Dreams of Britain – How I Almost Got a Job in London – An Internet Marketing Tale

Let me preface this by saying that, though I did not get the job in London, I managed to find an even cooler job in Chicago which has deadened my desire to move to London for now. I can’t wait to start it. I thought this would be a story worth sharing for people looking for innovative ways to try and get a job.

I’ve written about my desire to move to the UK in the past and my frustrations at how hard it was for Americans to move there for work. Well, about a month and a half ago, it almost happened for me. I almost got a dream job in London.

I can only talk about it now because I’m leaving my current employer for a much better opportunity in Chicago. Now, I can now talk freely about the whole experience. I thought it was would a great story to tell for people looking for creative ways to get a job in this challenging economy.

The Problem

The UK government recently made it much harder for skilled professionals to move to the UK for work – where before it was hard enough they now require a minimum of a Master’s degree in order to get the Tier One Skilled worker Visa. I don’t have a Master’s.

So, the only hope for me to get a job in the UK was to be sponsored by an employer directly for a Tier 2 visa. Easier said than done. Most UK employers require you to be eligible to work in the UK first before you even apply for the job – sponsorship is usually not an option. This is because it costs money for them to sponsor you, comply with the standards and it’s also politically sensitive right now as well (jobs for Brits and all that).

Half-heartedly, I was browsing jobs on LinkedIn one day and did a quick search for jobs in London. My reasoning was that if they posted a job on an American career site, they would be willing to sponsor for a visa. I was right, I applied for a job and someone bit.

Hope for London

What followed was a dizzying week of phone interviews, dreaming and praying. About a day after I applied for the job, I got an e-mail from the HR person at a major travel company with an office in London (in interests of disclosure, I will not mention names). She liked my resume and wanted to schedule a phone interview.

I was elated.

We scheduled the call for a couple days later, taking in mind the time difference. I didn’t really think about the job much – I had had phone interviews with London before and they’d never gone anywhere once they realize they have to sponsor me. But I figured it was worth the phone call.

The scheduled day for the phone call arrived and I made sure I was out of the office to take it. The call went very well, I seemed to tick all her boxes and answer her questions well. I’d been searching for a new job for nearly 3 months at that point and was beginning to get quite good at the phone interview.

The phone call neared the end and then the question came up: I made sure that she knew that I would have to be sponsored for a Visa.

She said the understood and had no problem with that. They would sponsor the right person, any person that was qualified. The call ended and she said she would get back to me once she’d had a chance to talk to my potential boss.

When I hung up the phone, I nearly floated back to my desk at my current job. I was beyond excited. There was a chance it could happen.

Days of London Dreaming

I thought it went so well that I immediately began plotting my move. The problem with moving to London, on such short notice was that it wouldn’t have been easy to just unplug from our life here in Indiana. My wife was finishing school, she was committed to a job for the summer and had to go back in the fall. Our lease was coming up, so that wasn’t an issue.

My wife knew how much it meant to me to work in London, so she assured me that we’d make it happen. The job paid a significant some of money (a HUGE raise over what I was making), so most of our problems could be solved with the right amount of money.

However, as that first weekend progressed, we sketched out a rough plan of how it would play out. I’d leave immediately for the job if I got it, set up house temporarily in a flat somewhere. She’d stay behind, finish out our lease, move in with our parents and follow me in December once she’d graduated. Somewhere in that 6 month period of time, she would come visit me once and I’d come visit her once. As I said, the job paid enough that that was possible and since it was a UK employer, it offered 21 vacation days so that was not an issue either.

Seeking Advice

As the days went on I began dreaming of my future life in London. How much I would love riding the Tube to work. Picking up the Evening Standard on the way home. Curling up with British TV in the evenings. Becoming a Londoner and loving it.

It became clear that I would do ANYTHING to get the job. So, I began to reach out to my network of mentors and friends to see if anyone had any ideas for how I could get a second phone interview.

My brilliant idea was to rent a mobile billboard and park in front of the offices of the company in London. However, once I priced it out and looked Google Streetview and saw that there was no street access to the offices that a truck could fit down, I discounted the idea.

I sounded some ideas off to my wife and then she hit gold – send them cupcakes.

Operation: Cupcake

Not just any cupakes mind you – AMERICAN Cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery in Notting Hill. I’d had the pleasure of eating cukcakes from the American Style bakery on my last trip to London and they were sooooo delicious. Since then, American style cupcakes have taken London by storm. So I thought it’d be a great idea to send some to the offices with a note thanking them for their time and consideration.

Easier said than done. You can’t yet order online nor place an order by e-mail. That meant a phone call. The problem is that this place is very popular, so you need to call right when they open, in order to get your order in. That meant getting up at 4:00am for a phone call to London.

Let’s just say, I was VERY tired that day but it was worth it. The soonest cupcakes could be delivered was two days later and I prayed it would not be too late as the cupcakes cost nearly $70 (for 18!)!

The next two days passed by excruciatingly slow as I waited for those damn cupcakes to be delivered. Thursday between 1-5pm became my mantra.

The day came, I constantly checked my e-mail from early in the morning – hoping that I would get a confirmation from the bakery or an e-mail from the HR lady. The clocked ticked. I got up. Went to work, checked my e-mail every five seconds. Waiting. Waiting.

I don’t know exactly when the cupcakes were delivered but shortly after 10am my time, I got an e-mail from the company asking me for a second phone interview with the person who would be my boss.

It worked. I think. Operation: Cupcake was a success.

Second Phone Interview with London

From the information I got from the company – the person I would be interviewing with was Russian. This made me nervous. I’ve worked with Russians before I know how… gruff they can be. So, I put my best foot forward, prepped as much as I could by browsing the company’s websites and finding SEO problems I could solve. I took the day off work so that I had plenty of time to sell myself to the Russian.

The phone rang at the set time and I had the interview.

It was an unmitigated disaster.

The interviewer asked questions I wasn’t prepared for – questions I had trouble answering. Communication was a problem since he was in London, I was on a cell phone. It didn’t help that he was Russian and hard to understand. He was blunt – we disagreed on some basic SEO principles, but I thought standing my ground was a good tactic. I didn’t get to talk about any of my ideas for the company or build on all the prep work I did.

When I hung up, I looked at my wife (who sat there and thought I did great) and said I’m not going to get the job – it was a disaster. I was deflated. But I didn’t want to give up hope.

I asked more people for advice – “How Do I Get This Job?”

I had recently listened to a podcast from Marketing Guru Jim Kukral about doing innovative things to get a job in the bad economy. It was worth a listen and one thing stuck out: make yourself memorable.

I thought’d I done that with the cupcakes and it got me to the next level, what next? So e-mailed him for advice. Jim is an incredibly nice guy and really knows about marketing (check out his blog here).

He said:

“Now, perhaps you make a video of yourself and your wife introducing yourselves to them. Let them get to know you. They have to like you to hire you. If you do this, they’ll get that you really want the job. They want to hire someone who really wants the job, believe me.

Get a flip cam and take them on a tour of your house. Let them see how you live (clean first), let them see you wife and your pets and the inside of your refrigerator. The point is… you will remove all doubt from their mind about the person they are going to hire. Be personable. Be yourself.”

I thought, great idea. I’ll make a video. The first issue I had to deal with was that I didn’t want to put my current job in jeopardy by posting a video all over the web asking a company to hire me. So, I settled on putting a video on a subdomain of my main website that could only be accessed by people whom I told it was there.

I wrote a script of everything I wanted to talk about on the phone but didn’t have a chance and crafted a sales pitch. I dressed up in a nice shirt, put on my trademark green hat, shaved and sat in front of my Mac to record the video. It ended up being 10 minutes long and I’d like to think it was impressive.

I posted it to a custom built Wordpress site I put together just for the video and e-mailed to everyone at the company I’d had contact with. The next morning I got up and checked the stats and saw that 3 people from the company had watched the video and stayed on the site enough to watch the whole thing. That was a good sign. Again, I waited and waited for an e-mail, something to give me hope that I still had a chance to live and work in London.

It didn’t come until two days later and it wasn’t what I’d hope. It was a rejection letter.

Dream of London over.

What I Learned

The big thing I learned was that you can try all the fancy gimmicks you want to get a job – but in the end you need sell yourself as you would if you didn’t have the gimmicks. I just didn’t sell myself well enough.

I was more than qualified for the job. They just didn’t think so and it’s my fault. Russians may be hard to impress, but I should have tried harder to impress him. To add insult to injury, there are still job postings for that position all over the web, some are relatively new. They’re still looking. Just not at me.

The Future

The whole process was an emotional roller coaster of hopes and dreams. I can’t put myself through that all over again. I don’t think working in London is going to happen until I have significantly more experience than I do and thus justify the cost involved. I will never be able to get a visa on my own – it’s prohibitively expensive and I’d need to go back to university for a Master’s Degree – as well as make significantly more money than I do for at least one year and save a large sum of money to meet the visa requirements.

So, I’m sad to say, living and working in London looks like it’s going to be added to the Bucket List of things I’d like to do one day before I die.

But all it not lost. I learned so much from the process and I thought that others looking for a job may enjoy the innovative tactics I used to try and land the job. I took what I learned from the experience and landed another, better job in Chicago.

As for me, I’ve landed a better job at a fantastic company in Chicago. It’s not London but I still love Chicago and I really am looking forward to commuting into the Big City for the first time. This new job is exactly what I’d been looking for and I’m going to give it 110%. Someday, London will come calling and I’ll be ready for it.

Besides, we’re still going to London in November. Come hell or high water!

Author Info -  Jonathan is a consummate Anglophile with an obsession for Britain that borders on psychosis. He keeps Anglotopia running in his spare time, always dreaming of his next trip to England, wishing he lived there - specifically Dorset - and is always trying to figure out a way to move to England. It will happen one day. Keep up with him on Twitter here. Read more from this author

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