Includes action items to help you identify necessary skills
A little more than a year ago, I quit my office job in San Francisco and made it a priority to find a remote position that gives me more flexibility and opportunity to travel. It took me around two months to find a suitable role, and it has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Since then, many people have asked me all kinds of questions about my lifestyle.
The most common ones are probably these two:
“How do I find a remote job?” and “Where do I start if I want to work remotely?”
When I started to look for a remote job at the beginning of 2019, the process wasn’t too different from regular job search, besides figuring out how to filter for fully remote opportunities. This won’t be a critical step right now since most of the roles are remote, but let me describe a few easy steps that should be handy as you start. All the tips in this post are based on my own experience and research.
Note: If you are serious about it and are ready to start right now, make sure you have a pen and paper before reading further.
Step 1: Job Aggregators
Job aggregator sites are an excellent place to start searching for both full-time and contractor roles.
Browse these sites to get an idea of what kind of jobs are out there, pick the industry/field (for example, marketing), and sign up to receive daily emails with new job opportunities.
My favorite remote job aggregator sites:
- Remote.ok: Aggregates remote job opportunities daily and provides remote work statistics such as salaries, fully remote companies, etc.
- We Work Remotely: Similar to the site above.
- Remote.co: Similar to the two sites above. I recommend signing up for all three, as the postings may differ.
- LinkedIn: Filter for Jobs — Location — Remote and sign up for email notifications.
- AngelList: Similar to LinkedIn, but mostly for startup jobs. Filter for Jobs — Location — Remote. Here you can also choose to receive email notifications.
- Glassdoor: Filter for Jobs — Location — Remote. Most useful for understanding salary ranges, seeing the company’s ranking and reviews, and getting a sense of interview questions. And again, you can sign up to receive updates when new job opportunities are posted.
- Upwork: I couldn’t skip this one as it is one of the best-known sites for freelancers and for finding freelancers (many companies in the Bay Area use it for finding contractors). However, it is overloaded with freelancer profiles. In fact, Upwork doesn’t even allow digital marketing professionals to create profiles anymore. On top of that, their reviews are getting worse and worse, so I wouldn’t use this site for finding projects. However, you can use it to get a sense of what people charge for similar services.
- FlexJobs: This is a paid aggregator that I haven’t used yet. I don’t see how this site would be different from free aggregators, so I never needed to explore it. If you decide to pay for its services, make sure you read independent customer reviews (not reviews from bloggers who get paid by FlexJobs to write them).
Almost all the career sites now have a filter for permanently remote openings, so if you’re already using a particular website for your job search, check the filtering options. In many countries, there are going to be local job hunting platforms, which often allow you to filter for remote work.
Here is an example of what you should see in your notebook after completing Step 1:
Output: Field of expertise
Question:
Do you know what type of job you are looking for now?
- Yes ( I’m a software engineer/marketer/lawyer/sales manager/project manager, etc. and that’s what I want to continue doing)
- No (I don’t think remote jobs exist in my field of expertise, I want to switch my career, or I just graduated and have no idea what I want to do with my life)
If you answered Yes — skip to step 3.
If you answered No, don’t give up just yet! Go to step 2.
Step 2: Define Your Role
If after browsing the websites above, you still not sure what you can do remotely and pay your bills, take your notebook and complete this exercise.
Once you identified certain patterns, you can take courses to develop missing skills and strengthen your job profile.
Step 3: Employment Type
There are different types of employment to choose from. Based on my own experience, I can highlight three types that do not depend on your field:
- Contractor/freelancer
- Employee
- Business owner
Here are the pros and cons as I see them for each type, and they’ll vary a bit from person to person:
You don’t have to choose just one type of employment. Consider the options that appeal to you, then mix and match. Here are a couple of examples:
- If you decide to work for someone else, explore both contractor and full-time opportunities.
- If you want to start your own business but need additional income to keep yourself afloat while building it, go for contractor roles to allow yourself more time and flexibility.
Make a note of which type of employment you plan to pursue and why.
Here is an example of what you should see in your notebook after completing Step 3:
Output: Employment type
Step 4: Resources
Now that you roughly know the field of work, the skills required, and which employment type you want, browse these additional resources:
For contractor roles:
Moms Project: For marketing, human resources, finance, technology, operations, sales, administration, legal, communications and public relations, customer service, design, healthcare, science and education, engineering and construction, industrial and manufacturing.
RightSideUp: For marketers.
Toptal: For freelance software developers, designers, finance experts, product managers, and project managers.
Facebook groups: Search on Facebook for digital nomad jobs, remote work from anywhere, and remote jobs. You’ll find many groups with job listings
For full-time roles:
Here are my favorite companies that are 100% remote (all roles in the company are remote). These employers offer a full benefits package, and in my opinion, the best benefits packages on the market. Note: Anyone from anywhere in the world can apply. You don’t have to be an American.
Automattic (WordPress) — https://automattic.com/work-with-us/
- Roles: All kinds of roles you can find in a tech company
- Glassdoor score: 4.4/5
- Size: 501 to 1000 employees
- Benefits: score 4.9/5; source: Glassdoor
- HQ: San Francisco, CA
Invision — https://www.invisionapp.com/about/#jobs
- Roles: All kinds of roles you can find in a tech company
- Glassdoor score: 3.8/5
- Size: 501 to 1000 employees
- Benefits: score 4.4/5; source: Glassdoor
- HQ: New York, NY
Zapier — https://zapier.com/jobs/
- Roles: All kinds of roles you can find in a tech company
- Glassdoor score: 4.6/5
- Size: 201 to 500 employees
- Benefits: score 5/5; source: Glassdoor
- HQ: San Francisco, CA
Buffer — https://journey.buffer.com/
- Roles: All kinds of roles you can find in a tech company
- Glassdoor score: 4.5/5
- Size: 51 to 200 employees
- Benefits: score N/A; source: Glassdoor
- HQ: San Francisco, CA
GitHub — https://github.com/about/careers
https://github.com/about/careers/remote (limited to some countries)
- Roles: All kinds of roles you can find in a tech company
- Glassdoor score: 4/5
- Size: 501 to 1000 employees
- Benefits: score 4.9/5; source: Glassdoor
- HQ: San Francisco, CA
GitLab — https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/apply/
- Roles: All kinds of roles you can find in a tech company
- Glassdoor score: 4.8/5
- Size: 201 to 500 employees
- Benefits: score 4.4/5; source: Glassdoor
- HQ: San Francisco, CA
Doist — https://doist.com/jobs/
- Roles: All kinds of roles you can find in a tech company
- Glassdoor score: 5/5
- Size: 51 to 200 employees
- Benefits: score 4/5; source: Glassdoor
- HQ: Porto, Portugal
Hotjar — https://careers.hotjar.com/
- Roles: All kinds of roles you can find in a tech company
- Glassdoor score: 4.8/5
- Size: 51 to 200 employees
- Benefits: score 4.3/5; source: Glassdoor
- HQ: San Ġiljan, Malta
Toggl — https://toggl.com/jobs/
- Roles: All kinds of roles you can find in a tech company
- Glassdoor score: 4.6/5
- Size: 51 to 200 employees
- Benefits: score 5/5; source: Glassdoor
- HQ: Tallinn, Estonia
And of course, in the current situation, many more companies offer remote roles, although, it may eventually change:
Zoom Video Communications — Not all positions are remote. You can filter for remote roles.
- Roles: All kinds of roles you can find in a tech company
- Glassdoor score: 4.7/5
- Size: 1001 to 5000 employees
- Benefits: score 4.5/5; source: Glassdoor
- HQ: San Jose, CA
Remote Year — Looks like it has fewer benefits and lower salaries, but is fully remote without dependence on time zones.
- Roles: All kinds of roles you can find in a tech company
- Glassdoor score: 3.7/5
- Size: 51 to 200 employees
- Benefits: score 3.2/5; source: Glassdoor
- HQ: Chicago, IL
Toptal — Looks like most positions are time-zone dependent
- Roles: All kinds of roles you can find in a tech company
- Glassdoor score: 4.2/5
- Size: 501 to 1000 employees
- Benefits: score 3.5/5; source: Glassdoor
- HQ: Wilmington, DE
Remote Work Policy Tracker — Here, you can track companies that used to offer primarily on-site roles. However, they are changing their policies in favor of remote work — some temporarily, some permanently.
There are more great companies out there that offer full-time remote positions or flexible work-from-home opportunities.
Check out this blog post by Buffer for more: https://open.buffer.com/remote-jobs/ Here is another one from Zapier: https://zapier.com/blog/companies-hiring-remote-workers/
One more from Skillcrush: https://skillcrush.com/blog/best-remote-companies-to-work-for/
For your own business:
This one is more up to you. If you have a business idea, great! If not, here are a few popular location-independent businesses I often encounter in the Nomad community.
- Blogging/Vlogging
- Coaching
- Consulting
- Agencies
- Retail
How do you choose the right one for you? The idea is similar to choosing your areas of expertise:
- Think about what you like to do and what you’re better at than people around you.
- List services you can provide or products you can create.
- Define your niche (how you are going to be different from people who are already doing similar things).
- Research (Google how to start a business you want; find people who are already successful at what you want to do and try to understand how they got there).
- Write a business plan, set goals, break it into milestones, define the next steps, and follow them.
- Talk to a tax adviser and choose the location for your business.
- Find a partner, co-founder or contractors/employees to help you with specific areas you aren’t an expert at (e.g., you may need a sales or marketing person to find your first customers, an accountant, content creators, etc.)
- Last, but in my opinion, the most important thing — choose something you are truly passionate about. It may sound cliche, but building a successful business isn’t easy, you’ll need strong inner motivation and passion is usually a great one!
There are a lot of resources on the internet about starting your own business or how to start blogging, consulting, or coaching. I won’t talk much about it here, although I’m planning to write more in the future about the specific businesses I am familiar with, such as consulting and marketing agencies. Follow me on Instagram @marynagou to stay updated on future posts if you find this useful.
If at this point, you still aren’t sure what to do with your career, I have a couple of book suggestions for you: Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life and Designing Your Work Life: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work. Both books are written by two Stanford professors teaching design thinking.
I’ve read only the first book, and have heard great things about the second one. In my opinion, they teach you an efficient approach to problem-solving that can be applied to many personal or professional areas. It is also my go-to book when I find myself at a crossroads and need help finding a direction.
Step 5: It’s Your Next Work Project
If you are serious and committed to finding new (remote) work, treat your search as your side hustle. You may agree with me if you’ve ever looked for a job: finding a new job is a job in its own right. Finding remote work is no different.
I use project management tools for everything, and especially for job searching. You don’t have to use Asana or Monday. Feel free to use a good old notebook or Google Sheets.
Next steps:
- Set goals — Fill in now
- Break it into milestones — Fill in now
- Define due dates — Fill in now
- Keep a list of roles you applied for (and save the job descriptions). I had a few experiences where I got invited to an interview and couldn’t find the role I had applied for (some time has passed or they took down the job description from the internet).
Here is my Google Sheets template: Finding a Remote Job — Asana Template. Just make a copy and fill it in.
Okay, that’s it! Only five steps, and you’ll be well on your way to make your dream come true, improve your work-life balance, enjoy your workdays more, or achieve whatever you are trying to achieve.
