Tips for Landing a Remote Job Right Out of College
There is a new trend catching on in the business world: remote jobs. Not only does remote work provide more freedom and flexibility of schedule, but it offers less of the commonplace annoyances of a 9 to 5— like traffic jams, cubicles, and your boss sitting right down the hall. Not only are these basic perks beginning to change the way employees work, but the shift in traditional business ideology is causing employers to rethink the way companies are supposed to be run.
For those persons who are comfortable and confident of their abilities to work alone, stay on task, and still contribute to a wonderful company vision, remote work begins to make a lot of sense. These remote positions are great options for people at various stages of life: the young married couple with an infant, the entrepreneur who needs more flexibility to attend to growing that business on the side, or the single wanderlust-filled college grad.
Whatever point in life or career you may be in, work from home jobs are becoming more common, and thus the skills that you have are becoming more marketable to companies who are comfortable with the idea of remote positions. The trick to all this however is actually finding, and then landing, a remote job. Doing so just out of college will prove a bit more difficult, not just because it is a remote role, but because finding a job just out of college tends to take more time than your optimistic professors and parents would hope.
While it would be dramatic to say that finding a job just out of college is “too hard!”, there is still a considerable rate of time for unemployment between being handed a diploma and actually signing a contract of employment— around three to six months. Half a year’s unemployment feels much longer when faced with the reality of having to move back home. The good news is that the actual unemployment rates for recent college graduates as of December 2022 was only 4.1%!
However, there was a significant percentage of college graduates who were not optimistic about the ability to land a job in line with their career goals. The pandemic put a major dampener on those hopes and dreams, but the economy has been on a steady rise since that time of unusual crisis.
With things open, and the economy back to some sense of normalcy, employers are on the hunt again. This time with new ideas about how to conduct business. With all that in mind, here are some tips for landing a remote job right out of college. Let’s begin with the basic, tried and true methods for just finding a job.
Finding a good job will be a challenge for most people at any point in their careers, but finding a job just out of college tends to be a bit more difficult, if only because of the illogical circular reasoning in the business world of education and experience. In our modern economy, in order for most employers to take an application seriously, there needs to be evidence of a college diploma. Regardless, with that checked off, sadly, all that hard work does little more than to signify to some employers a sense of dedication and the intelligence enough to handle basic entry level positions. A diploma demonstrates competency, generally, but not specifically. This is where “experience” comes in.
Experience is a great thing!… if one has it. But being that most college students spent every waking hour of the last four years studying rather than working, that may have meant little time for a job. A remedial job just to bring in money (so as not to stare while studying) does little to impress employers that, under the basic requirements section of the job description, are asking, “minimum 2 years experience”. This is a terribly common phrase that can quickly push an application to the trash. As such, one of the best ways to get a job straight out of college is to actually accrue “work experience” while in college.
Experience
First step: gain work experience before or during college to apply to a resume for that dream job. Colleges nowadays have plenty of clubs and organizations to join. Paid or volunteer work makes little difference so long as the abilities and transferable skills can be communicated to employers. The added bonus to gathering experience while in college is that the topics being learned in school can help to refine which skill sets come most naturally.
Understanding which skills you have and which you may want to specialize in can help the later process of narrowing down what type of industry and department of a company you can apply for. A quick search during the initial phases of browsing a job board’s postings will tell you if that company even has remote positions available. If not, you can move on to a company that does offer remote positions. This easy weed-out will save a lot of time and significant amounts of stress in the job search process.
Networking
Networking is one of the most well tested and dependable methods by which a person can gain employment. Employers look through resumes to narrow down which candidates might be good for a team, and thus good for the company. That requires people skills. A resume does little to communicate character and personality, that’s why interviews come next. One of the best parts about networking is that those characteristics can be demonstrated directly to employers before they might look over a resume.
Not only this, but the inevitable references part of the section — which just reinforces what might be discovered of a personality during an interview process— can suddenly come from someone already working within the company. In this sense, networking reverses the job search game. Rather than having to frantically swim upstream with the millions of other recent college grads to where the job doors are, networking can open a door to an interview that makes the employer ask you for an interview.
Portfolio’s
Social media changed everything, including the way employers scrutinize potential employees. While a Facebook or LinkedIn profile will help to create a basic online presence, a portfolio actually displays evidence of hard work and ability. Taking the extra steps to create a personal website or online portfolio gives employers something tangible to look at and weigh in consideration of the education and experience that has been accrued. Even if a website seems like too much work, just having a collection of writing, photography, or hobby projects created over the years shows potential employers the skills that you might bring to the table. Bonus points if you can link that portfolio to an existing social media profile.
Putting it All together: Refining a resume for Remote Jobs
Remote work is not like the typical jobs that you may have had in the past, it will a require slight variation on the skills that may have been used in other situations. A change in the patterns of your day-to-day lifestyle and project management is something that people need to be prepared for. Remote work is primarily a combination of personal organizational skills and technical skills.
Personal and Organizational Skills
Time management will be, by far, the most important and consistent skill required of anyone looking to do remote work. While working remotely has the benefits of flexibility of both time and space, lack of discipline in time management can wreck a good job. There will be no teacher, co-worker, or boss just down the hall to come in and check on your progress, only the pressure of deadlines and a genuine desire to do a good job can keep you on track.
Not understanding how to predict how long a project will take, and then balancing that with all the other tasks that come in a day, can ruin any of the perks of flexibility. On the other hand, if you know that you already have this ability, communicating this to a potential employer will reinforce your resume. Make sure you include those phrases.
In order to be an effective and efficient employee, all workers need to be able to show the ability to prioritize certain tasks for execution, remote workers especially so. The prioritization of tasks can be categorized in a variety of ways, but understanding the linearity of what steps need to be taken first in conjunction to how long it takes to accomplish those steps is key. Furthermore, recognizing what times of the day are ideal to tackle each task will cause a greater output of work. Practicing this skill, and then being able to communicate it on a resume or in an interview, will catch the attention of most employers.
Despite what some people may think or idealize remote work, you will still have to be a team player. Sometimes even more so with remote work. This is because, while working in an office, people have greater availability to interact with and observe the habits and personalities of co-workers, remote work detracts from that obviousness.
Having a level of willingness and emotional sensitivity to communicate by digital means is important to interacting and successfully working with other remote team members. Without the ability to communicate effectively in these less traditional business techniques will be a great identifier of your hireability.
Technical skills
Without a doubt, technical skills will be amongst the most immediately necessary abilities for success in a remote role. Software and applications like Skype and Google Meet, Slack and Microsoft Suite are indispensable and, oftentimes, much needed technical abilities to land any job in this modern economy, that is especially true of remote work.
College may have equipped you with the basics, but going out of your way to explore, learn and practice with such applications will make a resume stand out from others. Having these skills ready will do much to alleviate the hesitations an employer may feel about how long an onboarding process may take. Training takes time, and thus costs money. Any ability you can bring to the table that shortcuts that time is valuable to an employer.
Summary
Working remotely is a fun and refreshing option for workers today, and while there are certainly still more traditional, in-office roles, the number of remote positions is growing worldwide. In theory, finding a remote job should be no more difficult than locating a regular job, but with so many people grasping for the new trend, jobs may go quickly. So, in order to find and land a remote job — let alone right out of college— you are going to have to make yourself stand out.
Not just more than your peers, but especially those people who have a few years more experience than you. With the right skills, connections, polished resume, and confidence in hand, that next dream job may be yours sooner than you think.