Catch 22 in trying to get a job from the USA

Can anyone help me or offer advice with this little problem?  I'd like to move us (wife&2toddlers) to the UK with the epectation of establishing citizenship.  But I need a job first.  Can't seem to get a job without EU status.  For example, here's the latest response from the Museum of Science in London :\\\'(:

Dear Dan

Thank you for the interest you have shown so far in the above position.

As mentioned previously, you have made it through to the first sift of this
recruitment process, however for the time being we are going to interview
the EEA Nationals first. If we are unsuccessful in this, we will contact you
as soon as possible.

Kind regards,

Human Resources

Well institutions are required to look at EU nationals first and provide a justificationfor every single one why they might be less worthy than you. But it comes down to this: when an institutions wants you, they'll hire you. Some institutions are more foreigner friendly than others, of course. For jobs, you are looking at

www.jobs.ac.uk

right?

Just be thankful you got a response!  Judging by the slew of recent posts we've had from US-based job seekers, you're really lucky that they even looked at your application/CV.

In order to qualify for a work permit (which is what I assume you're looking to do), the employer sponsoring you must prove that there is no UK or EEA citizen that fulfills the requirements as well as you do.  But who knows?  Perhaps Maria will get back to you once they've looked through their EEA applications.  Good luck!

You haven't said what it is that you do. If you have skills that a U.S. employer would pay for, freelance, that's the first way to go. If not, and you have to get a job in the U.K., don't ever write to the human resources/personnel department. Find out the name of who would be your immediate supervisor, because he or she would certainly know more about what the job entails, AND appreciate your qualifications, than someone in human resources would. HR personnel are trained to instantly weed people out based on education, etc., when they might not actually know what a job requires. Bypass them and find out the true source, and if you're good at what you do, you'll get the job.

Also, you'd be a fool to give up U.S. citizenship. Just my two cents.

One doesn't have to give up their US citizenship in order to obtain UK citizenship.  Don't confuse the issue.

Several posts deleted as they were off the topic dicussed. Should you wish to continue the off topic discussion then I recommend PM's.

Both I and Wishstar welcome posts that relate to the question in hand.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Dan,

As a Brit who's received countless resumes over the years, looked through some of them with colleagues to decide on whether or not to call for interview, etc, may I add my 2p worth about applications, filtering them, and replies.

Many more people want to live and work in the UK than are allowed to.  I think it was just last year (although it may have been a little longer ago) that our TV news was regularly showing pictures of big groups of desparate people just across the English Channel at Calais trying to gain forceable entry to the channel tunnel  to walk the 20+ miles here, and we also head of a group of 20 trying to enter in a refrigerated lorry and dying in the attempt.  I'm NOT looking to get into politics here and say whether or not the UK Government is justified in its policy, but rather setting the scene.

The UK law now puts a responsibility on employers to ensure that all staff they take on are legally employable - and that means that either they're a UK or EU citizen or they have an appropriate stamp in their passport - to ensure that I take on legal staff only, the UK Government's home office has send me a booklet with illustrations of passport stamps that I may accept as proof.

You do indeed have a "catch 22", but there are many ways that might give you a solution ... and you want at least to be able to offer a solution to prospective employers whom you approach (Visas and Citizendhip boards here are an excellent starting point for past discussions of the options and contain many useful links).  Otherwise, they're simply not going to seriously consider your application; the good ones (and I would expect the science museum to be an excellent employer - their reply confirms this) will send you back a polite answer explaining that they can't consider you until they've drawn a blank in the EU.  The bad ones will save themselves the time and cost of replying.

My post may "read" negative - not intended to, but wanting to let you know the hurdles you have.  As lightbulb says, some places are more foreigner friendly than others, and with some it can be an asset rather than a hindrance to be a non-UK citizen ... once you can be fitted into the rules. But no national institution such as the Science Museum is going to flouting the law to get you (though they may know and use any mechanisms such as staff exchanges / secondment from a US museum service that help if they want you badly enough).

Well, I want to thank everyone for their replies, especially Graham's full one.  Believe it or not they are ready to interview me by phone, so now it's just a matter of worrying for a week or two awaiting their call.  We shall see, and I'll keep the list posted.  Thanks again.

That's good to hear! Congratulations. As others have said on here, think of whatever it is that makes you stand out/more qualified than the competition. As you no doubt know, U.S. employers are the same when it comes to employing foreigners--those would-be employees have to prove they have skills/abilities beyond what the native-born applicants do.

In some ways, you have an advantage with a phone interview: you don't need to worry about wearing a suit, or having sweaty palms, or being distracted by the interviewer's combover hairstyle/overwhelming perfume/remnants of lunch in between his or her teeth. On the other, it somewhat limits you in breaking the ice; since you can't see the person you're talking to, you can't pick up on facial expressions that might key you in to what he or she finds positive or negative, and, worse yet, you're walking a tightwire if you try to lighten things up with any kind of funny remarks, as you can't tell right off whether the interviewer is somber and all-business, or laidback and as annoyed with interviewing as applicants are about being interviewed.

I have a quick, ironic story to tell you about phone interviews: Eight or so years ago, I replied to an ad in an "insider's" media/publications jobhunters magazine that came out twice a month in the D.C. area. The ad was from National Public Radio (NPR--for Brits unfamiliar with it, NPR's similar to the BBC in that it doesn't run commercials, has "highbrow" talk shows, etc.--it runs more or less on donations from the public). Anyway, the ad was for someone with an English or, preferably, journalism degree (which I had), who was familiar with and/or had worked at a radio station (which I had) to write for a weekly comedy show in which the "celebrity" of the week would be asked questions about current events, given humorous options for answers, etc. They wanted someone with a good sense of humor, which, obviously, is a very subjective assessment. Anyway, I sent them my "serious" resume with a witty cover letter, and thought nothing more about it. I'm going to quickly skip over this part--my then boyfriend (and childhood friend) died in a car accident, and after returning home from the funeral, literally 10 minutes after I walked in the door, my phone rang, and a man said he was calling from NPR's Massachusetts office in response to my application for a job they'd advertised. I was in a daze that day anyway, and it took me a minute to realize what he was talkng about--it had been at least three months since I'd responded to the ad. So I was really caught off guard, to say the least. I asked if I could call him back, but he said they were in a time crunch, had narrowed it down to three candidates, and if the phone interview went well, wanted to conduct a face-to-face interview in the next few days--they couldn't take callbacks, because they'd gone through several hundred resumes to weed them down to three, and were time-constricted. I told him that I'd just returned from a funeral, and to bear with me (and I could just imagine him sitting in his office thinking: "Yeah--just got back from a funeral. Now THAT'S a new one."). Anyway, he said he was impressed with my qualifications, my cover letter was very funny, etc., and I gained enough presence of mind to ask him exactly what the job entailed. He repeated the requirements,and he said that whoever was selected had to be prepared to move to Chicago on very short notice. I had assumed, since the job was advertised in a D.C. publication ,that the job was IN D.C., as the ad didn't indicate otherwise. So it made it very easy to say that he could narrow it down to two candidates, because I wasn't going to move to Chicago. Anyway, given all the circumstances, it was incredibly awkward, for both of us. If it hadn't been for the job location, I'd probably be kicking myself to this day for not going for it (not that I have anything against Chicago--I've always heard how cool it is, but then wasn't the time)--but I still think he would have weeded me out during the phone interview because being funny was the last thing on my mind, and that was an interview that absolutely called for being quickwitted.

Anyway, good luck, keep us posted, break a leg, may the force be with you, and any other cliche I may have left out.

Suzanne