Tips for finding a marketing job abroad – Location is key
By Alice M. Chacon
Alice is a recent MBA graduate with a specialization in Marketing Management, based in Toronto, ON. She has a background in marketing, communications and corporate social responsibility in consumer goods, software and media. She is an avid follower of marketing trends and shares news and analyzes trends on her blog: www.alicechacon.blogspot.com and her Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/@alicemchacon.
Last month I started the story of my search for better job opportunities in Toronto. Leaving Vancouver isn’t easy, especially knowing that I was going to miss the Olympics and finally see what all that construction was for!
Toronto is such a different city from Vancouver in so many ways. One of them is that it is so spread out and so densely populated. Sure, the Lower mainland really stretches out, both North to South and West to East. But in Toronto, commutes over an hour are far more common than they ever seemed to be in Vancouver.
Location is key when you look for work here, especially considering that traffic is a nightmare at almost any hour of the day and any day of the week, and that public transit can be terrible when you are trying to get to or from a place far from the subway. And besides long walks, waits and switching buses, trains, etc several times, you have the nasty wind and snow, or the very high temperatures in the summer.
Ideally, you’d want to live close to the place where you work, especially if that is out and far from the subway lines, like Mississauga, Brampton and Markham. But it’s hard to know exactly where you’ll work until you get a job. In some industries, that can be more predictable. Banks and investment firms tend to be located downtown. A lot of technology companies are located in Markham. But if you’re interested in CPG, like I am, it can be hard to say.
In a tight economy, companies want the sure thing. Having a Toronto address is very important when looking for a job here, I’ve been told. I got very little done when I was in Vancouver last fall, finishing my MBA. Since I’ve been here, I’m impressed at how many more people I’ve been able to meet. That means that, like me, if you’re really decided on working here, you may have to find a place to live first, before you know where you will be working.
The good news is that real estate is cheaper here than it is in Vancouver. Rent can also be much cheaper (I’m paying less here for a 1 bedroom condo near trendy Yonge and Eglinton than I was in a much smaller, two-bedroom basement in Dunbar). The bad news is that you probably will need a car, even if you got along fine without one in Vancouver. Even if your home and work are on the subway line, having a car means it will be easier to get out to cottage country or Niagara on the weekends. In Vancouver, you can get around (even to go hiking or get a ferry out to Bowen Island) without a car.
But is it worth it? As of yet, I’m still searching for a good opportunity. However, this is a fast-moving city and there are so many companies in the Greater Toronto Area. I’ll share more about the job search in my next post.
