The Great Job Search

Since I left Rogers Publishing last April, I gradually made my way down a rather lengthy checklist. The last step of that list was also the most important building block in my successful relocation to London: securing a job in the UK journalism sector.

Full disclosure, I had been forewarned about the existing struggle in the UK job market. When I contacted my cousin Pearl in June to tell her of my plans, she wrote back: “I would advise you to be cautious about whether prospects will be any different here. Our economy has been hit even harder than yours and, although this is a field I know little about, I think there are many people chasing few jobs here.”

Although I appreciated the brutal honesty, I was already mired in doubt about my decision to move across the pond. Only five days before I was made redundant, the BBC published an article warning of the impending “death of journalism.” Not news exactly, but it was becoming more and more evident that I was trained in a field that was completely reinventing itself in order to fight extinction. And, to top it all off, I was planning to move to a country – and city – that was the worse hit by the economic crisis (save NYC and the rest of the states).

But I did it anyways. I was nearing the summit of my new life strategy and there really was no looking back. I was jobless, and almost homeless, plus I had just given the UK Border Agency a good chunk of cash for my work visa. I started to apply exclusively for jobs in London mid-way through the summer. As a result, I had two interviews lined up for the week following my arrival.

My first interview was for a job as an energy market reporter. Granted, I know very little about the energy market, but keep in mind that, before my stint at HPAC Magazine, I knew almost nothing about heating, plumbing and air conditioning systems. The best part of what I do for a living is the process of acquiring new knowledge about a niche industry. My innate curiosity is probably why I can’t name the field I currently specialize in. I thrive on learning little bits of wisdom about all different facets of the world.

As you probably gathered, I didn’t get that first job. The editor, also an expat, was gracious and kind, but she found a candidate who had more relevant experience in the energy market. This line would become a familiar one as the weeks slipped by. There is always someone who has more experience than me in the financial markets, the construction sector, as a sub-editor or as a commissioning editor.

But I wore on. I continued applying for jobs. I dressed up in blazers and heels, carrying my portfolio, and commuted to all corners of the Greater London Area (that’s right, we have a GLA). I shouldered the barrage of rejections again and again and again.

Among my 11 interviews (two of which were two-part meetings for the same job), two jobs invited me in for full-day working interviews. At a construction trade magazine, they pilfered my copy, tested my InDesign skills and then made me sit through a truly bizarre interview where the editor and his deputy essentially answered their own questions while I sat, slightly confused, between them.

I also spent a day at London’s Evening Standard, chasing stories and comments for the newspaper’s “Londoner’s Diary” section. Neither of these jobs materialized into a position for me, but I did leave feeling slightly used and violated; a brilliant way to pinch free words in an economy where real journalists are vanishing.

Never waivering from my quest for the perfect journalism gig, I eventually did own up to the fact that I would have to start earning a paycheque, no matter where it came from. The savings well was drying up, my meagre freelance pay barely covered my bad habits, and London wasn’t getting any cheaper. Before my move across the pond, I had told friends and family that, if I didn’t find a job by Christmas, I would simply come home. But I wasn’t ready to give up just yet. My desire to remain in London trumped my pride. I would do any form of labour to continue to call this city home.

Through a friend, I found out about a company called Off To Work, a temp catering agency that hired me on the spot for my background in both catering (somewhat exaggerated) and barista (completely warranted) work. The job turned out to be the ideal compromise for my lifestyle. I simply applied online for the shifts I was interested in and then would venture out to discover new areas of the city and collect loads of new friends. I worked anywhere between zero and five days a week (never on weekends): serving champagne at an Irish wake within the walls of Holland Park, proffering canapés at a private function among the photographs of the National Portrait Gallery and, the majority of the time, slinging cappucinos at corporate cafés.

I put in my time at Virgin Media, Sony Playstation (video games in the corporate restaurant!), CB Richard Ellis, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and a variety of law, accounting, brokerage and advertising firms. Some of those jobs I adored (free coffee and food, amazing co-workers, cute boys in suits) and others I loathed (finicky bosses, long days on my feet, a stalker). But I was, the whole time, aware that I was slipping backwards from my original goal.

At the end of January I had three big interviews over the space of a week and a half. The first was the associate editor position at a renewables magazine called Windpower Monthly. I interviewed with a very attractive man named Ben, who told me straight off that I was probably not qualified enough for the position, though he did see something brilliant in my CV. After my initial surprise at the seemingly ineffectual use of my time, we had a truly fantastic interview, but I ultimately lost out to someone who had more experience. Story of my life.

The second position was the editorial researcher for a publication that covered the digital television market. After two interviews it became clear to me that this wasn’t the job for me, though if they hired me I would do it gladly. Beggers can’t be choosy. I was spared in the end, as a career researcher proved to be a better fit for the position.

The final interview was to be a reporter at a trade magazine called Employee Benefits, which serviced a niche industry of HR professionals across the UK. The same week I was rejected by the other two jobs, I was offered a short term contract with EB. The news was mixed. I was not being hired for the full-time gig because another candidate had more than 20 months left in the country (my work visa was slowly ticking away), along with experience in the HR sector. However, the new reporter could not escape her current position for almost three months, so I was being brought in to fill the interim.

My first day was February 15, so I have already spent one week in my new contract position and couldn’t be enjoying it more. We start the day at 9:30AM with free coffees and five national newspapers, which we scour for business stories to adapt and confirm before posting them to our website. Then I spend the rest of the day chasing additional news stories to post online, writing content for the print edition and getting to know my new colleagues: two editors, two reporters and an art editor.

I really do feel like I have stepped into the perfect scenario. Sure, it would be great to start a full-time job right away, but experiencing a small taste of a reporter’s life is a great compromise. Now I have UK work experience on my CV, access to Centaur Media’s Intranet for internal job postings with the publishing house, and an editor who is genuinely sorry she couldn’t hire me long term and makes up for it by suggesting job search websites on a daily basis. My office is a mere 30-minute bus ride from my flat and one-hour lunches are spent cruising the shopping mecca that is Oxford Street. Last but not least, I am already learning a great deal in my new role, acquiring valuable skills for my journalism career.

Flatmates Wanted

It was September 17, 2009. I had packed up my life in Toronto and flown across the ocean to embark on a brand new chapter. In my mind, the most difficult part of this process was behind me. However, it turned out to be just the beginning. Now I had to find a flat and find a job.

I was living with my amazing cousin Pearl in her gorgeous house in Islington. I was adjusting to my new world, which proved quite effortless thanks to Pearl’s boundless hospitality. I was in a little transition cocoon, unaware of the hard realism that awaited me once I got out on my own. (Slight exaggeration here, for dramatic effect.)

I started searching for flats all over the city, choosing cheaper options to start with, but eventually gravitated back to the borough of Islington. The neighbourhood where Pearl lives is the London that I have always known, where I have stayed every time I visited the city. Once I fully grasped this, I concentrated my search to the immediate Angel area. It also didn’t hurt that my great friend Marge had already found a house in Islington as well. It only seemed practical to live near the two people I knew best in London.

I saw a total of seven flats before I found my current home – and only four of these were in the Angel neighbourhood. It took me three-and-a-half weeks to venture out on my own. (Compare this to the 11 interviews and four-and-a-half months it took to find a job!) Despite the apparent ease of finding a flat, I was constantly inundated with tales of the difficulties of the great flatmate search.

It would probably have been a completely different story if I had been searching for a flat on my own (a near impossible option in an expensive city like London). But I was trying to find that perfect blend of ideal location, spacious bedroom (already furnished), outdoor space and cool flatmates. I am a fastidious person who has lived alone for four years. It was sure to be a challenge.

Collecting appointments via Gumtree.co.uk (a sort of London Craig’s List), I canvassed the city by checking out flats in East Dulwich (too far), Highbury (too small), Canary Wharf (too dodgy), Tower Hill (too boring) and Queen’s Park (too many Australians).

I learned, among the many new experiences I gathered from this exercise, that going to look at a flat is a lot like going to a job interview. You are being sized up and tested to see if you make a desirable candidate. It does not necessarily matter whether you like the place and want to move in to the spare room. It is up to the flat’s already-inhabitants to decide whether you fit in.

The night that I found 15A Ecclesbourne Road, my present address, I saw a total of three flats – with Marge along to offer moral support, provide level-headedness, and prevent me from doing anything stupid. Her presence turned out to be a good idea.

The first flat I saw was in a great location, above a Japanese restaurant on Essex Road, not far from Angel tube station. But it was a tiny place and the bedroom that would be mine had previously been the living room, so there was no communal space. As Marge pointed out, while we were negotiating the narrow stairs down to the street, it would be just like living in residence.

The next appointment was also on Essex Road. It was a room inside the home of a lovely Australian couple. Their flat was clean, orderly and spacious, and was only five minutes away from Pearl’s. The flat’s main downfall was that it belonged to this couple – who were very gracious and friendly – and I was keenly aware that it was their place, and that it would never be mine.

At the end of the night I ventured down to Ecclesbourne Road (a mere four-minute walk from Pearl’s) and met Justin, my future flatmate. The house is ex-council. (Wiki: the council house is a form of public or social housing, primarily referred to in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Council houses were built and operated by local councils to supply uncrowded, well-built homes on secure tenancies at below market rents to primarily working class people. Council house development began in the late nineteenth century and peaked in the mid-20th century.)

The house had everything I was looking for: a large south-facing bedroom, a spacious living room and kitchen, and a backyard that, with better temperatures and some sprucing up, would make a lovely place to hang out in the summer. I would be moving in with two British boys (Justin from Manchester and Arthur from Oxfordshire), which offered a definite upside. For one, living with girls causes needless drama (2002 at Queen’s can attest to that). And, after looking at flats crammed with Australians, Kiwis, Japanese and Eastern Europeans, I had decided that I wanted to live with some Brits. After all, living with other ex-pats was not exactly a very UK experience.

I moved in on October 10, with some help from Ikea and Pearl, and have been here ever since. It is a fantastic house, with great flatmates, in a perfect location (15-minute walk to Angel tube station and six buses to all parts of the city almost right outside my door). The shape of my London life was starting to develop a discernable quality. I was starting to recognize myself again. Now, all I had to do was find a job.

A Canadian In London

This blog has been a long time coming. I intended to start writing a weekly installment back in September when I first got here, but the usual adjustments and modifications of moving to a new city have hampered my dedication to the project. Finally, almost five months since my big move, I am getting down to it. I intend to write a weekly note – sometimes lengthy and sometimes brief – about my life here: my observations, missteps and progressions.

Let’s briefly go back to the beginning. As the year of the Great Re-pression, 2008, bled into a New Year, I was sitting at my desk in the enormous Rogers Publishing building at Bloor and Jarvis, on a rather ordinary Tuesday. I was called into my editor’s office and made redundant, along with more than 60 other publishing personnel. It was a huge shock but, as I packed up my few belongings and wandered the three blocks home with tears in my eyes, I came to a realization (and it is clichéd): This was the best thing that could have happened to me.

I was at an impasse of sorts in my position as assistant editor at HPAC Magazine. With a tiny editorial staff, the magazine just didn’t offer any mobility and I was feeling that my time there had given me everything I could get out of it. I adore Toronto and my life there, but I was feeling restless and dreaming of travel. The lay-off propelled me to action. I spent a couple of months applying for jobs in Toronto, going to interviews and migrating through a minor quarter-life crisis. I considered Manhattan and I considered London. And, finally, after some long talks with friends and some serious self-reflection, I decided to take the leap and move to the UK.

I consider regrets to be the most deplorable things to gather over a lifetime, and I already have enough of those for one person. So I renewed my passport, completed the application for the Tier 5 Youth Mobility Visa and gave my landlords notice for September 1. My cousin Pearl offered me the guest room (the West Wing) in her London home for as long as it would take me to settle in, find a flat and starting looking for a job.

A lot of people have asked me why London. It’s a broad question and I am not sure that I know exactly what it is that drew me in. It certainly doesn’t hurt that I have family here who are supportive and accommodating and completely amazing.

As someone self-assured enough to call herself a writer – a great lover of the written word, at the very least – it is absolutely thrilling to tread the same ground as Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Karl Marx and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It still amazes me that I am a mere bus ride or tube line away from the lights of Shaftesbury and the great theatre of the West End; from the Tower of London where Kings were born and Queens were beheaded; from the cobbled streets that came to life in Dickens’ novels and that served as the avenues where the suffragette movement took shape; from Big Ben and the House of Commons where Churchill delivered his War Time Speeches; from Westminster Abbey where monarchs were crowned and great poets were entombed.

As I mentioned earlier, I have been here for almost five months – 143 days, actually – and I haven’t spent one second of boredom, malaise or even homesickness. I certainly have not had a moment of regret. I have gradually discovered an unfolding city of great friends and family, quirky traditions, history and literature, music, pubs and cloudy skies. If I can keep it up, I will blog about these discoveries each week, and maybe then I will be able to explain exactly why I love London so much.