Process

Overall Timeframe

• Decide whether or not to move.
• Do paperwork for both residences as needed. Moving in with roommates or even parents, make sure you have your agreements sorted out.
• Give notice to move in advance. If you have a landlord you communicate with regularly such as a house rental, letting them know far in advance can be helpful for them to plan accordingly. For example, if you know in six months, you will move, let them know informally via text or whenever you see them that you'll probably move (this is to be safe in case something comes up and you change your mind), and then formally two or three months before over email/text. Another way is to informally inform the landlord about 3 months prior that you will likely be moving out, then two months before, state whether or not you've for sure decided to move out and ask if there is any check out list.
• Asking to Leave Your Lease Early: usually, breaking a lease is a bad thing. You get charged greatly for it. You are expected to pay for the entirety of the lease. You may even encounter a fee, but if you know you can move into the new residence before the ending of the lease, you could always ask what works best for the landlord or management. For example, let's say your lease is up January 1st, 2025, but you can move into your new place as of November 15th, 2024.  If your current monthly payment is $1,000 a month, but given real estate increases, the demand for a place like yours is now $1500 a month, instead of getting $1000 for December, assuming there is a large move in market, it might be better for your landlord to let you end your lease early and set up a move in for someone else December 1st who will pay 500 more. This is assuming a good market for them where they could nearly grantee renting it out. I bring this up as we recently passed, as a fast-growing city, an enormous increase in the amount people were willing to pay for current residences. In my case, it nearly doubled and move in dates were being agreed to in 3 days rather than 3 months.

Major Strategy

Planning

• Identify how much time you have to move, how much time it takes to get from the first residence to the second (and back while considering avoiding bad traffic times), 
• Decide on the timeframes, deadlines, and priorities for the steps to moving.
• Timeframes such as, how much overlap you have overlap between when you can move into to the new place and when you need to be moved out of the old one,

• Once you plan on moving, start saving all delivery boxes. Save money by using left over Amazon, Hello Fresh, etc. boxes for packing. This way, you don't need to spend as much money on buying new moving boxes. Even if you think you can move with mostly some tote and trash bags, saving the boxes you'll already have is useful since they're protective, fitting for anything geometric, and stackable.
• Consider using tote bags, old boxes of supplies like for blenders, etc.
•  Packing things like toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc. into a cosmetic bag then everything else can be boxed or bagged and labeled. In the two months, theoretically you can still pull out your uncommon items. Just fold the tops of the box in overlapping fours instead of taping.
• I've seen people who kept their appliance boxes. For example, blenders have weird enough shapes and sharp enough blades to hold themselves.
• Start deep cleaning asap in order to minimize last minute cleaning.
• Is your home address the same as your physical address and as your mailing address? These are not always the exact same. For example, if your condo complex occupies multiple streets.

A P A R T M E N T  S E A R C H  S P R E A D S H E E T

Apartment Shopping Comparison Guide

The Apartment Search Spreadsheet is a copy-able Google Sheet for managing apartment shopping all in one place.  Sections include what the user is looking for, their budget, and the details of each apartment being considered. Each apartment specific sheet has entries for the address, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, size in square footage, rent cost, mandatory fees like for pest control and renters' insurance, how long of a commute it would be, and checkable features such as if it has a walk-in closet or a patio exposed to sunlight for gardening. The user can add their own cells about school districts or public transport accessibility. The first page tracks when and where the apartment search is taking place. The second page is for entering goals, plans, necessities, and wants. The third page and onward are for each apartment under consideration. Go into 'print' mode to have each of the apartment choices pages next to each other for comparison of pros and cons.

Download Here

Apartment_Search_Spreadsheet

H O W  T O  U S E  T H E  S P R E A D S H E E T

 Download here.

 Curriculum Vitae

A CV, or curriculum vitae, is a bibliography of your own history in your profession. 

Here, the citations are captions of each project and references are to the different jobs you have done.

It acts as a portfolio but for professions such as writers, researchers, architects, and software developers instead of artists.

Each job or work done is listed as a one sentence summary.

For example, Stephen King would have a section on his CV for books he had written, another for books he contributed to, and another for feature films he had worked on in relationship to being an author.

A researcher would list each journal publication they appeared on and each mentorship role they've had.

Coders would list their software's, and architects would list their designs.

All of it acts as documentation for yourself on what work you have done, and it is to be updated with time: your education, professional focus, projects, published work, achievements and awards, rewarded grants and funding, invited talks and article interviews, professional memberships and services, teaching and outreach, and more.

It acts as a portfolio for numerous projects, published work, and achievements, or an accounting of work experiences, qualifications, and education.

They are the detailed follow-ups of resumes.

Download a copy of the template here.

Below is a list of additional items and considerations that could make travel smoother.

1. Downloaded and Signed-In Apps of the Relevant Airline(s)

Airlines are depending more and more on their apps being a one-stop shop for customers. While having printed tickets, an eye on departure boards for delays, and an ear open for gate changes are always good things to practice, necessary information is becoming available faster on respective apps. Important features include:

• Boarding Pass(s) and Confirmation Numbers
• Updates on Delays, Cancellations and Gate Changes
• Updates of Where Your Plane is Coming From
• Wi-Fi and Flight Entertainment Ease of Access
• and, particularly, a saved credit card. Post-COVID, many airlines have maintained a hands-free payment system for any necessary In-Flight purchases.

    Practicing for a job interview with the most common interview questions is a good chance to reflect on why you want the job, how it could meet your overall goals, and how good of a fit it could be for you. Often times, job interviews are given from the perspective of the company: How would you be a good fit for us? In reality, no matter your work experience, education, or history (or even lack thereof), you have a lot to offer in terms of labor, skills, and ideas. Job interview rehearsal is a really good time to pause and realize this is your career and to flip the narrative. The number one question asked helps cover those bases.

    What do you want to do? Why do you want to do it? What are you hoping to get out of this? What do you think you bring to the table for this position and company? How would you want to be in this company?

    Answering job interviews questions first, and thoroughly, to yourself helps form a clearer idea of your goals and to form a plan of action.

 Tell me about yourself?

This is the most common interview question and typically the hardest. It's vague and opens the doors to a medley of chances to communicate your abilities to the interviewers.

How to answer the question:

This is not the time to go into a life story of any sort. What the interviewers are asking are: If we hire you, who are we hiring? 

    -What kind of employee would be entering:

    Are we getting an early career, inexperienced but willing to learn type of employee? Are you a high        school graduate looking for experience? Are you someone drastically changing careers from                   something like racecar driving to Dental assistant? We're you a stay-at-home parent the last fifteen          years and are you looking to reenter the workplace? Are you applying here, because it's the next step      in your career?

    The best way to answer this aspect is to describe where you are at so they can 'meet you where you        are'.

    Ex. I'm a recent college graduate looking to get an entry position into my field of study.

    -What are you looking for? What are you trying to do?

    Here, you can elaborate on the direction you're looking to go in.

     Ex. I'm looking for a long-term secretarial position. I'm interested in business administration and             management and am looking for a position that I could settle into for the foreseeable future.                 Organization and personal management are strong skills of mine, and I think I can use them best         in a secretarial position.

    Ex. I'm looking for a position as a retail sales representative. I have experience in retail sales already         and am looking to move further up into management. I would like to in the next couple of years             move into a store management position.

    Ex. I'm looking for a job as a substitute teacher. I've been in education for four years now. I used to             teach kindergarten and first grade. My spouse is now in the military, and their job requires us to             move every two to three years. Due to this, I'd like to apply my education skills in a support form.

    -What surface level personality do you have?

    Interviewers have a team's dynamic in the back of their mind. For example, if the workplace is an open office with constant team work, a solitary, quiet person who does better working by themselves. It's important to note that this shouldn't affect your answer. Who and how you are should only be used as a mental heads up, in case you are hired, on finding the best approach to help you integrate into the team. No matter the case, all personalities and personality traits have benefits to being added to a team. In the same case given, having a more solitary worker will bring balance to a strong team dynamic.

This is a good place to list your outward and inward personality traits that will show through most plainly at work.

Ex. I'm a bubbly, talkative, social person who like to have focus and positivity to get the job done fast.

Ex. I tend to approach work by learning as much as I can on my own before executing the actual work and communicating with others or asking questions.

Ex. typically do any research, planning, and preparing on my own. I like to do deep dive background checks into what I'm doing and what the best way to do it is. Then, I'll bring it to the team, or whoever in the job it might apply to. I run it by them for feedback, implement it, and bring management up to date. I like things orderly and to a 'T'. Quality and consistency are important to me.

    This communicates being detail oriented and strategic. They now have a better idea of this person's personality traits and work style.