Launching our guest blog month is Jo Petty's account of what it's like to leave the London smog behind to finally join the Wired Sussex community and live the Brighton lifestyle:
Jo Petty, @joapet found her ideal job at easyJet Holidays
After graduating from my journalism degree course last year I was ready and raring to go to put all my new skills to use, and I knew that I wanted to move down to Brighton to live with my boyfriend, Dan (@cham). I'd lived in London all my life, and after three years of to-ing and fro-ing to Brighton I was ready to take the plunge.
Job-wise however, it seemed that neither of us was having any luck, and things looked like they were going nowhere. Dan is a web programmer and was working for a big company in London, which was doing him well for the name on his CV but the commute to London was a waste of his time and money.
For me, I was looking for anything to dip my toes into the water. I browsed around for jobs in Brighton to no joy and eventually got a job in London editing events listings for a company that sold them to tourist boards. The job was tedious (and a 1hr 45 min commute from the London suburbs!) and it wasn't ideal, but I was desperate not to be a jobless graduate, and it was vaguely related to my career path.
Eventually, Dan found his current job via the Wired Sussex Jobs Board. He was just waiting for the right position to pop up, and he eventually found himself working for Brandwatch, a social media monitoring company. Suddenly, his commute to work was only 15 minutes, and he didn't compromise on the quality of the company either - Brandwatch is a big mover and shaker in the social media sphere.
So I was ready and raring to go get a job in Brighton, but things related to journalism are few and far between outside of London, unless I fancied going freelance, which I didn't feel confident enough in as I was fresh out of Uni. I was sceptical about ever finding a job but I realised that copywriting and SEO are like a natural progression in my career.
After a couple of months and a few interviews here and there, I finally found a job through Wired Sussex Jobs working as an SEO Content Executive for easyJet Holidays based in Gatwick. Some Brightonians were shocked to discover I was going to travel further than my front door to get to work, but for me, anything away from the tubes and crowds of London trains would make me happy. The fact that I get a seat on the train every morning is everything to me!
Now I can see that you may bump into prospective employers at Wired Sussex events, so before you even apply for a job, you get a sense of what the company is about and a foot in the door. I love that I have become a fully-fledged Brightonian; it goes to prove that there are great jobs in Brighton and Sussex, and we don't have to be slaves to the London smog - there really is the ideal job for you, you just have to be patient!