Landing a job as a foreigner is like telling a prospective employer that you regularly pee in you pants and expect him to still hire you. They don't like foreigners here. It works in this order of hiring preference: Londoners, English, Essex girls, Welsh or Irish, Europeans, Americans with International experience, a lump of clay, Scottish, and then lastly an American with no British experience.

The reason why is that it costs companies money to bring somebody over. The labor laws though recently changed to encourage imported skills sets but most companies don't know that its easier. The main jobs they are after are software specialists, professors, and medical professionals. So if you fit in one of those categories your chances just increased from 2.5% to 5.5%. For more info on Work Permits, they have information on the UK Home Office Site. Mind you, if you are only looking for a lower wage summer job, that's a whole other story because its temporary and they are much easier to come by. For that, contact BUNAC to get set up.

To begin your UK career search, here's a list of the main job sites to hit:

All Jobs UK
Planet Recruit
Go Jobsite
Job Serve

TIPS: Remember to spell in the Queen's English (favour rather than favor, CV rather than resume, etc) which you can set in your MSWord dictionary to English UK. The British like lengthy CVs and it should be at least two pages. Also, you are diggin a hole if you don't remember to have the page sized to A4 instead of 8.5x11. You might just want to have a British resume writing service do your CV if you are having trouble.

A suggestion from a reader Allison Garcia, said: "get your resume turned into a CV format by a professional, British-born resume writer, and go to the pubs near any business you want to work for about 6:00pm and buy a few rounds for the local yocals."

The laws that bind real estate prices across the world apply just as much here, so you will find like anywhere else that if the price is good, something sucks that you aren't being told about. With that in mind, there are several factors you must consider when house hunting in London

Size - Everything is shrunken in size here, except the prices. Our place here in London is half the size of the one we had in LA, yet I'm paying twice as much for it. The rooms that seem to have sacrificed most in size are the bathrooms and kitchens, which are usually microbial in size. Rent is quoted on a per week amount, so don't get over excited when you see a place for only £350 to only find out that it actually equates into $2,300 per month.

Convenience - There is another ratio that is incorporated into the size / price algorithm and that's its proximity to important stuff. If you plan on using public transportation, keep in mind you will not want to be further than a half mile from not just a tube station, but also a couple stores, restaurants, pubs, video stores, etc. Its best to also be near a grocery store if you can because the little markets usually have not as fresh of foods, limited selection, and higher prices. Also, just because a place is near a tube station, it might be on a line that will require you to change lines several times to get where you need to go, which can add a crapload of time to your daily journey.

Location - If you don't mind training into the city, it can be your best bet. Herding into the city by train though and then having to get on a tube during rush hour after that can drain your will to live if you aren't 100% up for it, so be wary before moving to somewhere with 'convenient train station access'. If you are wanting to live near where you work in Central London you will be very disappointed as it is far overpriced and is a dead zone on weekends so you better not need toilet paper because there won't be much around to buy from.

The best areas I have found have been:
West Hampstead, north part of Swiss Cottage, Maida Vale, south part of Angel, Vauxhall, and parts of Clapham
More ritzy parts that are nice are:
Hampstead, Warwick, Chelsea, and Kensington

TIPS: If you are new to London, try a Short-term let. That way you can check out different neighborhoods after you have moved in which will eliminate the pressure to find the perfect place immediately. A term to understand is garden flat, which normally means a basement flat with no windows or light outside of a four foot by seven foot piece of concrete backyard in the back. Make sure you clarify what they mean by a 'garden flat' before viewing.

Check out thelondonpropertyguide.com for better info on neighborhoods. And if you plan on living outside of London, you can always time the potential journey by checking out railtrack.co.uk. I received an email from a reader who runs a relocation service called quo vivis for those of you who might need to secure a rental before arriving in London. She apparently provides all kinds of assistance in finding what you need and if any of you end up using it, please let me know what you thought.

Estate agents are truly the most vile creature to sludge its way across the earth. They do nothing and take your money for that service of doing so. While you are looking, they will give you wrong directions, lie about the quality of a place, try to constantly make you spend outside your budget, and promise you the moon. And once you move in, they will then ignore any attempt you make to have anything fixed or changed. You can read my excerpt on it if you so wish.

The secret is to try to work around them as much as possible. Estate agents will book a time for you to see a place but more than likely not be the person actually showing it to you and rather having the current tenant or the actual owner showing it to you instead. Whenever possible, see if you can make a deal with the owner directly and cut out the middle man. You'll save money plus doing a humanitary benefit.

TIPS: Looking for places is difficult but the best bets are to check online at Loot, Gumtree and Fish4.

Jobs, car purchases, rentals and house sales all happen within hours of people meeting. I don't quite understand how people can make such huge financial decisions on a first time viewing basis, but thats how it goes here so make sure you have your wallet ready before you begin seriously looking. If you can't make decisions quickly, you will not get very far as you will more than likely have places taken from under you by the time you make a decision. Even if that decision is only a couple hours to consult with your other half.

TIPS: See places the first thing in the morning. That will buy you a little bit of time. If you have a digital camera, bring it with you as it will help if your significant other isn't available.

London is not necessarily large but in the same breath I would say it is spread out. Please don't ask me what the hell I mean but essentially, by tube you can only see a couple areas a day because its too tedious but walking around you can see one end to the other within a few hours. So do yourself a favor and don't overbook when viewing places. Though the tube makes popping above ground pretty easy, its not easy to do it often within one day so stick to booking all viewings within one or two tube stops per day. Aside from the convenience factor, you will avoid a premature death from being in the Underground too much and over exposure to carbon monoxide asphyxiation.

TIPS: Read your maps carefully. Research areas and the tube map before calling on places. Use Street Maps or A-Z for planning. While paramount is referencing a tube map before going.

Moving your stuff from another country can be very tricky. I learned the hard way that beyond that, moving your stuff is stupid. I put pretty much all of Leyhsa and I's stuff into storage expecting there to be a transfer method in place to move it over. What I didn't realize is that there is nowhere to put anything once it got here. Most London flats don't have much of storage space and certainly don't have a generous amount of room to begin with. So even if I wanted to bring our stuff over, I would have nowhere to put it all. Plus to add to the woes, things get freighted over by ship and normally take four to six weeks to arrive anyway. Keep in mind too, that you will have to pay for the same privilege to ship it back again once you want to move back home.

On top of that, most electronics from the states are useless. They don't use the same video tape or DVD format and everything uses a different voltage and megahertz anyway (so things like digital clocks will run fast). The cost to convert everything with a decent power converter that won't burn out your stuff in a year is more expensive than just getting a replacement.

TIPS: My suggestion is to bring only what you absolutely need. The rest you can buy at Argos, Ikea, or for electronics, Tottenham Court Road. If you are missing home and need some American comfort foods, it's been suggested to try Skyco.