Finding A Remote Job
Anyone who has a 9–5 office job knows there can be some downsides to the office life. It can be hard to get meaningful, thoughtful, creative work done with the distractions and frequent interruptions associated with the office. It is common to spend an hour or more commuting back and forth to the office each day. There is a lack of freedom and flexibility in our lives, having limited or no say in where we spend 40 hours of our life each week and what times each day we do our work. Sometimes our work-life balance suffers. If there is a fun event you’d like to attend on a weekday afternoon, too bad, you’re out of luck. You’re stuck living in the specific city where you can get a job. You can forget about going away on vacations for more that a few weeks each year, or living in a smaller community far away from the big cities.
Working in a remote job has the potential to eliminate these downsides of the office life. A remote job is simply a job that is not performed in an office. Remote jobs are often referred to as telecommuting jobs, virtual jobs, home-based jobs, and work-from-home jobs. Common remote work professions include writing, programming, designing, advising, customer support, research, marketing, sales, and much more. In fact, 37 percent of Americans reported working remotely in 2015.
In a remote job you have increased freedom and flexibility in life. You can work in your home office, a co-working space, a coffee shop, or wherever else you choose. You can work 9–5 each day, or you can choose to take some mornings off work to go for walks, for example, and then work those afternoons and evenings. Having that increased freedom and flexibility makes it possible to have a healthier work-life balance. You can plan your work schedule around family events, trips, and passions. You cut out your daily commute time. You can live in the city or town you choose, instead of being required to relocate to a major city. You can go away on a week-long trip every month and work from that alternate location, or even travel long term as a digital nomad. You can change your scenery as much as you like, maybe working from home one day, a coffee shop the next day, and a park the next day, instead of being tied to a single location for 40 hours each and every week.
Given the potential benefits of having a remote job, I decided to do more research on remote jobs and how to find them.
I used the following sources for my research:
- Finding a Remote Job course on Lynda
- How to Find Legitimate Work at Home Jobs course on Udemy
- Remote: Office Not Required book by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
- 12 blog articles from FlexJobs
Based on what I learned, I compiled a list of some of my favorite resources to start with if you’re looking for a remote job. I’ve also included a few pointers on how to create applications for remote jobs that will get you noticed by employers.
Where To Look For A Remote Job
To find a remote job, the first place to look is your current job. Can you work remotely 1 day per week instead of going into the office every single day? If so, talk to your boss and see if you can try that for a few months to see how it goes. This will give you the opportunity to show your boss how much more productive you can be without the distractions of the office. Then think about increasing your remote work to 2 or more days per week. If you can’t work remotely in your current job, is there any chance you could transfer to another position with your current employer that would enable you to work remotely?
If you’re unable to work remotely with your current employer or are not employed at the moment, below are some starting points to check out for remote work.
Two questions to keep in mind when looking at remote job postings are 1) is this a legit job opportunity or a scam?, and 2) (if you do NOT live in the US) is this opportunity available to those of us who live outside the US? I’ve made several additional notes related to these two points throughout the remainder of the article, where required. Some of the resources below focus primarily on highly skilled positions, while other resources have entry level opportunities available.
FlexJobs: FlexJobs is a paid job search site specifically for flexible and remote jobs. Although it is the only paid resource that I list in this article, in my view it may be worth the $14.95/month to $49.95/year to become a member (although I have not yet joined, but do plan to register in the near future). Representatives from FlexJobs hand-screen each job ad, eliminating the big headaches associated with digging through many of the other resources below. First off, all the scam job ads are eliminated so we don’t need to worry about that. Secondly, there are separate pages for Canadian and International opportunities, making it easier to screen out the huge number of opportunities that are only available to US citizens. Even if you’re not a paid member you can still get value out of the site. Although it is not possible to view the full job ads without becoming a member, non-members can view brief overviews of each job, which I found to be useful for getting a sense of what skills employers are looking for in remote employees. You can also access their excellent blog for free here.
Remote.co: Remote.co is another job site specifically for remote jobs. There seems to be a steady stream of new remote jobs being posted on here each day. However, a high proportion of jobs appear to be specifically for US citizens, so for us international individuals using this site may involve a fair amount to work determining which positions we are eligible for.
We Work Remotely: We Work Remotely is another job site focusing specifically on remote jobs. There are less postings on here compared to the above two sites, but it is still worth checking out.
Freelancing Jobs: Find freelancing jobs at Freelancer and Upwork.
100 Top Companies With Remote Jobs: FlexJobs outlined the 100 Top Companies with Remote Jobs in 2017. For each company they list available remote jobs and provide a link to the company’s website. Since I’m living in Canada, for some companies I typed the company name plus ‘Canada’ into Google to see if there may be a Canadian website with additional opportunities for my region.
16 Companies To Consider For Millennials Looking For A Remote Job: Check out the end of the article Are You a Millennial Looking for Work Flexibility? Here Are Companies to Consider by FlexJobs for a list of 16 additional companies to consider for remote work.
Fortune 50 Companies: Consider checking out the job listings on the company websites of the top 50 companies on the Fortune 500 list. These tend to be large companies with a wide footprint throughout the USA and internationally, and thus are more likely to have remote working options.
Companies With A Lot Of Employees Working From Home: A few specific companies with a lot of employees working from home that were highlighted in the sources I reviewed for this article were…
- Aetna (or Aetna International for non-Americans). Aetna’s USA job board even has a column that shows whether or not each job is a telework position.
- Deloitte (or Deloitte’s Canadian site)
- Intel
- Sutherland
- Lionbridge
- Appen
- Apple
- Enterprise (or Enterprise’s Canadian site)
- Hilton
- Xerox
It looks like you need to be a US resident for all the positions with the following companies:
Craigslist: How to find telecommuting jobs on Craigslist — Go here, select the appropriate country or region at the top of the page, in the list of cities that comes up select a major city, click ‘jobs’, on the left toolbar click ‘telecommute’. Although I found some legit opportunities, there were so many scams mixed in that I lost patience quickly. Looking on Craigslist was useful, but reinforced to me the potential value of signing up for FlexJobs to avoid the headache of picking through all the scams. I looked on some other job boards such as Indeed and Kijiji and did not see an option to select telecommuting jobs specifically.
Keywords: Go to Google and job boards such as Indeed and Monster and try the following keywords — remote, virtual, work at home, work from home, telecommute, independent contractor, online, write for us.
Pinterest: Go to Pinterest and follow the board work from home expert tips. There is a lot of good stuff here, but also a lot of scammy stuff, so it takes some patience picking through the material to find the good stuff.
Applying For A Remote Job
Skills to Convey: It is especially important when applying to remote jobs to convey that you’re an exceptional communicator, have the ability to focus, are accountable, have good time management, and are resourceful.
Cover Letter: Writing is an important skill for remote work. This is why writing a cover letter is especially important for a remote position, giving you the opportunity to showcase your writing skills. Take a few minutes to visualize what an employer is looking for in a candidate. Convey that you are someone who can be trusted, doesn’t need to be supervised, and has the competency to do the job. Show you can get projects done without being micromanaged. Show your ability to use technology and your ability to troubleshoot. Convey why you want to work remotely (e.g. because you plan to do some other meaningful things in your space time). For more information, check out the blog article by FlexJobs titled Use Your Cover Letter to Prove You’d Be a Rockstar Remote Employee.
Resume: Highlight your remote experience on a resume. At some point in your career you’ve probably already done remote work. All that remote means is working with people not in the same room as you. Therefore, even sending emails and making phone calls is remote experience. Consider putting a brief summary section at the top of your resume, stating you are seeking a remote job, and including anything that shows you’re passionate about remote work. Prove that you can work effectively from home. Don’t overlook your soft skills. Use relevant keywords such as “self-manager”, “strong communicator”, “problem solver”, “ and “highly organized”. Include any relevant side jobs or short term positions. If you’ve done remote work as a component of a previous job, for the location of that job write the city name plus the term remote (e.g. “New York City and Remote”). Check out this article from FlexJobs titled “7 Most Attractive Skills to Add to Your Resume”.
Moving Forward
Over the past few weeks I’ve learned about many new opportunities for remote work. I’ve made some improvements to my resume and cover letters, and have identified a few positions of interest that I may submit applications to. For the time being, my top priority will be attempting to incorporate remote work into my current job.
I would love to hear from you in the comments below if there are any resources you’d recommend for finding remote jobs, especially jobs outside the United States. If you currently work remotely or have done so in the past, what has your experience been like? If you would like to get in touch with me to discuss remote work further, please feel free to reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter.
