Well, I’m happy to report, though some what belatedly to this blog, that I’m now employed in the UK! As of June 1st, I will be starting as a Production Editor with Taylor & Francis publishing in Milton. Milton is a few towns passed Didcot and the RAL campus where Matt works, so we’ll now be traveling in about the same direction and for similar hours to boot! There are a lot of words for how excited and terrified I am about this development, but we’ll save those for later. Let’s start with the job hunt process and how extraordinarily similar and different it has been here.

I didn’t really start looking for work until April, I meant to in March, but I mostly just, didn’t. Then I did the usual update the resume/cv, update, revise, worry over the cover letter and then sent out various versions of each to innumerable jobs posted online. Actually, I probably only responded to about 10 postings, some administrative and many more in publishing. I was impressed with one of the posting at Oxford that said they would be offering interviews within a week or so of when the position posting date closed. I assumed they were unusually motivated, but it turns out, the hiring/search process does seem to move faster here than I’ve previously experienced. I’ve now heard back from every job I remember applying to, all of them responded one way or another within less than a month. And, the two interview processes I went through were both completed within about 2 weeks, so pretty darn quick! (Although, this is not true of Matt’s process at all, so grain of salt here, guys.)

Both positions I was in the running for had first and second interviews, separated by about a week. Both were with at least a couple of people and both included little tests/activities, which was only a problem because they never tell you how you did on the test and that’s just not a nice thing to do to a former honors program kid. The position I applied for at Oxford was with a great department, but (I very biase-ly think that) I was, if not over qualified for it, then at least overly experienced for it. And, so I was thrilled when they called me right before the last bank holiday to notify me that I got the job at T & F. I have zero experience and know almost nothing about the field, but I’m incredibly excited to figure it out. And, I can’t wait for the opportunity to get out of the house a bit more and participate in Britain in a more active way. Although, I know my having a salary will eventually lead to our having a car and I’m still not so on board with my having to learn to drive over here… *whimper*, but at least that commute will be with Matt everyday and we can be adorably grumpy morning commuters together, so how great is that?

And, as such, I’m sure there will be more to come…

– alaina