The remote job guide: job search & productivity working from home

Remote jobs are dominating the new employment reality. You can deliberate the pros and cons ad infinitum, but the global pandemic has hit the fast-forward button on this inescapable trend. Remote work is here to stay. Job seekers around the world are scrambling to adjust their sights and amend their career sales pitches. Hence the rise of a work from home resume. Job searches for remote positions are at an all time high and remote jobs are fast becoming the new norm in many industries.

So what do job searches look like? How do you ensure productivity when working from home? In this guide, we'll cover everything you need to know when it comes to landing and keeping remote jobs. Here's what we'll cover:

• The current landscape when it comes to remote jobs and how to capitalize on it
• How to get and keep a remote job
• How to put remote work on your resume (with examples)
• The secrets of writing a work from home resume
• Individual stories and insights from our fully-remote Resume.io team!

Remote jobs: how to find, keep, organize, and enjoy them

How do you find remote work these days? Truth is, the difficulty has dropped significantly, as we outlined in the stats above. It is widely accepted, and many employer brands are seeing it as a way to attract (and retain) the best talent. Selling your career story remotely is an entirely different proposition.

In a competitive candidate market, the task of actually keeping remote work and making a remote job stable is the real challenge. After you have got the job, when you are settled down behind your screen with the cat on your lap and the coffee brewing, you then have to make sure that you can work successfully, stay productive and sane. If you are organized and productive enough in the role, there is every chance of building a fulfilling and (dare we say it) happy existence.

In the following chapters of this remote work guide, we explore these four aspects: get it, keep it, organize it and enjoy it.

Individual or corporate remote work: job search and resume preparation

Traditionally, the chances of a successful job search for remote work have depended on the type of remote role performed. Working from home positions focused on individual output such as writers, translators, teachers/instructors, sales people and consultants were understandably featured in our “ Top 10 remote jobs that let you work at home” research, but the Black Swan of the pandemic has caused a seismic shift in the types of remote jobs that corporate employees are now managing to perform at home. The most forward-thinking candidates are adapting their resumes and job hunt tactics to these new types of positions.

As the nature of remote work varies from company to company, adaptability and flexibility are the hallmarks of a remote-first employee. Moving with what is best for the wider remote team is the way forward. While you have more autonomy as an individual remote worker, when you work with others it often entails considerable effort to maintain the levels of communication and purpose that you may see in an office environment.

The distinction between an individual remote job and corporate remote work in any given job search has become increasingly blurred. Whether most corporate roles will fully transform into remote work positions is a complicated discussion, but the fact remains that many leading companies (Google, Dropbox, Amazon, Wells Fargo, among countless others) are seeing that offering full-time remote positions is beneficial for their employer brand and long-term employee retention. Remote job boards can be a great place to find these opportunities.

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Many people possess the skills to work remotely on both an individual and a corporate basis, so how do you go about the job search journey for these potentially life-changing opportunities? The work from home resume needs to take on a new focus in this new world of work. A big part of the task is changing your approach to resume preparation, which will cover below in the remote job guide.

How to get an individual-led remote jobs

There are two initial barriers to building a remote work career as an individual (writer, consultant, translator, etc). Firstly, you have to possess or develop a talent / service that multiple clients are willing to pay for. Secondly, you need to gain the influence to tell people about it. Social media skills are crucial to obtain that valuable social proof - the wisdom of the crowd needs to say that you are a great person to work with.

If a gifted writer’s words exist only on their MacBook, their impact will be non-existent. If an amateur consultant spams their socials with poor advice, their impact will be negative. If you want to secure remote work in a certain area, you have to first ensure that you are good at what you are doing. This comes with practice and experience.

 Offer your services for free or at a reduced rate (maybe as a side hustle while you continue your normal job) and finesse your offer based on client feedback. Develop a pool of people who are happy to recommend you - and don't be scared to ask them for referrals. 

Once you are confident in your ability, you can move onto increasing your reach and influence in the market. Develop an impressive portfolio slowly over time and invest in building a presence on the social media platforms that are best suited for what you are doing. Anyone can cultivate a voice on social media - make sure that you don't fall into the trap of chasing views and likes for the sake of it - resist the temptation to get too personal with your content.

Securing corporate remote jobs

Searching for corporate remote work is a little more complicated. Much depends on the nature of the role (partially or fully distributed) and the culture of the employer. It might be advertised as a corporate remote job, but unless the company and your future colleagues have created a successful remote culture, you may be setting yourself up for failure. This role will have to be included in your resume, so don’t rush in blindly. Ask about their remote on-boarding and use your judgement to understand the fit.

It may also be the case the the company do not understand the parameters of the remote work. Sending off a work from home resume for a job that isn't clearly 100% remote is a risk. It is better to send a normal resume and then explore the possibilities once the employer has developed an interest.

Think through every aspect of what working remotely in a corporation will mean for the role. Find examples of your previous experience where you have worked autonomously and achieved results with a remote team. Make sure that your resume has a strong accent on the qualities needed for corporate remote work. 

Pitch your work from home resume in such a way that hiring you will not be a risk from a remote work perspective. Look for work on remote job boards like Flexjobs, for example. While lots of people are working from home right now, far from all of them are working effectively. Work out your secret sauce and tell them how you make things happen.

Job search evaluation: assess every remote vacancy

Remember that not every role will be right for your personal circumstances or career goals and your job search efforts should always be aligned with your long-term objectives. We explore whether or not you should apply for that job here. 

Think about how your remote work will be structured. Will you be part-time and able to create a portfolio career? Will you be expected to go into the office once or twice a week? If you are working remotely full-time, are there opportunities for progression? When searching for a job, consider your working hours and take into account your personal circumstances. Ideally fit a role that fits your needs – the risks begin when you start to compromise on these basic considerations. When it comes time to change roles, how easy will be be to keep your remote working routine?

Secondly, remember that company culture evaluation matters in your job search. Constant zoom quizzes and motivational sessions can get a little intrusive when all you want to do is unwind at the end of the day. Understand how you will be working with those employees who will still be office-based. Think about what sort of working from home experience you want.

Will you be expected to work in the same way as your colleagues or is there flexibility that will take into account individual circumstances. The best remote work teams embrace collective responsibility - what is best for the team should still come first, but each individual can make their own decisions within that framework.

How to put remote work on your work from home resume + remote work resume samples

There are certain aspects of your work from home resume that you should tailor to give yourself the best chance of securing a remote job. This is more about your ability to perform rather than your experience, so make sure that you cover all the bases.

It is important that you mention the software and tools that you are familiar with in your resume: the likes of Slack, Salesforce, Trello, Zoom and Basecamp. Highlight your flexibility – everyone likes to work in different ways. Communication skills should be at the heart of your remote job resume - tell stories about how you collaborated with others (preferably - remotely, but if not - live team collaboration works too) to achieve results. If you can, quantify how much better you and your team performed because you were working from home. 

As word gets out that you're a professional and reliable worker, your first remote job may just lead to more opportunities. So how do you add these gigs to your resume and leverage them into a flourishing career?

It all depends on the type of remote job you work. In this chapter, we'll look at some of the common situations and give you resume samples that can be suited for your needs.

Corporate or traditional employment, done remotely: This is perhaps the easiest form of remote work to place on your resume. If you're working a full-time position that normally would be done in an office, all you'll need to do is list the employer name, job title and dates worked in your Employment History section. For the location, simply add "Remote." You may want to mention where the company is based in the description as seen in our remote work resume sample below.

Ongoing contract work: Jobs that last several months to a year can be trickier to place on your work from home resume because you may have too many to list as you would traditional employment. In this case, you may want to consider creating a category called "Remote positions" where you can list these positions along with 2-3 bullet points. Make sure to give the most space and attention to the roles that are most relevant to the new job. See our remote work resume sample below.

Individual gigs and short-term projects: Many freelancers can work on several projects a month, sometimes for multiple clients. Adding all the details of these projects to your resume would take up too much space, so your best bet is to group them into types of work. Below you'll find a remote work example of someone who writes SEO content for beauty brands. Notice how the names of the companies are woven into the job description.

These roles do not have to be in chronological order. While you should still list dates of employment, start the list with the gigs and projects that are most relevant for the role. You do not have to list them all on a work from home resume - the employer will understand that you may have undertaken a plethora of roles.

Remote job management, productivity and avoiding burnout 

Many people are concerned about the stable management of remote jobs: the job security aspect, productivity, motivation and how to avoid burnout. You read about burnout a lot, but it happens to everyone. 

It might well be easier to fire someone that you are not sitting with in the office every day (although for some individuals that is a hidden bonus), but the fact remains that if you are performing in the role and hitting your targets, there is little danger. It actually works both ways – as it becomes easier to change remote working jobs, your employer may well be actively trying to keep you on board. Managing sustained performance and communication in a remote job comes down to a few key considerations that we’ll cover in the subchapters of our remote job guide below. But first, check out these three tips for avoiding burnout from the writer Morra Aarons-Mele.

Value team performance in remote jobs

Getting stuff done in remote work is not all down to you. Understanding how to engage with your team to make their specific contributions is crucial. Work hard to build relationships, let people into your world a little and be generous with your time and assistance whenever you can. 

Find ways of communicating with others that work for them – some might prefer a video call while others prefer messaging apps. Convey all this subtlety of understanding in your work from home resume.

Prioritize planning while working from home

To keep a remote job, you cannot afford to lose track of your priorities and let your motivation dip. When you are sitting alone with your laptop (in the blissful pauses between Zoom meetings) you have a choice. 

32% of people in remote working jobs find social media too tempting. 24% get side-tracked by their family members or partners. Working from home effectively means setting aside time with a notebook or a planning app to actually organize your time.

Optimize use of technology for remote work

With the plethora of options in terms of communicating with colleagues, organizing your time and enabling remote work, technology has the potential to save you time and effort. As long as you don’t overuse (and abuse) it. Think carefully about whether it is enhancing or detracting from what you and your colleagues need to achieve. Demise by WhatsApp notification is always a metaphorical threat.

If you are sure that you are performing sustainably in your role, organized in your approach and making technology work for you rather than against you, the final aspect of the remote work existence that might derail your chances is your physical and mental health.

Remember self-care even in remote jobs

In a remote job, you may be tapping away at the computer with the cat rubbing against your legs, having the freedom to pick up the kids from school, or going for a walk with your partner. But it also means you are your own boss for much of the day. So don’t be too self-critical and flood your own “ working from home environment” with negativity.

 Not everything will work out as planned, not every conversation or meeting will be perfect. Instead of letting off steam with a colleague over a coffee, go for a quick run or cycle and breathe some air. Physical exercise is vital.

Planning your working day is a huge part of ensuring a profitable and enjoyable remote job experience – be realistic in terms of what you can achieve and reward yourself when you hit your goals. When it comes time to make the evening meal, leave thoughts about work until tomorrow. 

Preserve human connections despite remote work

Isolation in remote work often has a negative impact on mental health, so it is important to find ways of connecting with as many people as possible. You may actually find yourself talking to more people that you would have done in an office environment, so make sure to make the most of it. Reach out and connect, but always be aware of loneliness – it is a modern plague.

If you have never worked in a remote job before you may not realize this yet, but there is an immense amount to be grateful for if you can make it work. When you get into the nitty gritty of the work it may not always be pleasant, but you have to consider the alternative. Remote working is here to stay because so many people are grateful for the blessings that it has brought to their lives. Make the most of the opportunity if it comes your way - the work from home resume can be your gateway to a blissful working life.

With these attitudes, remote work could be the best thing that happens to your career. That is definitely the case for all of us at Resume.io.

Here are some perspectives from our team about how we make it work for us:

Working from home life hacks: personal advice from a fully remote team

We’ve laid out a lot of theory in the chapters above. But there’s nothing like a real human story to illustrate a piece of advice. So, here are a few of ours, from an experienced team that thrives in working from home scenarios. Each story in this remote job/work guide has three pieces of advice that have helped us personally work from home productively. 

Tips for working from home from Paul (HR and recruitment writer)

My career has been a tale of three halves, ultimately arriving at a working from home setup.  After majoring in German and Russian at Nottingham University, I began a graduate program with a leading UK retailer. This later led me to work in a recruitment role in a retail startup in Russia. Although this was a corporate setting, it was incredibly entrepreneurial. Coming home years later, I knew I couldn’t return to the mundane world of UK retail. When at a crossroads in your career, you owe it to yourself to take the road less travelled.

I built on the skills that I had acquired and opened a retail recruitment business. I had two young kids under the age of two, I was working from home, and I was loving it.  Then, the 2008 recession hit, and I started a  job for a global recruiter, a large portion of it - remotely. I had the remote work bug, and I knew that this was my kinda life. 2012 started my final career pivot: writing about recruitment and HR. It was a combination of everything that I knew. I have always enjoyed writing and have been making my living from it ever since. 

Invest in your social media presence while working from home

When I started out on my HR writing career in 2012, countless “solopreneurs” were starting to realize the value of their social media personal brand as a way to boost their client acquisition while working from home. Many had taken a redundancy hit at the hands of faceless corporations and they wanted to take more control over their careers. They had skills that clients were ready to pay for, they simply needed to find a way of communicating them in their remote work and freelance setups. Enter content marketing.

As well as ghostwriting content for my audience, from 2013-2016 I wrote 100+ blogs under my name. I saw it as a way to reach new potential clients and although I have since scaled back the amount of personal writing as my client roster is pretty full, investing in your social media presence is the best thing that any remote worker in the UK can do. 

Put your remote work time into little boxes

If I am not laser focused on the task at hand, I tend to find that time slips away from me. Everyone handles remote work in different ways, but unless I have a “small task” deadline to concentrate my mind, I struggle to find the right words. I understood fairly early that “chunking” my time to create mini-deadlines throughout the week and day gives me a sense of achievement. It allows me to work from home in a more organized manner. You are often alone with your thoughts in a remote job and without this segmentation of time into little tasks, it is hard to avoid distractions.

Get ready for the rollercoaster ride of working from home

If you aim to do remote work for the foreseeable future, you will likely have a mix of corporate work (big clients) and more transient activity. Prepare yourself mentally that not every project will go to plan, not everyone will agree with your opinion and that you will always be at the mercy of events that are out of your control. In this regard, working from home is no different than an office job.

I always try to celebrate every little win at work, so when the disappointments come along it is easier to retain some perspective. Life is too short to dwell on what might have been, so keep searching for the next remote job opportunity. If you are good at what you do, your rewards will come. 

Remote jobs advice from Ivan (copywriter, content manager, branding consultant)

I started working at the age of 17 and it feels like most of my career has been either remote work or “working on the go”. The first gig that I had was as a reporter for a small newspaper, covering cultural events in the capital of Ukraine. Reporting was still done on foot back then.  I also chose to write most articles while working from home. 

True remote work came during my university years in Poland: as a contributor for one U.S. political magazine, then - an associate editor for another. Then, pure chance and my affinity for the English-speaking world steered me into a stable remote work career: copywriting, marketing and freelance. A friend needed an English-speaking writer to help launch his European startup in the U.S. That one little remote job began a wild ride many years long: writing blogs for CEOs, developing branding strategies for creative campaigns and breathing life into stories of businesses.

Today, I write and consult for several companies simultaneously. Working from home saves me a lot of time in periods of crunch, and even my little rented office isn’t that different from a remote job.

Work from home but think on your feet

I walk a lot. A LOT. This may not be a recipe fit for everyone, but whenever there’s intellectual work to be done, I do it during prolonged movement or trivial chores. While I do the hands-on work from home or my small personal office, I do most of my remote work prep in my head. When the strictest part of the COVID quarantine hit my home city, public transportation shut down. I walked a few hours to work each day. I loved it. I’ve never come up with so many creative ideas or solutions for problems as I did during those walks. 

Walking works especially well for me as a blend of meditation, “quiet thinking time” and movement-based stimulation. I’ve read studies that show walking and running boosts neural activity. That definitely feels true to me.

When working from home, we still spend so much time washing dishes, going out for groceries, walking to work or college… all the while thinking anxious or meandering thoughts that often leave us feeling stressed or empty. Try to fill this time by “gamifying” your remote work projects and coming up with cool ideas in your head. Let your thoughts flow quietly while the world bustles around you.

Move and think. Which leads me to my next point.

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Value your enthusiasm, gamify your remote work tasks

If you do anything creative in your remote work from home, here’s the trick: allow yourself to fantasize lightheartedly about projects. Let it be a game, a daydream during mundane chores that require no effort. As you go about your non-work day, think of cool ways to express yourself in your writing, the stories you can tell, the novel solutions to project challenges. Let yourself be a little freer and think of remote work like solving little puzzles or scenarios. What you’ll often find is that by the time you return to your PC/Mac, you already have a plan formed in your head.

And even if your remote job is not creative, there are still options to engage yourself:

• Think of how you can optimize your tasks while working from home to get to the rewards. Imagine you’ve got a particularly boring piece of work waiting – but it pays well. Think of what you’re going to buy with the money, or how relieved you’re going to feel once it’s done.
• Explore side-skills. For most of my remote work career, I feel like this has been my biggest time investment. And it has helped me pull through the most boring and difficult stretches. Find new creative spins on your current skills. When I burned out on technical writing or ghostwriting, I started listening to marketing podcasts and doing courses. This led me to serious branding projects. When I got tired of that, I spent time on game development. Looking for the “next cool professional thing“ has helped me stay sane.

Years after I had independently arrived at these two tactics  of “walking/routine meditation” and “daydreaming / gamification”, I found that David Lynch has a similar creative process (incidentally – a successful creative person that also mostly works from home).

Find a physical outlet that distracts you from your remote job

This is a bit cliched, but I’ve learned the hard way doing remote work that your body is one interconnected neurochemical system. Sometimes all it took was one sleepless night working from home on a critical deadline to send me into a spiral of junk food, nerves and lack of stability. So, I’ve become a bit  of a “positive neurotic” about physical stuff. It’s almost a matter of professional survival to me now, as I can’t afford to spiral anymore.

I can’t boast about always eating healthy or always sticking to a stable routine, but there’s a life hack that has helped me never abandon good habits in the long run: find a physical activity that you actually like and. It has to be outside your working from home environment, but it has to also spark your interest. Too many people go to the gym and half-heartedly lift weights because, well, everyone does it.

Forget that. Find a group sport, a martial art, a sports community or an individual regime that engages you mentally. If you like it (and the people connected to it) you’ll have a more sustainable reason to stay engaged than just modern-day body-shame. My personal love of boxing as a way of “gamified” self-improvement has definitely saved me from more than one mental breakdown. Remote jobs are tough on your mind and emotions, if you find a sport, let it also be a support system.

Remote job advice from Karl (writer, editor, translator)

I started writing when I was 6, and by age 13 I was working a de facto remote job by mailing my best stories to magazines in hopes of publication. I dreamed that when I grew up I would live in an RV, traveling around the U.S. writing magazine articles. At the age of 51, this dream mostly came true, except the country was Costa Rica (and I never got the RV).  

I spent 25 years working a desk job as an editor at California’s San Jose Mercury News. But my father died in 2014, and I had an epiphany — life is short, and you’d better live it the way you want. So I got a wild hair, quit my job, sold all my stuff and bought a one-way ticket to Costa Rica. This led me to my remote work career. I figured I would try to sell travel articles, but I never thought I could make a living writing. Yet for the six years I’ve been in Costa Rica, that’s exactly what I’ve done. And my work has been almost 100% remote. 

Somehow I landed a full-time job as travel editor of the Tico Times. I occasionally went into the office to attend meetings, but I did almost all my writing working from home or on the road. My job was to barnstorm around the country writing travel articles (my childhood dream come true). So I would go bungee jumping by day and file a story on it that same night from my hotel room.

Unfortunately, the owner of the Tico Times died and the entire staff was laid off. But I would land on my feet in the remote gig economy, finding work as a content writer, copywriter, book editor, paid blogger, SEO specialist and Spanish-to-English translator.

I’ve done all of this work at my kitchen table, setting my own hours and managing my one employee — myself. And I’ll never work in an office again. Here are three suggestions I would make to anyone interested in working from home as a contractor or freelancer:

Build connections that will lead to more remote jobs

Every one of the jobs mentioned above came about as a result of personal connections established through other remote jobs. Several came from old contacts at the Mercury News. Many came from conducting interviews for stories I was doing working from home, and then learning that the interviewee needed a writer too. 

When I moved to Costa Rica, I drastically underestimated the need for English-language writers here. The country is driven by tourism, and almost every business needs publicity in well-written English. The pool of professional writers who speak English as a first language in this country is small. So as I spent time just doing my job, one thing led to the next and 99% of opportunities could be done as remote work. 

Find a way to make yourself a big fish in a small pond. Figure out what you’re good at and where your skills are needed, and focus like a laser on tapping that market.

Make yourself indispensable to your clients

At times I’ve done some drudge remote work for low pay because I saw the prospect of long-term work that could eventually pay well.

Be alert for clients who are going to need a lot of work done over a prolonged period. If the money offered for the first job is low, do it anyway. If it’s a really promising client, do it for free. If you’re good, the client will want to use you again, and eventually will realize what you’re worth, and they will even see your working from home habits as a cost-saving benefit.

Make yourself indispensable to your clients by providing reliable, accurate, fast work. Make them dread the idea of having to find somebody to replace you. Make them need you!

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Working from home is like ping-pong, so hit the ball back

I think of remote work like a ping-pong game, a constant exchange where you have to keep hitting the ball back. If you get an email, answer it right away. If you receive a text, reply. If you’re given a job to do, do it and send it back. Working from home allows you to communicate more, not less. You can just choose when to do it.

They say the perfect is the enemy of the good. Obviously you don’t want to rush to send out subpar work, but you also don’t want to spend a week perfecting your comma usage on a job the client needed five days ago. Surprise your clients by being not only competent but fast.

There is no juggling in ping-pong, so don’t let the balls pile up on your end of the table. Hit them back as soon as you can. Such a high tempo of remote work can be incredibly satisfying - if you adopt a sustainable approach you will be able to keep it up for many years.

We hope that both our general advice and the working from home stories in our remote job guide have been useful. We wish you luck and fulfillment in your professional journey!