You want to move to a different area, but you want to have a job before you go. Good idea. So, you put together a resume and put on your real current address and phone number. You are 1000 miles away from where you want to work.
No one calls.
Can you blame them?
You have basically announced that hiring you will be a problem. It doesn’t matter what your cover letter says. You may have a place to stay there and be willing to pay for your move yourself. It doesn’t matter until they actually talk to you. They immediately assume they will have to pay for you to fly in and interview, pay for a relocation, deal with the first two months of lack of productivity while you settle in to a new home, and put up with you getting homesick.
The answer: Get them to see how good you are before they notice you are from out of town.
You have to get past the screener. The screener is a computer or a human who is wading through 100 resumes, trying to find the 2 or 3 best ones. Your phone number and address may be getting you excluded without any review. So change them.
Get a local phone number at the very least. Try Google Voice. Or, you can get a Vonage internet phone for $10-$25 per month. For $5 more per month you can get extra phone numbers that have any area code you want. You can have the Vonage phone automatically forward to your regular home phone or cell phone and never use the internet line if you want. You can switch where it rings as often as you like. With Vonage, you can have a local phone number for your job search no matter where you really live.
Getting a local address for your resume is also a good idea. You can use a friend’s house, rent a Post Office Box at the Post Office, or get a box at a UPS Store or some other mailbox forwarding service. Put in a change of address form. Any letters sent to you may be delayed, but they will get to you. More important, your resume will not get flagged for deletion merely because of your address.
If you have a specific place you want to move to, it may be worth your time to camouflage where you currently live. You will have to deal with the relocation issue during the phone interview, but at least you will have a better chance of actually talking to someone instead of getting screened out by a computer because of your zip code or area code.
Something To Do Today
Try to figure out what may be keeping you from getting a call when you apply for a job. Can you overcome that problem? Do you need camouflage, better writing, or stronger experience?
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Later: Hiding real problems
When is your resume being thrown away?
Non-competes