What Comes First, the Apartment or the Job?
Lately I have been trying to look for jobs in NYC or the surrounding area. I have a master’s degree in sociology and currently work for a consulting firm doing program evaluation and design, strategic planning, and program assessments. The firm I work for deals mainly with health and human services and contracts with non-profits and local governments. I really like the work that I do and would love to find something similar in NYC. I am hoping to find a position that focuses on policy research and program evaluation in the area of poverty, human rights, or homelessness.
Compared to Milwaukee there are many more job opportunities in NYC. While this makes me optimistic I realize that there are also a lot more people applying for jobs in New York than there are in Milwaukee. I have been using a few different job search sites to hunt for jobs, unfortunately most of the sites out there seems to be geared to computer or other technology based careers. Some that have been useful to me are idealist.com and philanthropycareers.com. These sights offer a broader range of careers than sites like monster.com.
Idealist.org is especially useful because you can search by job category and area of focus rather than having to choose from a narrow range of job categories like some other sites force you to do. In addition to searching for jobs on idealist.org it is an excellent resource for networking in the non-profit world. You can search for people with similar interests or for organizations in the area. This is particularly nice since I am trying to find some non-profits to do some volunteer work with. This site allows me to search for the National organizations by area of focus and then provides links to the local chapters’ website. It also let you subscribe to an RSS feed to keep you updated on any changes or new matches within your search!
So while I am finding a decent number of jobs to apply for, it is hard to hunt for jobs in a city where you do not live (or live any where near for that matter). Ideally I will find a job that will start in either at the end September or the beginning of October and we will find an apartment with a lease that starts at the beginning of September. I guess one of the hardest parts of this move is trying to coordinate the timing or everything. I do not want to find a job that starts before we move to New York, but I also don’t want to find an apartment that is available too soon…
