Texas Bound from Ohio (Austin, Round Rock: rent, homes, job market)

[Ready4Texas]

Hi! My husband and I are from the Dayton, Ohio area and are planning an escape to the Austin area! We have been looking at the Round Rock and Georgetown areas. We have heard that this area is full of nice people and job opportunities. He has a 20 year background in IT and I have a 2 year background in Graphics/Publishing. We are looking for a nice and happy area to live in. Any suggestions? We are ready to move in the fall of 2008.
Thanks for any suggestions!

[HappyTexan]

Find a job first before moving here. See the other threads about the job market here slowing down.

[ohio2texas]

Hello, Ready4Texas! My husband and I moved here from NE Ohio two years ago and love it! We both had jobs prior to moving (my husband's job is what brought us here... I was just lucky to find a teaching job in a short amount of time). I teach in Round Rock but live in Cedar Park, so I might not be the best source of info on housing in RR and Georgetown. But if you have any further questions, feel free to private message me. Best of luck to you!

[twange]

Originally Posted by Ready4Texas

Hi! My husband and I are from the Dayton, Ohio area and are planning an escape to the Austin area! We have been looking at the Round Rock and Georgetown areas. We have heard that this area is full of nice people and job opportunities. He has a 20 year background in IT and I have a 2 year background in Graphics/Publishing. We are looking for a nice and happy area to live in. Any suggestions? We are ready to move in the fall of 2008.
Thanks for any suggestions!

Can't give you too many suggestions as you're criteria and mine do not match but welcome anyway My wife and I relocated from Cleveland last year and we like it very much. Are there things we don't like? Sure. I could find something wrong with any city. That's the nature of cities.

Don't get too put off by the occasional surly, arrogant, spluttering native who enjoys grilling you into submission with questions about your personal choices. You'll find most folks here to be very warm and friendly.

[austintilelady]

Great idea moving out of Ohio. My family and I moved out of the Dayton area last year. It has not been easy and doing it with or without a job has been a challenge.

Trying to get a job in another state is getting harder and harder. You will need a phone number in that state for starters. If you have verizon you can go into the store and tell them you want an additional line and phone put on your account with the Austin or Round Rock area code and within minuates you will have a Texas phone number.

Then you can call up mail box etc. in Austin or Round Rock and tell them you need to open a mail box. Get a small one! They can fax the paper work to you and then you will have to get it noterized and then fax it back. Within a few hours you will have an address to go along with the new phone number. Now you are ready to search for a job in the state of Texas.

Change all of your resumes to that address and start searching. If you get a call for an interview pack your bags call priceline and go! Start with the texas work commision website. Good Luck

If you make it here message me and tell us how it went.

austintilelady

[WillysB]

If your cell service can't provide an Austin area code you might try Skype.com. It's a VoIP service and will cost only a few bucks a month but gets you an Austin local number. And you can set it to forward calls to your cell. Skype is actually an international VoIP provider expanding into the U.S.

The Texas Work Commission is Work In Texas. It's kind of a pain in the process to use and works with InternetExplorer (not so good with Firefox) but gets you job listings. Looks like lots of IT stuff. You'll need to choose a local 'workforce location'. I suspect most any in Austin will be good, or Round Rock. That's closer to a Dell identity. Maybe another poster can give you some direction on that.

[kismit40]

Hello and welcome when you get here. I would avoid Pfluggerville. My boyfriend bought about a yr ago and it wasn't a wise purchase. Although growing it can't decide rather its up and coming or going down the hill. Also, if home buying you may want to google the info on KB Homes. They have a terrible rep here in Austin. Beautiful homes, but apparently lots of problems. Dell is a bigh part of Round Rock, but lots of layoffs now. Contracting (or assigned workers) may be a good way to get foot in door. I live in Georgetown. Lots of money in some areas and very low rent in others. Big divide but still has a small town feel to it and everyone gets along just fine. Couple of large building projects going up in GT too. You will find that GT, RR and Austin just run right into each other. For Georgetown 2243 (or leander road) to teh west has some beautiful areas. Also there are some new housing areas out Exit 29 to the east - towards the toll road. If you have to commute at all south, the toll road is the way to go. Cedar Park is up and coming too. Out 1431 road there are lots of pretty areas to live, plus they are expanding out in CP rapidly and doing what seems like a good job of keeping growth balanced. There is supposedly even going to be a tran from CP to downtown eventually which will be really cool. Good luck!

[AustinTexan]

Originally Posted by austintilelady

Great idea moving out of Ohio. My family and I moved out of the Dayton area last year. It has not been easy and doing it with or without a job has been a challenge.

Trying to get a job in another state is getting harder and harder. You will need a phone number in that state for starters. If you have verizon you can go into the store and tell them you want an additional line and phone put on your account with the Austin or Round Rock area code and within minuates you will have a Texas phone number.

Then you can call up mail box etc. in Austin or Round Rock and tell them you need to open a mail box. Get a small one! They can fax the paper work to you and then you will have to get it noterized and then fax it back. Within a few hours you will have an address to go along with the new phone number. Now you are ready to search for a job in the state of Texas.

Change all of your resumes to that address and start searching. If you get a call for an interview pack your bags call priceline and go! Start with the texas work commision website. Good Luck

If you make it here message me and tell us how it went.

austintilelady

That won't change the fact that all of their experience up to this point is from somewhere in Ohio. Employers aren't stupid, if you've lived your whole life in another state, it's going to be pretty obvious on your resume. I guess employers just ignore all that and really just look to see if they have a local phone number and P.O. Box, huh? LOL!!! Good advice.

[PfinallyInAustin]

Originally Posted by AustinTexan

That won't change the fact that all of their experience up to this point is from somewhere in Ohio. Employers aren't stupid, if you've lived your whole life in another state, it's going to be pretty obvious on your resume. I guess employers just ignore all that and really just look to see if they have a local phone number and P.O. Box, huh? LOL!!! Good advice.

Actually, this does work out just fine. Worked for me in fact, once I figured out there is some degree of discrimination going on based on where you currently live. Basically employers don't want to gamble on people from out of state due to some expectations such as relocation reimbursement, etc. There's a quick way to take care of this "employment in other states" issue... don't include city information for your past jobs on your resume. It doesn't matter where your past jobs were. What matters is the quality of your work. Therefore, I omitted that information from my resume. If you really want to be judged as fairly as the local job applicant, however, you've got to be ready to come for an interview at a moment's notice. Sure the employer will eventually find out you are not from the area, but the important thing is to make sure you can attend an interview to sell yourself and explain that you are extremely serious about relocating (otherwise, you wouldn't be hundreds of miles from your current home at the interview).

Originally Posted by kismit40

I would avoid Pfluggerville. My boyfriend bought about a yr ago and it wasn't a wise purchase. Although growing it can't decide rather its up and coming or going down the hill.

I don't recall the OP mention anything about Pflugerville, but I'll throw my two cents in about this. I think it is a great city and I disagree about the identity crisis you seem to imply. Pflugerville is definitely up and coming. The signs of growth are all around, with new infrastructure and shopping centers going in all the time. Sure, just like any other city including Round Rock and Georgetown, there are some specific subdivisions that might not be the best investments, but the response to that is simply not to buy in that subdivision. If you write off an entire city due to one part of a city, nobody would live anywhere.

[WillysB]

I guess employers just ignore all that and really just look to see if they have a local phone number and P.O. Box, huh?

LOL!!! Good advice.

I suspect that a company/recruiter would be more willing to respond to an address/phone number that is local rather than 'foreign'. Or that a candidate would be more prepared to make an interview if he had some local connection rather than needing to put together some thought as to how to get to an interview.

Prepared, thinking ahead, taking action, enterprising. Or kicking back, laughing at the losers?