume? Seems counter productive

Pahdz said:

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So get a 763 area code number, but still have the OK address on the resume? Seems counter productive

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Gives the illusion that you have ties to the area, and are trying to get back. When looking in a different state, any perception of ties to the area can help you. It provides a case assurance that you won't be there 3 months, decide it's not what you expected, and then leave.

Good point. Would think her cover letter would show that but every little bit helps.

Pahdz said:

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Good point. Would think her cover letter would show that but every little bit helps.

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Remember, you've got to get through the HR Drones and the Bots first. Don't expect that an intelligent/literate human being is going to be the first one to filter the resumes.

My brother is an HR guy and he loves sifting through resumes and throwing them in the trash. My brother is also a major dick on a power trip. There are many like him.

In my experience, HR folks are often either super lazy and/or super ignorant about what they're looking for. You've got to make sure that the resume has every keyword that could be related to the job so a text search will find it.

As an example, one time, we were hiring for somebody skilled with a specific software application and the HR folks sent us the resume of a Sales Rep who had previously sold that software. Their one word search criteria (name of software application) led HR to his resume. They didn't even screen it. Keyword hit and move on.

And no matter what you put in the cover letter, I would expect that less than 1/3rd of folks in the hiring process will read it. I recently interviewed with 5 guys for a Director level job at my company. 2 guys read my cover letter and my resume. 3 of the guys had no clue about me.

But, I couldn't have even got to that round if I didn't make it past some offshore HR screener who made sure that my qualifications ticked all the boxes for minimum requirements. They initially cast my resume aside because I wasn't based in their preferred work location for the job even though I indicated in my cover letter that I was willing to relocate.

If you've already built a house in Minnesota, why don't you use that address? At least that's what I understood your earlier post to mean. The other thing you could do with respect to the address is get a UPS Store Mailbox locally in MSP and put that on the resume as the mailing address. Even if you only rent the $10/month mailbox for 3 months, it would help overcome the local address problem. You could put your Minnesota house or your Oklahoma house on the resume as a Permanent Address or Current Physical Address. The hiring company just needs to know how to contact you, they don't need to know that your head is hitting the pillow at 123 Main Street every night.

Again, if I was a hiring manager in Minnesota and I saw a resume from somebody living in Oklahoma, I had better see that they went to High School or College in Minnesota, or their hobbies include Ice Hockey or something. Otherwise, I'm probably going to have some big question marks about why this person from Oklahoma wants to move up to someplace cold. I'm sure you've already covered that in a cover letter but, maybe you could re-iterate it as a one sentence Job Objective Statement at the top of the resume. Good Luck. Like I said, I'm about 180 days away from doing this myself.

I don't get this mentality. Are you looking for the best candidate or the safe one?

At the company I'm at, you're encouraged to move to a different role (if you aren't promoted) every 18 months to 2 years anyway. It wouldn't be much different if someone decided to go back home.

Unless this is just a huge problem for that company or location, it just seems really short sided. I'd prefer to have the most qualified people to build the best team possible. Especially since we're all generally trying to further our careers and not be in those roles any longer than necessary anyway.

AgLA06 said:

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I don't get this mentality. Are you looking for the best candidate or the safe one?

At the company I'm at, you're encouraged to move to a different role (if you aren't promoted) every 18 months to 2 years anyway. It wouldn't be much different if someone decided to go back home.

Unless this is just a huge problem for that company or location, it just seems really short sided. I'd prefer to have the most qualified people to build the best team possible. Especially since we're all generally trying to further our careers and not be in those roles any longer than necessary anyway.

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I'm going to have to get back to this after I take my 19 year old to the dentist. Short story for now is that the original OP was asking about relocation to Denver. Denver is a specific market with some uniqueness to it. Lots of move-ins and they hate outsiders. Especially ones from California and Texas. This might not apply to other job markets but it absolutely applies to Denver.

I followed up with an example about how I would do hiring screening in Los Angeles and some of the situations I ran into there. For example, because housing is so expensive, I worked with several people who commuted 50+ miles each way to work. It was always a recurring problem but none more so than the gal who was severely injured and missed work for a year when some a-hole tried to commit suicide by driving in front of a train in Glendale. At least she wasn't killed.

When I come back, I'll try to describe some of the situations I ran into in Austin as well.

For your question about the "safe candidate" or the "best candidate". The Best Candidate is the one who is going to workout the best for the hiring company. And that's not somebody who is going to move back home after the winter because they just can't deal with the cold. That's not somebody who is going to be a recurring absenteeism problem because they are commuting in from more than 50+ miles away.

International stuff is a whole different story so I'll leave that one in the parking lot for now.

I get Denver, but I'd be surprised if that applied to other places like Minneapolis.

As Hollywood mentioned, it's a game played on the margins. If you get 500 resumes, maybe 400 get bounced by automated filters. 80 get trashed by HR. 15 are discarded by the hiring manager and only 2 get through the phone interview to an on-site interview.

You have to be willing to bet that the decision maker at every step sees you as clearly a better candidate. Even if you are a better candidate, that won't necessarily be easy to tell from a sheet of paper.

Second, you have to play the game as it is, not as it ought to be. The fact is that sometimes location is a filter in the hiring process. Your choice whether to adapt to that fact.

Last is the inference that filtering by location is wrong. In a world without transaction costs and with perfect information I agree, but that's not what we have. It's easier to hire local. Candidates can come in for an interview in person. There's no weighty decisions about uprooting a family, selling a house with emotional roots, learning to live with a new climate, or figuring out what to do about a second earners job. There's no awkward 4-6 week transition period trying to get moved, and there's much less chance of buyer's remorse 6 months in on the new hire's part. Finally, you may not know enough about the different candidates to know whether a relocating candidate is actually worth the risk. That will often depend on the job role and local market.

If I were hiring o&g engineers in Houston right now, I probably wouldn't interview non-local candidates. If I were hiring hedge fund managers in North Dakota, I would have to. Most jobs are going to be somewhere in between those extremes.

As I thought about this a little bit more, one point that I didn't discuss is how hot the local job market is.

Let me talk through the 3 different US markets I've worked in and the different scenarios I've seen in them.

Austin 1994-2000
I wound up working in Austin during the Y2K boom, the Internet boom and the PC boom. At the beginning of my time, there weren't that many jobs in Austin and it was difficult to find work because there was so much demand from candidates - especially t-sips who would turn down $40,000 jobs in Freeport, TX to take a $30,000 job in Austin.

As the early 90s turned into the late 90s and Austin started to take off, it became very difficult to find job candidates. The company I was working for would relocate anybody who was willing to move to Austin. The situation was that dire. But, let me give you an example about the practicality of recruiting, interviewing, hiring, etc.

From 1998-2000, I was in a group that had 5 open job reqs. We had a ton of work and every time we would hire somebody, we'd get another job req. opened because that's how much work we had on. So, I meet a guy out of Marin County who worked for a well known employer and I tried to recruit him to Austin. He was interested but once my manager got involved, things went south.

The guy from Marin was making $70K in the Bay and I was only going to be able to offer him $60K in Austin. Sounds like a deal, right? My manager said that there's no way the guy would be willing to take the pay cut. And my manager asked, what was his motivation for moving to Austin? In other words, why would he be "sticky" if we hired him. He had a sister in Austin but that didn't seem to convince my manager that he had any real desire to move to Austin. My manager just figured that he was trying to get a better offer to take back to his current employer and get a raise. Maybe. I still had plenty of work to do so I didn't spend too much time trying to figure it out.

The technology wasn't really available at the time but, using today's technology, had I been able to hand my boss a resume with a 512 number and a Travis/Williamson County address on it, I might have been able to get my candidate brought in for an interview.

Denver 2000-2004

I moved to Denver in January of 2000. It was an interesting time because the dot.com boom was still in full swing and plenty of companies were throwing VC and IPO money around.

I got lucky in my hiring because, I went to work for a guy who was from Colorado who had spent a good amount of time out of state because he couldn't find work in Colorado. For the past 40 years, Colorado has had a very boom-bust economy. This guy had been away for 15-20 years before returning to Colorado. So, he wasn't averse to hiring somebody from out of state. (quick aside, six degrees of separation and all, he was an older brother of Chris McCandless of "Into the Wild" fame so, I've met Walt in person a couple of times)

The other things I had going for me were the fact that the small company I went to work for had recently merged with a company from Dallas. Because of this, the Sales Manager and the Engineering Manager had both recently moved up to Colorado from Texas. I happened to know the Sales Manager from his work with my previous employer in Austin. In fact, it was his recommendation that got my foot in the door.

Note: I didn't speak with the Sales manager about my desire to work for his company (I wasn't that smart back then) but, once the Engineering Manager got a hold of my resume and recognized the company I worked for, he asked the Sales Manager if he knew me and the Sales Manager told him to hire me.

Now, if this was music, we'd do a key change to cover the post dot.com bust.

So let's say post 2001/2002, Denver was a bloodbath. Everybody was getting laid off. Not in 2002 per se but, but 2004, all of the people I had met through the A&M Club and other Texans in my neighborhood and my church, ALL of them had gone back to Texas by 2004 except for maybe 3-4 of them.

And that's the thing about hiring in Colorado. There are kind of 4 major areas that people come from.

• Texas
• California
• Nebraska
• Chicago

Each of these areas supplies people with different characteristics

• Texas folks love living in Colorado but... if they can't make a living, they'll move back to Texas, no problem. They're not fools and they're not desperate.
• Californians have usually sold out of California and invested every penny in the biggest house they can find. They are not going back to California under any circumstances because they can't afford to.
• Nebraskans are the ones who have hit the big time. Think of it like every poser from Waco who wants to become a poser in Dallas. Once somebody from Nebraska has made it to Denver, they're never going back.
• Folks from Chicago like Denver because it's less urban and less crowded but they're still Chicagoans underneath it all. They're willing to go back to Chicago but they really like the mild winters in Denver. And if you're a Chicago guy, they're all Cubs fans. Nobody from the South Side moves to Denver.

Now, one oddity about Colorado specifically is that it has grown like crazy over the past 25-30 years. When I moved to Denver in 2000, the Census counted 4 million people in Colorado in 2000, up from 3 million in 1990. So literally, 25% of the state had been there less than 10 years. And the vast majority of that was the 2 million people who lived along the Front Range between The Springs and Fort Collins. Checking the latest Census figure shows that there are now more than 5.5 million people in Colorado.

Where did this extra million people come from between 1990-2000? Texas, California, Nebraska and Chicago.

So there was a thing with Colorado people that they would try to act like they had lived in Colorado forever. There was a definite stigma associated with being a "move-in". So much so that they created a custom license plate for families that had been in Colorado more than 100 years called "Colorado Settlers". I saw quite a few of these on the road.

It's now called the "Pioneer" license plate and anybody can get one.


In 1988, the 719 area code was split off from 303. In 1995, 970 was split off from 303. And in 1998, the 720 area code was overlaid on 303. So, by the time I arrived in 2000, there were very few numbers in the 720 and all of the long term Denver residents all had 303 numbers. So, you could spot a move-in in two seconds by the fact that they had a "new" number in the "new" 720 area code.

When my company moved offices in early 2001, we all got new 720 numbers but thankfully I had a 303 cell phone number to give out to the school and kids soccer coach, etc.

Like I said, Denver is kind of like Austin in that if you've been there for 10 minutes longer than the next guy, you've been there forever and that guy is the "move-in" who ruined it.

Notice that the band 3OH!3 didn't call themselves 72OH!

Now, the next element to consider is not just lifelong resident versus move in, but the fact that we're talking about a cold weather climate versus a warm weather climate.

Remember how I went to work for an Engineering Manager and a Sales Manager from Texas. Both of those guys had a 1 year contract where they got paid relocation to move to Denver for the new company. When those guys had been there 366 days, they were both wheels up headed back for Dallas and Houston. Neither one of them could deal with the cold. And by the way, I'm an Alaska guy so from my point of view, Denver isn't that cold but... If you're from Texas, it's all relative. My wife (from the NASA area of Houston) complained about the cold in Denver the entire 4 years we lived there.

So, with respect to getting a job in Denver, you're going to have to be willing to accept that there is going to be a fair amount of competition from the groups described earlier and that is going to be compounded by this discrimination against move-ins by people who were themselves move-ins as recently as 1-10 years ago.

I always got a kick out of our neighbor from Lufkin. She was as backwoods East Texas as you could get but she had married a guy from Colorado and had moved there 2 years before we did. She completely lost her accent and you would have to beat it out of her to find out that she was from Texas. Can't fool me though, there were a few word choices that were a dead giveaway that she was a Texas girl.

So, again, as stated before, for Denver, you want to give every inkling that you're from Colorado or at least committed to the area. Phone number and address go a long way towards achieving that.

Los Angeles 2004-2007

Ah, this is where the fun begins. After getting laid off from my job earning $105K in Denver, I got many offers along the Front Range for jobs in the neighborhood of $65K. In fact, one year earlier, I had gone on some interviews including a successful company in Boulder where I was hoping to turn an unstable $105K into a more stable $110K. The CEO told me to my face that I was overpaid and he could only offer me $85K so, we were pretty much done talking (I appreciated the integrity). I still spent an hour in his office talking to him about what it was like being in Boy Scouts in Saudi Arabia and what it was like being a Tank Commander in the US Army. Waste of my time but, I had already driven up from Highlands Ranch to Boulder so what the hell, might as well.

So, I got laid off in Colorado in October 2003. It took me two solid months of job searching to find a new job. I wound up taking a job in Los Angeles because, for one, it was warmer which was important to my wife and for two, I was able to earn more money than I was earning in Denver. The reason I would come to find out later is because NOBODY wants to live and work in Los Angeles County.

As I was interviewing, I found a recruiter who did a great job of advocating for me. But, once I made it through all the phone screens, the Studio wanted an in-person interview. It was clear that this would be my expense and, I was in need of a job so I was happy to do it. Luckily, I had plenty of frequent flier miles, etc., so I was able to do the trip for next to nothing, cost wise.

My situation here was a highly-specialized skill set so, they were unable to find anybody in LA who knew how to do what I did. When I went out there, I lived in a $900/month Studio apartment by myself. I was generating so much cash compared to what my mortgage was in Denver, it was crazy. Seriously, I was banking about $2K/month after I paid all my bills.

Now, we wound up with the need to hire at least two more people in my group which led to the reviews of a lot of resumes and quite a few phone screens. We needed a highly specialized skill set so we were willing to look far and wide. But, we had problems with attendance issues from people who lived in the Antelope Valley, the Inland Empire and The O.C. Nevertheless, we wound up hiring two guys from The O.C. who had to commute between 75-90 minutes each way to get to work.

One of those guys lasted 3 weeks before he decided the commute was two much. The other guy lasted about 4 months before he wound up getting fired. He was literally insane but, he was the most God gifted script writer I've ever seen. He was a genius in that respect. It was his challenges off the court that were the main problem.

During this time, what we now call the sub-prime mortgage boom was in effect in LA. It was very difficult to hire anybody in LA with the skills we needed. This is where we kind of developed the resume screening process I described earlier. I knew that anybody commuting in from 50+ miles away was going to be a problem. We were pretty desperate though. But, this leads to another point I want to make.

In Information Technology, we're lucky if we can get somebody to stay on staff for 18+ months. But, we still hire as if that guy is going to work for us for at least 10 years.

It's the hiring as if he's going to work for us for 10+ years where we start to get into trouble. If we were honest and hiring people knowing they're only going to be there for 18 months, then, all the other considerations might not matter as much.

With these three vignettes, I don't know if I've clarified my point at all. But, it's definitely been some additional insight into where I'm coming from.

So, in summary, in a tight job market, you've got to do whatever you can to differentiate yourself from the competition. Obtaining a local phone number and address is low hanging fruit that is within your control.

Like I said, I'm about 180 days away from re-entering the job market in SoCal. So, I'll have a fresh sample when that happens. I'm really looking forward to Reppin' The 818 again.

Thanks everyone who gave advice last year. I wanted to update this and let y'all know I got a pretty cool gig up in Salt Lake City. I will be moving next month and I could not be more excited. I definitely utilized a lot of information given to make it happen... So time to let the outdoor adventures begin! Thanks and gig 'em!