Work From Home Jobs

Top Places To Find WFH Jobs

Here are our favorite places to find remote work. Included in this list are some lesser known hiring platforms such as Hired.com (where 10,000 companies request interviews with you) and Getro.org (a community-driven initiative to ease the impact of COVID-19 by connecting tech professionals and hiring companies). Remotive.io is a great place to find remote work and flexjobs offers access to exclusive opportunities for a subscription fee.

Explore these sites to find your dream WFH job:

How to Find the Best Work from Home Jobs

In this guide we will focus on simple, actionable, and compelling ways to find remote work and how to differentiate yourself as a candidate. This guide is intended specifically for the active job seeker who plans to work remotely.

Step 1: Figure out what type of job seeker you are

Ask yourself the following questions: “what do I want to do?” This might seem overly simple but it is a great place to start. If you are looking for work you likely fall into three groups of job seekers:

1. You are new to an industry, perhaps because you recently completed a move geographically or academically. Maybe you just finished up college, for example.
2. You are an industry hire and are looking to stay in the same line of work. Maybe you are changing firms because you want a new manager, better pay, or a new start.
3. You are switching careers and entering a new field. This type of job seeker is looking for a career re-orientation.

If you are new to an industry or switching into a new field you will want to understand the skills that this new field values because it will inform how you build your resume, develop a hiring network, and sell yourself to employers.

Step 2: Build your resume (or your story)

You likely can’t apply for a job without telling a simple story on a piece of paper as to who you are and what you have done. Some companies will ask for your resume. Others will ask for your LinkedIn profile (optimize it here!). Others will ask for neither but set a specific time for you to interview.

Even if your resume is simple (perhaps you have not worked before) you still need to organize and thoughtfully articulate what it is that makes you unique. What have you done, or accomplished, that can help your future employer understand your capacity to add value?

There are services that can help you construct a resume. If you are switching careers or new to the workforce, I highly recommend these tools. For very little money you can have a professional editor and writer help craft your story and format your resume in a way that makes it readable and understandable to recruiters and hiring managers. 

Step 3: Know where to look for jobs

Michael Jordan famously said that “you miss 100% of the shots you do not take”. The same is true for jobs. If you are not in the know about where jobs are posted online, you won’t know they exist. And if you don’t know they exist you certainly can’t apply for the role or hope to be hired.

Most large corporations utilize applicant tracking systems which post jobs to multiple job websites, such as Indeed.com, LinkedIn, and ZipRecruiter. You can also try platforms like Hired.com, where you apply to the platform and companies search for you.

In some instances you, the job seeker, need to proactively apply to roles using these job sites. Sometimes, however, companies can reach out to you directly if you are active on these sites which leads me to the next critical point.

Step 4: Create a job seeker profile

Yes, this step is as easy as it sounds. Make sure your profile is up to date on popular sites with high employer job posting volume. On Indeed.com, for example, companies are more likely to each out to candidates that have updated and complete resumes and are active.

Indeed.com even introduced a field recently where job seekers can mark themselves “ready to work”. This signals to the employer that the candidate is ready, willing, and able to start working immediately. LinkedIn has a very similar feature: you can inform recruiters that you are actively looking. When these recruitment professionals view your profile or search for active candidates, they are more likely to engage with you.

Step 5: Apply to relevant and recent roles

There are two huge and obvious challenges when applying to a job: the company never gets back to you (this problem is bad for you, the job seeker) or your skills don’t meet the needs of the employer (this problem is bad for the company looking to hire). We have all applied to jobs and never heard back from the company. It is not a good feeling. There are a few reasons why this happens:

1. Too many other people applied and the company only has time to communicate with people it wants to interview or hire.
2. The role is no longer active or has already been filled.
3. The company is not interested in your profile.

In all three of these instances you can take proactive steps to change the outcomes. One of the easiest things you can do is sort jobs by “date posted”. Sort with the most recently posted roles first. This way you will see the most relevant, up-to-date content. Companies spend a lot of money and time posting jobs and have entire HR teams and managers dedicated to attracting and retaining talent. If you want to catch their eye, apply often and apply to roles recently opened.

Moreover, take the time to read through the job description. Does the firm ask for certain skills? Or years of experience? Apply to roles that align with your actual skill set. This will increase the odds of hearing back from the firm and moving forward with a possible hiring outcome.

Remember how I mentioned Applicant Tracking Systems earlier? Many have filters and algorithms that compare the job description with the words written on your resume. This way if a company posts a job and receives 1,000 applicants, it can sort through the resumes in a more expeditious fashion.

If your resume doesn’t align with the skills desired, it will be ranked poorly and you very likely won’t hear back. All of this goes to show that you should have an updated resume, apply to jobs that are new and fresh, and roles that ask for skills that align with your core competencies. Hiring a professional to write your resume can help boost your chances of aligning with the jobs you are applying to.

Step 6: Network

Companies want to hire good people. Hiring is laborious, expensive, and time consuming. If you have a friend, family member, classmate, or former colleague who can vouch for you, you can increase your odds of getting hired. Even if you don’t have these people in your life you can still generate a huge amount of goodwill by speaking with people that work at the company you hope to join. 

Ask them: what do they think of the firm? Ask these people for an internal referral. Ask if they have friends who are hiring managers that you can speak with. Getting your foot in the door takes work. But showing that you are resilient, determined, and hungry will go a long way to helping you land an interview, and the role.

Step 7: Practice for your interview

A new trend is arising in on-demand hiring. Some firms are stopping general screening and going right to interviews. This trend is most apparent in health care work and manufacturing.

If you are in these fields, don’t be totally surprised if you are asked for your calendar and availability to interview. The reason why this trend is arising is because it reduces candidate-firm back and forth and enables those that have the right background to show up and discuss their next steps. Virtual job fairs are increasingly popular.

All of this is to say the following: interview preparation in a tight labor market is critical. Getting an interview is hard enough. When you finally have one foot in the door you need to practice what you will say and have a range of insights, examples, and guidance to cover the questions that you might face.

Step 8: Build and maintain a pipeline of roles

The final actional way to find remote work is to constantly build a pipeline of people who might want to hire you – or other remote workers. In some sense you should always be interviewing for your next job.

This would seem even more compelling if you are younger in your career and the switching costs of changing roles is relatively low. There are three stages of a job pipeline that I measure:

1. Number of jobs applied to.
2. Number of interviews scheduled.
3. Number of jobs offers received.

Depending on your skillset (core competencies, years of experience, etc) or industry, it is a reasonable ratio to think that you will need to apply to 20 to 30 jobs to obtain 3 to 4 interviews.

Of these 3 or 4 interviews, landing 1 or 2 jobs job offers would be a strong conversion rate. In short, you need to make sure to build enough pipeline coverage at the top of the funnel to lead to results you find beneficial.

As you maintain this pipeline, think about roles you have applied for in the past.

Did you thank the company if they passed on you?

Do you stay in touch with the recruiter?

All too often the answer is no on both fronts. But why? People hire people they know. If you want to stay top of mind, stay in touch with people who have hiring budgets and powers.

Every 3 or 4 months reach out and ask how things are going. They will keep you top of mind for future roles and appreciate your hunger. This networking not only helps your pipeline it helps others – hiring managers, recruiters – advocate on your behalf.