Job-hunting Strategies for Trailing Spouses

You're moving. Again. And once again, your spouse's career takes precedence and yours is back at square one. Even if you are in total agreement with the move, you will still experience two of the highest stress factors in existence simultaneously - moving and unemployment.

Along with death of a family member, loss of a spouse, and disaster, moving and being unemployed rank among the top five stress producers. To be faced with two of the top stressers simultaneously requires the marshalling of all your survival and recovery instincts.

You're moving to make life better, but that is only true if moving is best for both of you and the rest of the members of your family. Your job as the transferred spouse is to make the best of the transition. Finding the right employment situation will get you well on the road to accomplishing that goal.

Over 75% of company transferees are married, according to the Employee Relocation Council in Washington, D.C. which means three out of four transferees has a "trailing spouse."

Although some companies take steps to smooth the transition for employees who are asked to move from one city to another, few recognize or appreciate the tremendous stress factors that typically befall the trailing spouse. The transferee is expected to integrate into his/her new surroundings and "hit the ground running," while the trailing spouse is left with the primary duties of finding or moving into a home, installing children in new schools and other programs, beginning a new social network, and generally adjusting the family to the culture shock of a new environment. Add to that the burden of having to find a new job in an unfamiliar market, and the prescription for adjustment problems is filled.

Many relocating spouses cope by developing or falling back on a skill they can develop in an entrepreneurial style. Deborah Grooms, who followed her husband to Orlando when he accepted a job at Disney World, found that she could return to the photography business she had begun in another city. Dave Harland, who followed his wife to Orlando where she took a job as a radio DJ. Knowing that every time she took a new job, it meant putting his career temporarily on hold, he developed a strategy that works for them as a couple. He began a home-refurbishing business, a career he can take anywhere.

And job hunting in a new market doesn't have to be frustrating. There are a number of tips that transferred spouses can follow to help them find the right position.