AIBU to apply for hybrid roles even though I'm nowhere near the workplace?

[Isitameproblem]

Hello ladies!

Some of you might or might not remember that I was made redundant after 8 months. In the end it was mutual but that's by the by.

I live in deep west country and have always had remote jobs for the past 14 years this November. Unfortunately, it seems like most of the jobs in my field these days ( client relationship management) are hybrid. I have never really applied for hybrid roles apart from 2 times and both told me I simply lived too far away and I needed to relocate. (Bristol and Plymouth so not the other side of the country!)

I'm happy to pay my own travel/lodging expenses, but had anybody been successful to get an offer with my current situation? (Living too far away to commute but committing to travel)
TIA

An hour?! I think in London you'd be hard pressed to find many people with less than that, given the cost of house prices more centrally.
I live in greater London (13 miles from office) and have a commute that is about 1 1/4-1/2 hour door to door and would be astounded if someone thought that was an issue. I get there for 8.45/9 so it's not any of my employer's business that I have to live in zone 5 to afford a house in which I can raise my family!

And this is why 'common-sense' is a very slippery term. It uses bias to make decisions, leading to overconfidence in accuracy and creating a false consensus.

It's not common-sense that Alan gave up the job after 3 weeks and didn't come in til 10am every morning so therefore we won't be hiring Steve because the singular thing they had in common is they both lived X distance away.

Commonly it's the 'fault' of the hiring manager to not strongly make it be known and reiterate that 'X in-house working policy' or strict timekeeping is a non-negotiable.

I would just say you are looking to relocate.

Which is true, but in 4 years time!

No, it isn’t! But then I didn’t raise it. I just think it’s really important to be factually correct about what is and isn’t legal in this space, given the impact it could have on someone to get it wrong.

My company has a policy as to what is a 'reasonable distance' for a commute - I think it's 25 miles away from base office.

Leaving aside everything about the rest of us, for you @Isitameproblem - sounds like you have a plan, and the salary expectations to support it. I'd consider putting something specific in your cover letter to note that you are aware that in person working is expected and then have some very specific plans to note in an interview if you are called in. Sounds like other institutions have more flexible options available than where I work so hard to generalise.

I'm glad to hear those instances are illegal!

I'm thinking more of scenarios like a recruitment I was recently involved in where the final 3 applications were all good. It was a London-based job. One was in North Wales, one in the North-East, one in the home counties. Location became the deciding factor so the home counties candidate got the role and all is well. This is more akin to the OP's situation and feels more real world than the ideal that no one will consider her far-flung location a factor, which hasn't been her experience so far and may not be unless she's the outstanding applicant in other ways.

What a poor policy. Most well-known commuter towns to London are at least 30-40 miles from their closest mainline station.

I’m a manager and I work in a setting where the expectation is staff spend an average of 3 days a week in the office.

90% of people I’ve managed who live a long commute away have ended up moaning about the commute, trying to renegotiate their on-site days, arriving late or leaving early and failing to turn up for in-person meetings with a series of excuses.

Which means 10% don’t of course. These are nearly always the ones who recognise that such a long commute is unsustainable and so arrange accommodation.

I get it. I have an hour commute, which can take double the time if there are roadworks or traffic is unexpectedly heavy. But I used to work in a setting where every working day was on site, so this is still an improvement.

Generally I really support WFH but I think some people
got too used to it during Covid and failed to see it as a temporary thing. OTOH some companies have mandated a return to the office without good reason when they’d actually get more from their employees by letting them WFH or hybrid work. Each workplace should review on a meaningful set of criteria IMO and wages should to some extent reflect the inconvenience of commuting for those who have no choice but to be on site. This would be much fairer on jobs such as emergency services workers, care home staff, etc.

I didn't say it wasn't real-world practice. I said it was poor practice.

Of course, we all live and work in London, nowhere else exists in the UK. 😁

25 miles from the nearest city to me would give you quite a lot of options! Although I'd stretch it a little bit further so you caught all the people living in the next city along rather than relying on the villages to supply all your talent. 😁

My CV/ application (unless asked) makes no mention of where I actually live.

Wouldn't it be worse to mention it if they actually have no clue?

Is your location on your LinkedIn?

Nope, they all just say "UK" the jobs say "remote, UK"

The highest concentration of jobs are available in major cities, as is where the OP is looking to travel to – by train – so a 25-mile distance policy in a non-comparable location is not at all relevant (and nor is it good practice regardless).

Well if they say 'remote, UK' and you are in the UK then that's not likely to be why you weren't hired the other times. The jobs where I work do not say that at all.

I would agree with you that they shouldn’t project an assumption based on that, especially if OP gives a detailed plan of how they are looking to manage this.

However I do also see how an employer needs flexibility especially for client management (you may be required to meet them) and that will not always fall on the days you have planned to be in the office. So you would need to be able to come in sometimes with little notice. You would also have team building days / team meetings that may fall outside of the usual days you’re there and a lot of the time employees get funny about it. You see it on MN all the time - “I am usually in the office Monday and Tuesday and my employer wants me to come in on Monday and Thursday, I can’t afford to book a hotel twice in the week. This is so unfair”.

yup, as I have said multiple times, several equally good candidates for one post.

No, as in my CV, they're listed as "Remote, UK".

The two jobs I got offered one was hybrid, one was FT in office, I was happy to do both but got rejected because of my location in no uncertain terms

Ah - well then I would consider being really up front from the start and then you can avoid wasting everyone's time if it's not the right setup for you. It sounds like you're able and willing to manage 1-2 days in the office a week but you'd need to know ahead of time when that was so you could book your travel and hotel - and can only travel overnight. That might not work logistically for many depending on what they mean by 'hybrid' (as others have noted, that can mean anything at all really).

If all OP's previous roles say 'remote' then that might add to the 'assumption' you'd prefer to do remote rather than commute, which is different from, say, a candidate a long way away but with a track record of hybrid roles at a distance.

As per my previous example, the two candidates who lived 3+ hours away had previously been in roles local to them, from which one could 'assume' that's their preference and that the job market being as it is, they'd had to look further afield and the commute would be their compromise. Maybe they'd have stuck it out, we'll never know, but it would have been different if they lived far away but were already commuting in a hybrid role. People can say they're willing to do all kinds of things when they want the job, but as many PPs' experience has shown, that can wear off soon when the reality of the long commute kicks in. Which is 'poor practice' on the part of employees but is still going to happen and an employer is bound to consider it when weighing up the pros and cons of all the candidates.

Yep - my employer (med/large public sector) was quite slow off the mark, post-COVID, in finalising our hybrid policy. During that time, no one was applying to work for us. Once we got out policy sorted out (min 2 days per week in the office) things got back to normal. But if ever one of our departments fails to state 'hybrid' on the advert, there are less applications and/or lots of enquiries about hybrid. The world has changed.