by Sarah Firisen
I recently started a new job. The process of looking and interviewing for this job was unlike any other I’ve been through because I now live on the Caribbean island of Grenada. I moved here during the height of the pandemic when everyone was working from home. When I told my plans to the company I was working for then, their only comment was that I needed to stay domiciled in the US, which I have. But now that we’ve all gone back to some kind of post-COVID normalcy (even if variants are still coming at us hard and fast), I wasn’t sure how to approach a new company with my slightly unusual living situation. My initial thoughts were that I get through a first interview before bringing it up, but that seemed not only disingenuous but also pointless; they were going to have a problem with it, or they weren’t. Putting off the reveal was just a waste of everyone’s time. And so, I mostly led with this news. Amazingly, no one cared.
I work in sales in the technology start-up space, and I realize that this niche of corporate life is perhaps not representative. However, it’s still interesting that not one of the companies I interviewed with even took a beat over my location. The company I finally accepted an offer from, BusinessOptix, is split between the UK and Kansas in the US. The client I’ll be managing is mainly in New York City, so as long as I was in the same time zone as them and could get back to NYC quickly, it wasn’t an issue.
In a couple of weeks, I’m running a workshop in New York where I’ll meet some of my new colleagues for the first time. This is a meeting I’ve been pushing for, because, as much as I am a huge advocate (and beneficiary) of remote work, there are also times when you just need to be in the same room as people sitting across a table for a bunch of hours, then breaking bread and drinking some wine together. I’m far from the only person trying to find that perfect balance of in-person and virtual. Read more »