Month: January 2012

Tools for Relocating

As I come to the end of my MBA career figuring and getting ready to potentially move out of Utah the time is coming to find somewhere suitable to live. This post will outline a few tools and communities that have proved useful for research:

Finding a Neighbourhood

So you know where you’ll be working but you don’t know where to live yet? There are often several choices but how do you narrow them down? I have found the city-data.com forums valuable for getting people’s opinions about areas where they live.

Getting people’s opinions is useful but there are a couple of other tools that I’d recommend to narrow down where you want to live. SpotCrime provides an easy way of viewing recent incidents reported to the police in a given area. Knowing that there are clusters of crimes on certain streets can help you to know that you should be avoiding particular areas. Another useful website is greatschools.org. This site lets you know which schools serve the areas you are looking into and how well they rate compared to each other.

Finding a Rental

So now you’ve found a neighborhood you like it’s time to find a place to live. I’m not planning on buying a house so I’ve been looking for somewhere to rent. Everyone already knows about craigslist but one tool I’ve found really useful is padmapper. As a visual thinker being able to view a map of the neighborhood with all the available rentals visible is really useful.

Organizing the Move

After figuring out where you are going it’s time to figure out how you’re going to get there. I’ve not found any good resources that help you to select moving companies to assist with the move. Are there any you would recommend?

Bold Choices

One of my favorite adverts from 2011 is the Bold Choice advert for Jim Beam. I was reminded of this advert as I am facing some career choices of my own at the moment. The message that “the choices we make, and the ones we don’t, become you” certainly hits home when contemplating a dramatic change. When making these changes we look to the future and try to see what impact the choices will make on our lives.

One of the questions I have often been asked in interviews and during reviews revolves around this idea of seeing yourself in the future: “where do you see yourself in 5 years?” For me knowing the answer to this question has always been a bit vague, personally I don’t find motivation in considering what destination I may achieve after 5 years but what experiences I’ll gain and what impact I’ll be able to make over the next 5 years.

Why not focus on the journey and not the destination?