Dear Recruiters, If You Send Me a Job Outside My Local Area…

…please acknowledge that it will require relocating!

Moving for a job is a major life decision, so it’s good to at least mention that when contacting me about a job opportunity. And I don’t mean just copying the part of the job description that says, “Must be willing to commute or relocate to [location].”

If you acknowledge this, then I can tell that you’ve taken the time to consider my résumé/profile and taken the location into account. Otherwise, I can only suspect that you’re just sending the job to as many candidates as possible without any regard for what the job will require in practice.

And this shouldn’t be that hard to do. I have my location on my résumé, LinkedIn, Indeed, etc., and I assume you have the location of the job from the job description. If you need to, plug them into something like Google Maps to see how long it takes to get from one to the other. (Side note: Occasionally I get messages about jobs in Silicon Valley, and sometimes I wonder if those recruiters assume that being in the same state automatically makes the commute reasonable. California is pretty big, you know.)

Finally, please mention the location up front. You might think this is obvious, but I’ve had a few recruiters contact me without mentioning the job’s location. I of course had to check if it was a remote position, and each time it ended up being on site in a completely different region I couldn’t commute to. That could have been over a lot quicker if you had just given me the location in the first place. (And yes, if the job is in fact remote, please mention that as well so I don’t have to wonder about it.)

I can only speak for myself, but this is something than can make or break my trust, and again, it shouldn’t be too hard to do.