my rutland job[s]

Everyone always seems to be talking about the lack of jobs in Rutland or at least the lack of good jobs. I realize I've been blessed with a fairly privileged life and my parents priority was always education. My family and husband have always supported my crazy ideas and overactive imagination, allowing me to follow my dreams in any direction. So, where are all the jobs and why can't millennials seem to find them? I searched long and hard and applied for anything and everything so maybe I just have good luck or good timing? I'm not totally sure but here is my personal experience with finding jobs in Rutland. 

I graduated from Ithaca College a semester early in 2009 with a B.S. in Communications Management and Design (fancy for marketing, leadership and graphic design). Many of my classmates were taking any job they could to pay their student loans, a significant number of them not related to their degree. My husband (then fiance) and I made the move to Rutland in December 2010 after he also applied for jobs in upstate NY that paid anywhere from $15-25k less than the job he had applied for and taken at Rutland Regional Medical Center. People are shocked when they hear that because most assume that every job in NY pays better than in VT but, for Physical Therapy at least, that's far from the truth. RRMC has also provided us with amazing health benefits that we have not seen elsewhere and even comparable to other local businesses they are pretty extraordinary. 

My mom and I at graduation. A slightly terrifying time for college graduates looking for jobs. But I'm determined and when I want something I go for it and I wanted a job using my degree.

But back to me and my marketing degree and a little history. By my sophomore year in college I had decided that I did not want to move to LA and work in entertainment like many of my classmates had. It's a running joke that LA is owned and run by Parkies (what everyone in Ithaca calls students in the Park School of Communcations). After taking many environmental courses and traveling to Copenhagen for the COP15 United Nations Climate Control Conference, I knew I wanted to use my degree and career to make a difference. I attended SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry for a semester of grad school before we left for Vermont but decided that environmental marketing was not the career path I wanted to take. And hello, VT was full of tree huggers so I'd be good!

Ugh, so young! Our first visit to Rutland when Tom interviewed. Having a chicken of wine at Three Tomatoes.

Moving to Vermont I was honestly scared if I'd find a job related to my degree given how small Rutland was in comparison to Utica, Ithaca, Syracuse and Rochester (everywhere I'd ever lived prior). But by mid-February I was working part time as Community Relations Assistant for Rutland Area VNA and Hospice where my boss took me under her wing to make sure I succeeded. I was managing all areas of graphic design, rebranding all marketing collateral and heading a state wide marketing piece with my manager that is still in existence today 5 years later. My boss taught me the ins and outs of not just the VNA but of the community, making sure I was involved and attending everything I needed to. She'd introduce me to everyone as her prodigy letting them know how amazing I was and to keep an eye out for me. When I applied for my job at RAVNAH I had also applied to about 20 others, a few I knew I wasn't qualified for and many I was over qualified for. 

Laura, my boss from RAVNAH who was at my wedding just 8 months after I started working for her. I'm still not sure she understands what an impact she's had on my career and life. And since I know she'll read this - thanks Laura :)

2 years later I took a full time graphic design position at the Mountain Times newspaper in Killington. As much as I loved my boss at the VNA I knew I needed to push my design to the next level and honestly needed a full time job (I was 30hrs at the VNA). The Mountain Times may be a small town newspaper but it's look and feel was anything but as the new, and young, owners had taken over a few years prior. To say that I grew during my 2.5 years there would be an understatement. Not only did my design skills expand but I had learned what the word deadline actually meant. After 18 months I took it upon myself to go to the owners with a new position for myself as Creative Director and for the next 7 months I worked harder than I ever had before. I was completing projects like the yearly magazine from start to finish, managing layout, content, sales leads based on content and the overall look and feel to really push us to the next level. I loved my job but crazy deadlines and not always predictable hours were becoming hard now that I was pregnant with our second son. As I sat in my publishers office in January 2015 telling her I had to give my 2 weeks notice, I'm pretty sure it took me 10 minutes to get it out through all of the tears. I still tear up thinking about that day as I left some of the best friends I had since coming to VT, amazing people that argued like family but would do anything for one another - something I truly feel you can only find in a small Vermont city like Rutland. And how lucky I was that not once, but twice, it was exceptionally hard for me to leave a job because I loved my coworkers and managers that much.

This was my baby while at The Mountain Times. It pushed me to my creative limits and is still one of my favorite pieces.

Two weeks later (and 25 weeks pregnant) I started my current job at Heritage Family Credit Union as AVP of Marketing. The salary and benefits along with the more predictable work hours had, at first, been the main reason I switched jobs. In all honesty I had no idea what a credit union was prior to being hired and had assumed it was a type of bank. As I quickly learned, all credit unions are a non profit, cooperative financial institution that were founded to help the under-served in its communities. Remember my short lived time in grad school? Well my thesis was to be about social responsibility and the effects of climate change on the under-served populations of the US. My inner hippy couldn't contain itself as I'd found a career in my field where I was also helping to make a difference.

Working at HFCU has pushed me in a direction career wise I didn't think was possible. Getting involved with the community on a more meaningful level, allowing me to professionally develop beyond what I thought possible. 

So in 5 years I have managed to have 3 jobs, using my degree in the so called city that doesn't have any jobs, in a time when many companies needed to cut their marketing department in the rest of the US. Did I work hard, of course I did. Did I make sacrifices, take salaries that were far less than what I had paid for a single year at Ithaca, you bet. I went in taking what I could get but put my stamp on everywhere I was, pushing the envelope and pushing my companies to do bigger and better things. I had a degree, I had knowledge and I wanted my companies to use it, to benefit from it and to hopefully make lasting changes.

Just a little plug for the National Credit Union Marketing award we won this year :) 

I cannot speak for other industries, but I have seen some amazing professional jobs available in Rutland. And the most amazing thing about the Rutland workforce is that they want their young employees to succeed, they push their young professionals to do more and be better. When they find someone willing to work hard, they see their future and foster those relationships, even if it means letting them go on to bigger and better things.

Find what you want and go get it, be willing to make sacrifices and work hard. The right job is out there, it's in Rutland, now you have to go get it.

the rutland i know [and have learned to love]

I realize I'm technically an outsider and am certainly not a "Vermonter" by local standards so my point of view is vastly different from those who were born and raised here.

So often I hear locals complaining about how Rutland was once this great small city with no drug problems or crime. Honestly, I think every town and city, big and small, says the same thing. Our populations have grown and changed drastically over the past few decades. We have access to information at our fingertips and even the smallest happenings are posted all over the internet - something that was impossible a few decades ago since you can only fit so much into an hour of news or in a newspaper. I do believe that drugs are a national issue and unfortunately Rutland has seen this epidemic first hand.

However, I will say that as an "outsider" [ who has lived in cities such as Syracuse, Utica and Rochester, NY ], Rutland is an extremely safe city. As a runner I feel safe running any street in the city and often run through the "gut." There were streets in Syracuse and Rochester where I knew I shouldn't go and never did because my life would actually be in real danger. Tom went for a run in Syracuse while I was living there and got extremely lost. He was yelled at and mocked while running down streets he could tell were not safe and he was actually scared. He came back having run 5:30minute miles and when he told people the streets he had run on they were scared for him.

The streets in Rutland are fairly well maintained and yes there are some boarded up houses but for the most part the lawns are mowed and people wave. An older runner once told me that you can tell if a street is safe or not based on how many lawns are mowed - not sure if any other runner follows this standard but I do and I've never been down a Rutland street where a majority of the houses have hay fields out front. Actually, the only time I have ever not felt 100% safe while running in Rutland [ on a lonely back country road, not in the city ] was because I had watched too many Criminal Minds episodes and thought "a farmer could feed me to his pigs right now and no one would hear me scream." Trust me, your mind would go there too if you were running 10 miles on a single back country road in rural Vermont!

Every city and town has their problems but it's how we deal with them that defines us. Rutland is by far the most supportive place I have ever lived. We all want to see it continue to improve and everyone is there to help. Most people live near their families so they have help when and if they need it which was a huge concern of mine when we started our own family 3 hours away from our hometown. But ya know what, Rutland has been there for us through every up and down - Rutland has become our family when we've needed them the most. Rutland has made us feel like we are in fact Vermonters through and through. We moved here for jobs and have stayed for the Vermont lifestyle which Rutland embodies perfectly.

Running through Downtown Rutland.

Running down Grove St from McKinley Ave is by far my favorite stretch of Rutland to run.

Another Burlington Weekend [beer and cider included]

Why yes we were up in Burlington again for what seems like the millionth time this summer but we do love it and this time it was to meet up with family. My younger brother is starting a course at Yestermorrow Design/Build School so my parents swung over to Burlington after dropping him off to see us [aka the grandkids] before heading back to NY.

 

We, admittedly, have never been to Citizen Cider on Pine St. even though we pass it every time we come to Burlington and this time we decided to stop. We may have also only stopped because Declan was asleep so managing one kid at a restaurant/brewery is muuuch simpler than two so it was also out of convenience. Don't get me wrong, we love cider but we are first beer lovers so we are picky cider drinkers. Our problem with ciders is that we feel like they all taste the same even when they say they are all vastly different. Let me just say that Citizen Cider is a beer drinkers cider [they may or may not hate that I just said that] and each one tasted vastly different from the rest and I honestly liked each one and even loved a few. We always chose Citizen when we get cider at the store but usually just their flagship [which is amazing and we do get it very often] but we will for sure be venturing out and trying each and every one of theirs. They will also be on our "must stop while in Burlington" list from now on too!

Slept the entire time...

 

An open, family style tasting/restaurant room with some tables outside too.

 

We stayed the night at the Marriot [my dad travels for work and has points or else we'd be AirBnbing it] which by the way is an awesome location right next to Hotel Vermont on the water. On our way back to Rutland we stopped at the ReUse materials store on Pine St. [they have an actual store and a materials store] and found my dream sink for our new house. We also got all the hardware for our kitchen cabinets [$1 a piece I may add] and a few other things that would have cost us a couple hundred dollars brand new and instead cost us $20 and are exactly what I wanted. Below is our 1962 Kohler cast iron white enameled sink with drain tray that I love.

That's enough typing..below are some pictures from the weekend where we stopped at [in no particular order, just as I can remember them] Burlington Beer Co., Citizen Cider, Once Upon a Child Consignment shop, ate at American Flatbread, had a family run on the bike trail, and of course walked Church Street while eating pizza larger than our heads. Enjoy!


Burlington Beer Co. is a family favorite with tons of old school games that the boys love.

Finn pretending to be a beer maker - I have to brag that he knows the beer goes through a masher, aka the mash tun :)

Why We Transplants Love Rutland

I love lists so here's another one. It's an I love Rutland list similar to the one Steve Costello wrote that went viral a few months ago. Mine may not be as eloquent but here goes nothing.

 

 I love Rutland from the view of a transplant.

1. It's in Vermont. We love Vermont. Win win.

And now, in no specific order the rest of the list!

2. Downtown. To a native NYer it's quintessential VT with beautiful buildings. The businesses downtown have grown exponentially since we moved here 5 years ago and we try to frequent them as much as possible. It has everything you could want in a downtown and more.

3. Palms square cheese pizza extra crispy. Us NYers are picky pizza eaters and this is one of the best.

4. RRMC. It has provided my husband with a job that he loves. When we first moved here the HR dept was beyond helpful with helping us find housing and even helping me find a job. The hospital is a cornerstone of the community and just keeps getting better.

5. Roots the Restaurant Grilled Caesar Salad. I honestly dream about this salad daily it's so amazing. I am a vegetarian though and wacky salads are my thing, but then again so is ice cream and pizza. But this salad, yep, it's the best.

6. Hop n Moose. They may have beat us to the punch of being the first brewery in Rutland (owning a brewery is our pipe dream) but they have some stand out beers - my favorite is Head Doctor!

7. Dancing with the Rutland Stars. I may be biased since I'm on the committee but it is a fantastic event that raises funds for a fantastic organization (Kids on the Move). It is a sold out show that is guaranteed to entertain all!

8. Halloween parade. We've been going since before we had kids and it's easily the best parade we've ever been to.

9. Paramount Theatre. They have world class acts and each year is better than the last. I can't even begin to list all of the acts they've had that you wouldn't think would make it to little ole Rutland.

10. Friday night summer series. 3 Friday's in July Center Street is closed off and restaurants and bars open into the street and fantastic music acts perform. It's transformed over the years into more of an adult event but we take the kids down and have a quick bite and drink outside.

11. Art in the park. It's twice a year in Main Street park and all of the exhibitors are great. I've purchased some of my favorite jewelry there and have gone every year.

12. Killington summer concert series. Not the city but still Rutland County, this is a ton of fun and the kids love it since they can run around and dance and not bother anyone.

13. The Bakery. This addition to downtown has everything and the employees are amazing. Everything they make is sooo good and when I walk in every Monday the baristas always knows I need a red eye!

14. The parks. There are so many parks in Rutland and, at least for us, they are all in walking distance and our kids love them all.

15. Whites Pool. It's in the process of being rebuilt to open in 2017 and it's going to be like nothing else in Rutland. We took Finn there when he was a baby and it was always filled with kids and families and is just an all around great place.

16. Fruition Fineries and Raw Honey. My favorite dress and sweater come from Fruition and my favorite jeans from Raw Honey. Rebecca is beyond helpful whenever I'm in and always pulls exactly what I didn't know I wanted!

17. Rutland Rec Halloween 5k. So I kind of love Halloween especially now that we have kids and I can force my family to dress in ridiculous themed costumes. So this 5k is perfect and a ton of fun and a great course through the city.

18. Hops on Top. Again, I'm biased but I do have the backing of at least 500 people. A beer fest with a view and some of the best beers there are. It's seriously one of the best events in the area and is a step up for Rutland for sure. You will not want to miss it!

19. Veggie burgers at Table 24. Even if you aren't a vegetarian, these burgers are amazing. We travel a lot and have eaten our fair share of veggie burgers and nothing compares.

20. Hope. Super cheesy but the Young Professionals (I'm admittedly not a member of the official Rutland Young Professionals but this is directed at ALL YPs in the area) in Rutland have more hope and passion for our small city than anyone I know. They/we know how amazing Rutland is and want everyone else to feel it too. We know Rutland is kick ass, now everyone else needs to figure it out too!

Our Vermont Weekend: Take 2

On the road again this past weekend but this time all the way up north to Burlington. It's a 1hr 45min drive straight up Route 7 and is super easy. We almost always make it a day trip and thankfully the boys (usually) fall asleep both ways.
[ There is info on a new brewery so keep reading through my shameless Credit Union speech. ]
We planned our trip around the inaugural meeting for The Credit Union Young Professionals of Vermont that I helped my friend and mentor plan. I'm a typical millennial and want my career to have meaning, I'm not just in it for the money to pay bills [a little bit of a lie since our student loans are hell]. My time away from my family has to be for good reason and working for our Credit Union does just that. Not to get all philosophical but credit unions are for the people, they are a co-op and are there to help the community and especially the underbanked.
There's my shameless plug for the day and on-to the pictures of my kids that the grandparents will love :P

A group of the smartest, hardest-working women and the future of our Credit Unions!

The newest brewery just opened up in Burlington so we had to stop in and try it. Foam Brewers is right on the water, just down from Skinny Pancake and totally makes me wish we lived closer and had a nanny that could chase after our kids as we sat and drank beer. It seems to attract a younger crowd but seeing as it is a bit of a college town that's to be expected, although it did make me feel especially old :(

 

We topped off our day with a quick visit to Echo Aquarium - also right on the water and .25miles from the brewery. We're members so we love to just stop in for a half hour, look at some fish and then head out and we never feel like we wasted our entrance fee. FYI - if you're a member you also get free entry into a ton of museums around the country including the Boston Kids Museum, the Boston Natural History Museum, Syracuse MOST, and 3 different museums in Ithaca as well. It's so worth it and one of the best kept secrets there is.

 

Well that was our weekend. This weekend we have an open house to sell our tiny home in the city in hopes of a little more land for our kids and dog to run around on. Wish us luck!

Why We Love Vermont

At the top of Deer Leap drinking a beer - our first VT hike.

I know the blog is about Rutland but I wanted the first post to be about why we love Vermont and how, no matter what (losing jobs, changing careers, any other unplanned life event), we would choose to stay in Vermont.

Vermont is a way of life. My husband and I are both Ithaca college graduates which is located in Ithaca, a very liberal, forward thinking city in upstate New York and before moving to Vermont figured that it was like a big Ithaca. In general it is, which is probably why we love the state so much but it's even better than Ithaca, something we didn't think was possible.

I like lists. I have ADD so lists help me write down my thoughts in the random order they tend to come out without babbling on (just kidding I still babble). To do lists are my jam and are the sole reason I have never been fired from a job because without them I'd be lost. With that being said here is a list of why we (maybe just me but I think Tom agrees with most) love Vermont:

Traffic doesn't exist. I mean it does but nothing like the traffic we were use to living in Utica, Ithaca, Syracuse or Rochester ,New York. Even in Burlington it's not bad although native Vermonters may disagree.

Mountains are everywhere. You can go for a walk in "the city" of Rutland and no matter where you turn you see gorgeous mountains. Now, go for a hike and at the peak there are endless mountains that will take your breathe away, it's like nothing you've ever seen before.

This picture was taken from a window at our first apartment in Rutland on Main St.!

The people. I'm sure there are other places in the country, hell I'm sure other places in the northeast that have nice people. But it honestly seems like the entire state is pretty damn nice. No matter how much someone has or doesn't have they are always there to help you out any way they can and they never expect anything in return. Every business we go into, everyone is always so nice even when you walk in with two young kids. And on the kids note, no one has ever made us feel bad for bringing our kids with us just about everywhere we go. They come to breweries and go out to dinner with us and not once has anyone given us a hard time, in fact they usually seem to treat us even better (maybe it's the gigantic bags under my eyes that make them feel bad).

 

The beer is kick ass. I know my husband agrees with me on this one and we love the beer here. Not just the beer but the beer community and businesses and everything that goes with it. We are now certified beer snobs thanks to the amazing brews that can be found all over the state. Our favorite? Foley Brothers Fair Maiden Double IPA, and Zero Gravity is our favorite brewery as a whole. There will be many more posts about beer and breweries and our love of beer and breweries.

The Vermont Pub & Brewery in downtown Burlington.

Local food, everywhere. Just about every restaurant uses local ingredients whether vegetables, breads or meat. I'm pretty sure the only time we've eaten at a chain restaurant since living in VT is when we've been given a gift card to Applebee's but even then we just went to the bar which happened to have local beer on tap. Our only gripe with Vermont is the lack of Mexican food in the Rutland area. There's a few decent ones in Burlington but as a whole the state seems to lack good Mexican restaurants (someone please email me and prove me wrong, tell me every Mexican restaurant I've missed!).

Family friendly jobs. Ok so maybe we've just been blessed with wicked cool companies, but before I had kids I was scared about the ramifications on my career. At every job I've always been told to put my family first, I've had great maternity leave and I was even hired while pregnant by my current employer (I know they can't legally discriminate but still they didn't even bat an eyelash). When Finn was born my then employer let me come back 30hrs over 3 days so I could stay home with him 2 days a week until he turned 1. I could go on but you get it.

Nothing to do with jobs but the breweries are also family friendly!

It's runner friendly. Ok when I first moved to Rutland I was pissed at its lack of paved trails and over abundance of hills. Now my race times thank me as those hills make my races so much easier. I love passing people on "hills" at races - I need to make a shirt about running Vermont hills, maybe "in Vermont we run mountains," it's a jumping off point, I digress!

Most local 5k's allow strollers and sometimes dogs so it's a family affair!

The size. Vermont is small but I love that. We can take a day trip to Burlington and it's no big deal. You can take a day trip to just about anywhere in the state from central Vermont. None of the cities are all that big, even Burlington is small compared to the cities we're use to. There are people who love big cities, we are not those people.

Chittenden Reservoir near Mt. Top Inn 

It's location. Vermont is pretty centrally located in the northeast. From Rutland, at least, we can get to Boston or Portland in 3hrs. We've never been but you can also get to NYC and Montreal pretty quickly as well. We've taken the train to NYC from Albany which was cheap and easy but driving is much quicker, but again traffic!

Lake Champlain in Burlington.

Skiing, duh. I am not a skier. Tom is a skier and learned to ski about three years ago and of course picked it up super quick and is super good. I, on the other hand, have no want or need to ever learn to ski. I hate heights and I hate the cold. I know, I live in Vermont but I hate the cold, I love the snow and mountains but from the lodge drinking a beer! I do however want the boys to learn to ski at a young age since everyone who skis loves it and being 15 minutes from the best mountain in the east, Killington, we'd be stupid not to. And I also secretly hope they'll be good and will go to Killington Mountain School and travel the world - I'm not a helicopter mom I promise!

Taken by my husband at Killington.

So there's our short list. We could go on but studies show most people won't even read through that entire list, so stay in suspense until the next list.

Vermont isn't for everyone, but if you like amazing beer and nice people and hate traffic then it may just be the place for you.

Hiked to the top of Pico Mtn.