Will this American be able to join her King's College-bound boyfriend?

[Wren11]

My longtime American boyfriend will be attending grad school at King's College at the University of London in the fall on a student visa and I would like to join him in the UK. However, like so many others, I am concerned about finding work.

With only a bachelor's degree, I don't qualify for the highly skilled migrant programme. I checked into the possibility of getting in with the qualifications for "unmarried partners" (under the "Husbands, Wives and Partners INF4 section of ukvisas.gov.uk)
and wonder if that's a viable option. We've lived together in the US for three years.

Has anyone had any experience moving to the UK to join their American partner who's attending school or any experience with the partner visa? Would the college be any help? Ideally, I'd like to work for a book publishing company, but I know I can hardly be picky in this situation.

Thanks so much!

[Bevdeforges]

Normally a dependent visa of any kind does not carry working privileges. On the visa site I checked, it says that you will need to have an employer as sponsor, which means you need to start looking for a job now to get the visa paperwork in motion.

Finding a job overseas that will score you a working visa generally means that you need to find some aspect of your training or experience that is not generally available in the local work force. Could be a language, or contacts (in the US publishing business?) or something else, but you need to give a potential employer some reason to justify the additional hassle of sponsoring your visa application.

The other catch is that it's unlikely most employers will be willing to hire someone "sight unseen." It would be a good idea to be able to make a vacation trip over to the UK to talk face to face with any potential employers. Otherwise, you may have to make a trip back to the US once you've found a job to initiate the work visa process.
Cheers,
Bev