[- - e r i k - -]

For personal reasons I am moving to London around November. This means my scheduled 4-years per major life-change came two years earlier than expected. Oh well, life thrives on change.

Any Londoners want to dispense some advice?

I am looking for a job in the creative industries, preferably in computer games. I have a strong CV covering design, multimedia, video and web with over 5-10 years experience depending on the field. I registered at Monster.com.au, but they seemed to have mostly web design related jobs. While my main career for almost a decade, I feel that I have moved on a bit from that - into broadcast, animation and post production which is my current career. I would be in the market for a full time, 30-35K£ job. Where would I start looking for such jobs? Anyone have any contacts?

Also I need a place to live. I will be living mostly by myself, with my girl friend popping by when she's not on the road. Where would I start looking, and what should I be looking for? Areas to avoid?

I am regretting leaving the climate down here, but without a visa I can't stay and my girlfriend's band will mostly be London based from now on (she's already over there for three months now), so it really is the best option at the moment. Although London is an exciting city, I am a bit over the party scene (at 26). Pubs should be good though

[turtle777]

Wow, can you survive in London on 30-35K£ ?

Good luck with everything. My sis just moved to Windsor, and she's complaining about cost of living in the greater London area.

But at least the weather is go..., uhm, no, wait, nevermind.

-t

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Wow, can you survive in London on 30-35K£ ?

I don't know. Hence me asking

I am probably undervaluing myself a bit if you look at my CV, but that seemed to be the standard for Senior Design jobs around there AFAICT.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

I don't know. Hence me asking

I am probably undervaluing myself a bit if you look at my CV, but that seemed to be the standard for Senior Design jobs around there AFAICT.

Yeah, I would have thought you could get more than that. My sister is fresh out of grad school, got into two year trainee program in marketing paying 26K£, and she is NOT living it large.

-t

[- - e r i k - -]

Well, my main goal isn't to live it large, but rather put some money away for house etc. later on, hopefully moving back here when the time is right.

[Laminar]

I know your cell number.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

I know your cell number.

Call me

[Dakarʒ]

I know what you did last summer.

[Peter]

consider Cambridge.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally Posted by Peter 

consider Cambridge.

As a place to live?

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

Areas to avoid?

Ummm... ...London.

If you're going to be on your todd for most of the time, I don't think it'll make a difference if you're actually in London or not. The fiancé could just as easily pop into Manchester or Birmingham to see you.

There's probably going to be less competition for those kinds of jobs outside of London too, since everybody in the World is attempting to move to London to be a graphic designer.

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

Well, my main goal isn't to live it large, but rather put some money away for house etc.

I don't think that's going to happen if you're living in London on a graphic designer's salary. You'll be very close to hand-to-mouth, AFAIK.

You could try Jobcentre Plus - that's the main national jobs database, sort of like a state-run version of Monster.

Just as a test, I popped "graphic designer" into it in my local area and came up with one* immediately. Widening the search to the whole country, however, shows that that's pretty much the only non-trainee graphic designer's job on there.

If you absolutely don't need to be a graphic designer, come and barkeep for a short while while you train up as a plumber - you can pull £80k-odd doing that (since there's a shortage as everyone trained to be graphic designers, not plumbers).

Other thoughts... ...pop your CV into some of the TV companies on the off-chance they've got something going. Or maybe some other types of companies which you know will be into graphic design.

* damn, that government site is screwed up. Doesn't work in Safari and redirects to a different job when the link is clicked. Here's the details:

Permanent, full-time. Some overtime required. Salary negotiable.

Skills required: Conversant with Adobe CS Knowledge of print and digital media Duties: To produce artwork and graphics materials for exhibitions. Must have good communication skills and organisational skills. Must have degree in Graphic Design or similar. No experience necessary but must possess great portfolio. Driving licence preferred.

You can apply for this job by sending a CV/written application to Chris Cotterill at Envisage Design Ltd, Envisage Design Limited, Brick Kiln Lane, Basford, Stoke on Trent, ST4 7BS.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

As a place to live?

As a place to mow down cyclists with your ute.

[Angus_D]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

There's probably going to be less competition for those kinds of jobs outside of London too, since everybody in the World is attempting to move to London to be a graphic designer.

Otoh there are more jobs in London, and they pay more. You might as well try and make a go of it in London, because if you succeed you'll be in a better off position. There is a reason people come here, you know - and sure there's tough competition, but if you're good then surely that shouldn't bother you?

You could try Jobcentre Plus - that's the main national jobs database, sort of like a state-run version of Monster.

Jobcentre isn't really designed for skilled professionals now, is it? It's for getting people on benefits into work doing something, anything.

If you absolutely don't need to be a graphic designer, come and barkeep for a short while while you train up as a plumber - you can pull £80k-odd doing that (since there's a shortage as everyone trained to be graphic designers, not plumbers).

As far as I know, this is not necessarily true so much these days - there was a bit of a shortage of plumbers, and some people are able to make quite silly money doing it, but this resulted in a lot of people training as plumbers expecting to make easy money. You don't get £80k for starting out either...

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Angus_D 

Otoh there are more jobs in London, and they pay more. You might as well try and make a go of it in London, because if you succeed you'll be in a better off position. There is a reason people come here, you know

Because the RDF clouds the reality?

Yeah, the jobs in London pay more, but then the cost of living is much higher. I mean, if the guy wants to save for a house in Oz then he ain't going to be putting much away if he's being sucked dry by London rents and Ken's initiatives, is he?

Originally Posted by Angus_D 

Jobcentre isn't really designed for skilled professionals now, is it? It's for getting people on benefits into work doing something, anything.

Dunno. I've pretty much always been self-employed, aside from jobs I fell into accidentally.

So, update Erik: Take no notice of me, I don't know what I'm talking about.

[- - e r i k - -]

I am fairly aware of London being the most expensive city in the world to live in (not that I'm not used to that coming from living in Oslo though). But I also heard that if you avoid the whole party scene, things do become a bit more bearable. One of the main reason London is so expensive is all the options you have to do things which cost a lot.

[Doofy]

Oh, forgot.

Rightmove is a good place to look for somewhere to live.
UpMyStreet is useful.

[Mastrap]

One of the main reasons why we left London after 17 years was the insanely high cost of living - an both me and my wife were earning good money. London is rapidly becoming a city for the very rich and the very poor, with the middle classes being pushed out into the suburbs and beyond. That has nothing to do with the party scene, real estate is the main culprit. People simply can't afford a place to live anymore. To give you an idea, I sold my, admittedly large, one bedroom flat in central London and for the same money we were able to buy a 3-4 bedroom Victorian house in downtown Toronto. The only reason I had been able to buy my flat was that an ex and I got lucky and bought a Georgian house in Whitechapel, an inner city neighbourhood in central London, bordering the financial district just before it went from slum to desirable.

Erik, forget about living on your own, in your own apartment. In the UK a good rule of thumb is that for every £1000 you make per year you take home £60 a month. So if you make £30.000 a year you'll be taking home roughly £1800 a month. Given that most one bedroom flats, or even studios, in London will set you back about £1200 plus utilities you'll be broke the second you've paid the rent. So you have two choices, earn a higher salary or reduce your circumstances. This, for most people, means living in shared accommodation. And while you can be lucky and find a decent shared house or flat, do prepare yourself for a serious drop in your standard of living as it currently is.

When I first came to London to get a job in advertising I lived in North Kensington, a great neighbourhood just north of Notting Hill. I shared a house and paid £50 a week for my single room. I'd be surprised in the extreme if that same room would now been available for anything less than £150.00 a week plus bills. That gives you an idea of what to expect.

Job-wise, and please don't take this personally, you'd better be good at what you're doing. Very good. As Doofy said above, the entire world comes to London to work in Graphic Design,a and the related industries, and the competition for jobs is intense. That doesn't mean that it is impossible to find a job, but you do need to be in London to have a chance - forget about finding a job from Australia, forget about finding a job on monster.com. So now you have to live in London, while you're looking for a job. This means that you need at least enough cash to see you through for the first three (ideally six) months.

I am no trying to talk London down - I had a fantastic time there and was lucky enough to meet people who gave me a chance to build a career, but it is a tough city to survive and prosper in.

[Peter]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

As a place to live?

Yeah, and to work.

Unless you're earning a fortune or heading to London to work for something you just can't say no to - I'd avoid it.
Cambridge has a lot of the benefits of London, far more jobs, slightly cheaper - and its not a huge sprawling city.
You're also 45 minutes away from London.
London = always living out of rented property, always skint, permanently on the tube.
But maybe I'm biased.

[Peter]

Shameless Promotion:
Jagex Software :: Jobs

Friend of mine works here, am sure she can put a good word in for you if anything grabs you.

[Mastrap]

Originally Posted by Peter 

Unless you're earning a fortune or heading to London to work for something you just can't say no to - I'd avoid it.
...
London = always living out of rented property, always skint, permanently on the tube.

Words of wisdom that.

[PaperNotes]

Rent is money down a blackhole. Make sure you live dirt cheap for 1-2 years so you can save money for a mortgage.

You will definitely find design jobs for 30-35K. There are so many over there.

If you want to work in gaming that is a taller ladder to climb but can be done if you work as a front end designer for a gaming firm.

You could try getting an agent in the gaming industry. They are take 10%. Jacqui Lyons at marjacq.com reps lots of game developers.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Mastrap 

Given that most one bedroom flats, or even studios, in London will set you back about £1200 plus utilities you'll be broke the second you've paid the rent.

Compare that with my area, where a 3-bed semi (house) will set you back about half that. London is about 2 hours (one way) and £40ish (round trip) away by car (assuming you don't buy something ridiculous on the juice, like I have).

For the price of living in London like a monk, around here you could live, actually have a social life and put money away. Same goes for pretty much anywhere outside the M25.

[cSurfr]

I have three words for you. . . Mind The Gap. Oh, and enjoy your stay! I'm ususally in England once a month or so for work. I love it there, and would be ecstatic to be in your shoes!

[Chooglin']

Don't listen to the naysayers, If you really want to go to london, you'll find a way.

[Peter]

I'm not trying to put you off, really
If you wanna do it - go for it, but be prepared You can always move out of London if you dislike it!

[Mastrap]

Yes, same here. London is a great place, just be prepared.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Chooglin' 

Don't listen to the naysayers, If you really want to go to london, you'll find a way.

What naysayers ?

The OP asked for advice, and he's gotten pretty good ones.

-t

[JonoMarshall]

London = always living out of rented property, always skint, permanently on the tube.

London for me = always living out of rented property, always having something to do, cycling/walking to anything and everything, meeting amazing people and generally having a laugh.

As for location, keep investigating, do you want to be North or South of the river? For me it's North: Wapping three years back (quiet, circular) Camden for the last two years (mental, tiring, busy, slightly dodgy) and am now doing Shoreditch (young, funky, slightly dodgy but essentially safe).

[Mastrap]

Heh, I used to live in Shoreditch for years, although that was before it became gentrified. Is 'Charlie Wright's International Bar' still open?

[JonoMarshall]

It's still there, some people still go for the Jazz nights and accompany the now 'old timers', but for the most part its become a local for the residents further up Pitfield street (which as a street is now populated with laundrettes, convienience stores and the like). Shame.

Shoreditch has one hell of a community, perhaps it will become a little gentrified with the planned tube station, but there are enough independant traders and motivated people to keep the area alive and kicking.

(Plus the odd night at Shoreditch House makes me think that the afluent types aren't all bad, heh.)

[Nivag]

Another place for Jobs Design Jobs | Graphics, Digital, Interior, Print, Retail-Design Week

The back of Creative Review magazine has a good list of various agencies. I'll see if i can scan a copy when i see one next.
Like Mastrap says competition is fierce in London for work, but there is plenty of work for talented people. I work as a freelance Mac support monkeh and get to see a lot of different types of companies and how they work and what they require for staff. Be prepared to work long hours for some of them, it's become the norm rather than the exception.

As for living in London, yes it's expensive, but you'll should be able to have a good time on £30-35K unless you like the expensive treats in life. I think the national average wage is around £22k mark (according to here it's £15k+), which i know a few people would love to earn.

Personally i live South of the river in East Dulwich, about 5.5miles from central London, while we don't have good connections to the fable Tube system - overland trains will get you into central London in 12-20mins depending where you need to get to and to be honest i'd walk the rest of the way if you work in Zone 1, London isn't that big once you've worked out where you are going.

[JonoMarshall]

I'm subscribed to CR and DW (Design Week) which are both great for job alerts (DW > CR IMO), yell if you want me to forward on the PDF versions...

Also you could go the recruitment agency route for your first (perhaps temporary) job as (particularly in graphic design) you'll only end up meeting someone with an interesting idea/project and want to change jobs anyways?!

[Mastrap]

Originally Posted by JonoMarshall 

Shoreditch has one hell of a community

The years I lived in Shoreditch were possibly my favourite years in London. I had a fantastic time. What is now all 'lofts' were at the time real artists and photographer studios and we all knew each other and were in and out of each other's spaces. Half of the people lived in their lofts illegally as it was all commercial rather than residential space. My girlfriend and I lived on Coronet Street. We had two floors in what used to be a button factory, with a roof terrace and a huge skylight. Our bed was right underneath the skylight, so you could lie in bed an see the stars at night.

Where there is now the hotel on Old Street used to be wasteland and on Saturday morning that was full with rough trade from the London Apprentice, now 333 - if that's still open. We used to have rooftop movie nights, projecting from one roof of Coronet Street to the next. Zeke Manika lived in a warehouse opposite our. We moved in in early summer on a Friday, fell into bed around midnight and woke up because somebody was playing reggae music - live. I went out on the roof and there was Zeke, in the early morning, jamming with friends on the roof of his building. They'd been out at a gig all night and went back to Zeke's to finish the night. This turned out to be a fairly regular occurrence, but the music was always good, and the door always open, so it never bothered us.

We finally moved when the Blue Note became too popular and we had people yelling in our street all night and the artists and photographers got driven out by property developers. I'll be in London in a couple of weeks and am looking forward to catching up with some of the old gang.

[JonoMarshall]

Sounds great, I'm not sure where you could find quite that same bohemian-style community nowadays, but I'm renting a large loft space with 4/5 others where we do what we like (currently we're renevating: building new spaces for creating artwork and a new bedroom, the landlord's an awesome guy).

333's still there, and Secret Cinema in a local warehouse is a great way to spend an eve. Although the artistic (both visual & musical) scene has obviously moved on I've spent many a party treating my ears/eyes to great company.

There are still lots of independant gallery openings, but again I imagine it's a different kind of atmosphere, most folks have fairly big ideals and opinions of themselves and others.

It sounds like Shoreditch hasn't changed too much, but perhaps our current culture/social structure has changed the people, still I'm pretty happy here for the time being, as I said it's lots of fun. If you're about at the end of the month we're going to be celebrating the new nest, you're welcome to come along.

[- - e r i k - -]

Maybe I'll come live with you for a while Jono

[JonoMarshall]

Heh heh, we'd have to build yet another bedroom first, although that's not out of the question!

[- - e r i k - -]

Hey Jono. Can you send those PDFs to erikveland at the gmail? That would be sweet. Thanks

Thank you to everyone who responded with advice in this thread. I really appreciate it

[maxintosh]

I thought New York was expensive... and then I visited London.

Oof.

I've heard the cost of living is higher still in Moscow and Tokyo though.

[Peter]

it isn't that bad.
If you got £30k it'd be pretty sweet.

[amazing]

it's especially sweet if you've got dollar debts (student loan) and are getting paid in pounds. You can smile triumphantly as the dollar keeps tanking.

[peeb]

You could try living in a public building like a library or a hospital. If you can avoid detection that can be a strategy for mitigating the insane cost of housing.

[Mastrap]

Originally Posted by Peter 

it isn't that bad.
If you got £30k it'd be pretty sweet.

I always had month left at the end of the money until I made considerably more than that.

[jebjeb]

Being an Aussie (you're Norwegian though aren't you?) living in London, I have a bit of advice to dispense.

First things first, somewhere to stay. The Gumtree is the place to look. Lots of bedsits, shared houses, flats etc to look at there.

Also, living in London does not necessarily mean living IN London. You don't need to be within pissing distance of Buckingham Palace to enjoy the benefits. Look at the areas just outside the centre but still in the "zones" which means you can get a travel card which covers all types of public transport in London. I live in Croydon which is directly south of the centre. It is in zone 5 which means I can buy a 7 day all zones travel card (covering trains, trams, underground, buses and Thames water ferrys) for £40. It is cheaper if you buy monthly/yearly.

Croydon (and many places like it) is only 15 minutes on a train to Victoria or London Bridge Station and trains run pretty much every 5 or 10 mins and are even 24 hours as we are on the line to Gatwick Airport. Croydon and much of South London has a bad reputation but this is unjustified in my book. There are good areas and bad areas of any place. Notting Hill has multi-million pound houses backing up on to council estates.

Of course, living a little way out means cheaper rent and even a cheaper cost of living in many respects.

The good thing about living a little further out is that it is easier to get out of London too. It is a quick drive for me to get to the South coast whereas you could easily add an hour and a half to that if you lived in a more "trendy" area such as Clapham. Mind you, I would recommend Clapham if you were after a more London experience as it is a pretty cool place.

£30k would do you pretty well, especially if you were sharing a house.

You would be looking at around £100 per week for your own double room in a shared house in Clapham (have a look at the Gumtree). This would generally include bills. Obviously you can pay more than that but I would budget for around £500 per month and you would be safe.

Have a look at the following sites for jobs (as well as the ones that have been mentioned before).

JobServe Homepage
Flats to rent London, jobs in London, flatshare, free classified ads UK
Jobsite UK - 1000s UK Jobs, Start your Recruitment Job Search Now

Let me know if there is anything else specific that you would want to know.

Jeb

[Chuckit]

Out of curiosity, is it really that hard for a guy with no family or major debt to live in London on the equivalent $71,000 a year? Y'all folks should move to America; you'd be billionaires.

[peeb]

Trouble is it's not the equivalent of 71,000 in the US. It looks that way because the dollar has crashed, but that doesn't mean the UK has got cheaper. The dollar is worth half as much, that doesn't mean the pound is worth twice as much, except in the US.

[Mastrap]

Peeb is right. When you compare actual buying power the £ is pretty close to the $. Meaning that what costs us $1.00 in Canada costs pretty close to £1.00 in the UK. For example, a monthly travel card covering all of Toronto will set me back $99.00, the equivalent in London will be similar in price, but in £.

I realize that I am generalizing, but more often than not the above is true. I am looking forward to being in London again in October but I am dreading the Visa bill in November.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by peeb 

Trouble is it's not the equivalent of 71,000 in the US. It looks that way because the dollar has crashed, but that doesn't mean the UK has got cheaper. The dollar is worth half as much, that doesn't mean the pound is worth twice as much, except in the US.

Ah, I see. I've never been to the UK. I just knew in the few foreign countries I've been in, prices seemed to work out more or less to their dollar equivalents (e.g., a $1 drink would cost about 100 yen or a little more than $1 Canadian).

Still, British folk should find a way to telecommute from America. They could all have hot cars and huge houses.

[peeb]

Indeed, that would be advantageous.

[- - e r i k - -]

Thanks for the links and info jebjeb. I am indeed Norwegian, and thus used to the high cost of living

[moonmonkey]

London is going to seem very boring and slow paced after Queensland.
Take a good book.