hoffage123

Hi,

Planning to move over to the USA next year (DCF) from the UK. I am already researching jobs/career options over there. I have looked at websites like payscale and salary to get an idea of figures, but am still a bit confused about how it relates to my particular situation.

I currently have a full-time admin job in higher education (fairly entry level, but decent salary for the North of England, £19K and I have increased in responsibilities over the years) - I have worked in this job for seven years. I also have an undergraduate degree (2:2 with Hons, Psychology) and a PgDip in Radio Journalism and in addition to my full-time job, I have been freelancing for the BBC and various other radio stations on a casual/occasional basis, but I would still qualify myself as someone who is experienced, albeit not as much as the administration.

I know that I will have to have two resumes to reflect all this - we are planning to move to Rochester, NY, which is where my missus is originally from. In terms of applying to jobs, I am presuming my former degrees probably don't make much of a difference now and I should just focus on my experience? I read somewhere the average grad salary in the US is around $45K, and was thinking to pitch myself at jobs slightly below that, for admin at least. Does that sound realistic or am I kidding myself?

In terms of the media experience I am already planning to join local media associations and network that way, but I am hoping that there will be more opportunities for regular work than I have found over in the UK.

This is all academic as I haven't moved over yet but would appreciate any insights/hints on how to help my job research before I get over there ....

Hoffage

civilservant

You are likely to need to look into having your degree translated into a US standard, or it will mean little to recruiters over here. I am very doubtful that you could land a $45k job right off the boat, but you never know.

The US is all about contacts. If you aren't on LinkedIn yet, do it now. Network like crazy, and be prepared to 'start again' with a $19k job over here - in my experience employers promote from within when you have proved yourself.

hoffage123

Thanks Civilservant I appreciate the advice

I am on LinkedIn and have already started stalking places and people of interest there and am building up a list of organisations and employers I want to get in with. Once I get my Visa approved I am going to go into overdrive with the networking for both types of career and will deffo be prepared to start again, 19K over there is the living wage I am assuming? Both myself and my missus will be job-hunting so that should be fine until I progress up/get a job in a better paying field etc. We are lucky in that her family is based over there, so we aren't starting completely from scratch.

civilservant

I'm not sure in NY, since it's probably slightly higher, but down here in GA $19k would be liveable if you didn't have much of a life. As always, medical insurance (depending on your employers provider) seriously eats into your wages. As an example, my wife and I pay $400 a month for our insurance - and that is on the low end of the scale.

Pulaski

All the world and their dog are trying to break into radio or TV. Have you considered doing some ad hoc video journalism and uploading reports to cnn.com iReport, youtube, etc., to showcase your skills? .... It'd give you something to show prospective employers, or build a freelance career in the US.

hoffage123

Hi,

I do have a youtube channel, but those other links sound fab as well as I do need to expand my video repertoire (I have plenty of audio and written stuff going on).

Aye, it is a bit of a dog-eat-dog environment in the media, especially as traditional channels of media are on the downward trend and new media takes a more prominent role. The major advantage with the US is how massive it is, so I can cast my net quite wide if need be whereas in the UK it has stagnated due to cuts at the BBC (so I am competing with former permanent members of staff for freelance work). Also looking forward to seeing how they do it over there as well

hoffage123

By the way, love the Jeremy Clarkson pic

kins

Lots of small TV channels in the US. I'm sure you can only do a better job than most of the presenters I've seen here :-)

IMO it will matter that you have a degree but they won't be particularly interested in what grade you got. Just put down Bachelors Degree majoring in Psychology. It'll be your experience that gets you a job, but usually they want to see that you have a degree to be even considered.

Chrisdc

There's no network TV in Rochester (AFAIK) - so look for the local ABC/CBS/NBC/PBS/Fox affiliate stations. They are usually news operations with a couple of local tv shows. Check out NPR for radio. A quick Google shows there is also some corporate video outfits in Rochester too.

Local print journalism is thin on the ground, but perhaps there are national online outlets you could pitch to. Location is obviously less of a problem there.

One thing is that no-one is likely to be interested in talking to you until you are there with boots on the ground. For some reason the thought of hiring someone who is not yet living in the town seems to put off most employers.

HTH!

SultanOfSwing

Rochester is a network TV market, so it has its own affiliates of ABC/CBS/NBC/PBS/Fox. The local affiliates in the smaller cities vary in quality but for the OP, it could be a foot in the door in broadcasting if it works out and at least they'd all be 'in town' so to speak.

Bob

There is also option of going direct to the cable provider like Comcast, who produce local adverts, news, reviews and stuff like that.

Definitely don't try to sell your self short, is harder to get a decent pay jump without getting a new job, but that means starting from scratch on benefits such as holiday allowance etc.

Michael

US TV stations are setup differently than the UK. There are the major network affiliates FOX, NBC, CBS, and ABC (also CW and My Network TV) which normally gets network feeds during certain hours of the day (usually mornings and evening). Generally those stations fill in other hours with syndicated programs (usually reruns) and local news programs. In the larger metropolitan areas, some of the stations will also produce local interest programs. PBS works differently where each PBS station has access to the main PBS database of programs and they can show programs whenever they want but most do little local programming. A lot of the programs for PBS are produced by only a few stations such as WGBH in Boston or they get their programming from the BBC or independent producers.

All of the above feed into their local cable systems but SAT takes feeds by region so all of New York state may get SAT feeds from New York City.

Major metropolitan areas also have independent stations which are primarily syndicated programs. Sometimes they fed into cable systems but seldom feed into SAT.

All of the above transmit via free airways. All of the rest of the national channels such as CNN, TNT, TBS, etc. are produced by their network and are feed to cable and SAT providers and do not transmit via free airways.

Pulaski

Thx!

Pulaski

A good detailed summary of the results, but the reason that it is different in the US is that in the US it is very easy, compared to the UK, to set up a TV, or radio station. If you have the money you can do it, and then you can seek programing in one of the ways Michael described.... typically by seeking to become an affiliate/ franchise of one of the national networks, which is loosely comparable to seeking to turn your restaurant into a franchise of a chain restaurant.

BTW FIFY