Where to start? Well first of all I have officially been offered a full time role in graphic and textile design at a very well known British fashion designers - and accepted! BOOM! HELLO LONDON FASHION WEEK! What a whirl wind.... job hunting in London is not that fun, especially when you decide to move into a house first like I did - there is way more pressure on you to secure a job asap but at the same time I needed a place to live so I didn't have a choice. It was incredibly daunting to say the least and looking back it was one of the most worrying periods of my life... lets start at the beginning...
My plan as most of you know was to head up to Edinburgh and live and work there. When my two Kiwi friends txt and said they needed a third flatty in London I jumped at the opportunity - there were at least 6-10 exciting design jobs advertised a day in London that I wanted to apply for and about 5 a week in other areas of the country - so no comparison. You have to be prepared when you come to London - on average it takes 2-3 months to secure a full time job (from what I have heard from others that have moved here and recruitment agencies). I didn't have that choice - I had 6 weeks to land a job in order to make my bill payments and that was the maximum amount of time (as I mentioned earlier - stress!) but I did it!
Its an incredibly isolating experience moving to one of the biggest cities in the world, populated by over 10 million people - and you only know about 5. I started applying for jobs 3 weeks before I left my Uncle and Aunties in Chester (who have now been officially dubbed 'The Foster Parents') and continued to apply for my first two weeks in London. Over here most jobs are advertised for a month so you have to allow four weeks for the closing date, one week for them to sift through all the applications - there will be 1000's in most jobs - and then IF they are interested you get a phone call, an interview will be set up for the following week, then you have another week to hear back, and thats 7 weeks gone.
The strongest advice I have is to SAVE. Consider everything - bond and agency fees for a flat can be anywhere from 1500-2000 pounds, you need money to stay in hotels / backpackers if you don't have a couch to crash on (thankfully I did) plus food, travel (about 32 pounds a week for a travel pass) and theres more along the way, so thats about $6000 to get set up (when converted), feed yourself and travel around for a few weeks - and boy does the money go fast! You might as well just stand on the street throwing cash away.
Anyway, back to the job hunting. Its very scary not hearing a peep from anyone that you apply through - you think surely they have seen my CV and want to call me - nope - all CV's get sent to a receptionist and put in a pile and at the end of the four weeks they are passed onto management. After four weeks of not hearing anything you start to self-doubt yourself big time. I spent most of my first few weeks in London sitting inside just applying for jobs and it drives you insane - but as Dr. Phil says 'If your not working full time then by golly, your looking for a job full time.' For some reason those words have always stuck with me! So after 5 weeks since first applying the phone calls started, agencies calling wanting to chat about the type of work I was after etc by the 7th week I was on board with four really good design agencies. After six weeks of applying for jobs, I received a phone call about a two week freelance job with a leading fashion design brand to design a textile print for a new handbag. Of course I jumped at the opportunity! I was then asked to stay on for another week and then was officially offered a full time position yesterday! Its a dream role and most importantly ticked all of the boxes for what I wanted in my new job. Everyone in the team is just fantastic and I get to look at fashion and home design magazines as part of my research and explore London for new up and coming trends - time to pinch myself I think???
I also had an interview for a stationery company that I have followed frequently over the last four years and when I was in New Zealand I would literally day dream of one day visiting this company and possibly working for them so to have an interview was beyond me. However I found out that the designs are actually imported and the 'designers' simply place existing designs on product. My flat mate / friend Nikki described my disappointment perfectly - like a child finding out Santa wasn't real.
Anyway, I actually landed my dream role without realising it was a dream role before I came to London. Isn't life full of exciting surprises? I would have never seen myself working for a leading fashion company and attending fashion week in London when I left New Zealand in May. We have a beautiful home in Wimbledon, I live with two fantastic Kiwi friends, now have an amazing job and we are all excited about living life here and planning our travels over the next few years.
In regards to moving into our flat we had nothing - we ate our dinner on the first night using a beach towel as a table cloth on the floor and drank wine from plastic cups - all part of the fun! We have been here a month tomorrow, we have a TV, outside furniture as our lounge furniture (the couches should be here soon) I am still on an air bed and will be until November / December and my clothes are all in piles on the floor as I have no where to put them but you know what? I couldn't have asked for a better start to London. Yes its scary, yes you feel isolated / stressed / lonely / homesick - sometimes all at the same time - but if you want it bad enough you can make it happen and I'm so proud of myself for everything I have accomplished over the past few months!
So whats next for me? Im going to start a new blog called Living Life in London (go figure), hopefully make it up to Scotland soon to see my family and meet my pen pal, re-open my Etsy shop with a new set of prints, continue exploring London and just making the most of our time here. By December I should be financially back on track and I want to save for a flash camera to keep working on my photography - as well as do night classes in cooking and web design - phewf!
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