Techniques for Finding Telecommuting
Employment
It seems everyone wants to do it: Work from home, that
is. Whether it’s being able to work in their pajamas, or getting to spend
some extra time with their children, something is prompting people to consider
giving up their day job to look for this "alternative" form of employment.
The only problem seems to be actually finding a work-from-home job! Where
are these companies that have openings for telecommuters? In the paragraphs
that follow, you will learn how to research and find home-based employment.
SCAMS
The first thing to be aware of is scams, such as when
a person or company poses as an employment firm, yet requires you to pay
X amount of money in order for you to be placed. Or, a company claims to
be a hiring company, but requires you to pay X amount of money in order
to
“process your application”.
If you are looking for a home-based job, you should follow
the same procedures that you did when you sought traditional employment:
send a resume, get an interview, fill out some tax forms, and agree upon
wages or commission.
JOB CATEGORIES
Thanks to the widespread use of computers and the Internet,
working from home has come a long way since envelope-stuffing and craft
assembly, To demonstrate, I’ve broken down different types of telecommuting
arrangements into four categories.
1) 100% REMOTE OR VIRTUAL
Virtual or Remote work typically means that you will
never personally meet your employer or your client. Your location is irrelevant.
You will go through the entire application and hiring process online. Obviously,
jobs under this heading will require that you are very computer literate.
Typically, this is the hardest category of work to find
because there are trust issues. You will need to be very good at selling
yourself on your resume. Competition in this category is extremely high.
2) HALF IN/HALF OUT
This category refers to work that is based from home
but requires you to leave your home to complete important functions of
the job. You still might never have to visit your company’s office, or
even personally meet anyone that you work with or for. However, portions
of your job must be performed away from the home. Jobs in this category
will usually allow you to create your own hours, work at your own pace,
and work around your own schedule.
3) MAKING AN OCCASIONAL APPEARANCE
some jobs may require that you physically check in from
time to time. Or you might need to receive your initial training in person,
or attend weekly, monthly, or yearly meetings or conferences. If you aren’t
local to the company’s headquarters, you need to be prepared for occasional
travel, sometimes including overnight stays to accommodate meeting or training
schedules.
When you show up for a company meeting, be aware that
you will be re-evaluated. Be prepared to continue to sell yourself as a
valuable employee. Your boss will be asking him or herself, “Why should
I keep this employee?”
4) LOCAL CANDIDATES ONLY
Some companies may allow you to work from home, but want
to make sure that you are physically accessible. Either that’s how they
feel comfortable or, perhaps, there are assignments that need to be delivered
to you in person. In this category, you will more than likely be under
an employee status, rather than an independent contractor, which is common
within the other categories. You might have to pick up your work assignments
every day or week, and then deliver completed work to them personally at
a determined time
Once you have learned the various types of work arrangements
that exist, and you are able to avoid the scams, the next step is to actually
locate an actual job. For most people, this is the hardest part. There
are several good sources to use when you look for home-based employment.
They include:
1) Job boards
2) Staffing firms’ web sites
3) Fee-based job sites
4) Work-from-home sites
5) Freelance web sites
The first place most job seekers look when they want to
find employment is in their local newspapers. However, if you find even
one legitimate work-from-home job ad there, you’ll be lucky. Companies
rarely advertise at-home positions in newspapers.
The Internet, word-of-mouth, and creating a job are the
best ways to find a home-based job. For one reason, the Internet is the
primary way a home-based worker and a company communicate. It also offers
the widest array of job-hunting sources. So, if you aren’t Internet savvy
it’s time to get that way.
JOB BOARDS
The most common online source that’s used to find jobs
is what I call Mega Job Boards. Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com are a
couple examples of Mega Job Boards. These are general job boards and they
will post any job, in any occupational category that a company pays them
to post.
While it is possible to find some good job leads here,
you will have to do a lot of screening. A simple keyword search such as
“work from home” will yield hundreds of results that are usually spam,
scams, or something in between. (We'll talk about how to do a quick scan
in a following paragraph.)
Fortunately, there are other job boards worth looking
into. One type is the NICHE job board, which only advertises jobs within
a particular industry or category. Retailjobs.com is an example of an industry
niche board. This site posts only job leads from companies seeking retail-related
workers. NetTemps.com is an example of a category Niche board. Rather than
posting jobs within a particular industry, they post for any industry as
long as the job are all for temporary or contractual positions.
Another type of job boards is what I call SUPERNICHE job
boards. These boards focus on a single profession within an industry. IHireNursing.com
is an example. This site focuses strictly on nursing jobs, and does not
post jobs for the entire medical field. IHireAccountants.com is another
example. Niche and Super-Niche boards carry a lot less junk than the Mega
Job Boards because moderators of these boards screen ads more carefully
before posting them. Therefore, these are good sources for finding work-from-home
jobs.
Now, when viewing search results from Mega Job Boards,
you can scan these ads without actually having to read all of them. Look
for some common denominators, so to speak. For example, if you have 50
job results on one page, and most of them start with “Work from home! Easy
work!” you know to ignore it. Or, if you see that one company is posting
dozens of the same ad for areas all over your country, you should probably
avoid those, too. (Such ads are probably ads posted by a Webmaster or affiliate
in an effort to lure to you a site to purchase something.) Look for ads
that advertise specific positions, posted by a real-sounding companies
or staffing firms. For example:
Case manager needed for adolescents.
Orange County Appraiser needed.
Account executive for Northern territory
Legitimate jobs rarely put “work from home” in their job
title. Why? Because working from home is a benefit, or perhaps a requirement.
It is not a job! So, scan past all the amazing results and focus on the
jobs.
Another internet job resource is STAFFING FIRMS’ WEB SITES
There was a time when, if you wanted to apply for a job
through a staffing firm, you would have to actually visit a firm in person.
Now, you can simply visit their web site. You can browse their lists of
jobs--even using search words, like on the bigger job boards--and submit
your resume for their database in the event that they have a position that
meets your criteria. And, since these companies are hired to find people
to fill job openings, they will actively seek you out if you are qualified
for a job they've been asked to fill. I suggest that you leave your resume
on every staffing firm web site you can find.
FEE-BASED WEB SITES are another option
Due to the growing popularity of telecommuting, there
are some people who make it their business to comb the job boards, online
groups, staffing firms, and search engines for good job leads; and then
arrange all their information into sensible formats so that, for a fee,
you can simply log on to their web sites and view nothing but legitimate
work-from-home jobs.
Unfortunately, there are also people who think they see
a quick profit by promising job seekers that they can help them find this
difficult-to-find type of employment. Be careful to research these types
of sites before you simply read the sales pitches and claims, and then
pay their fee. You may not get what you pay for.
If you do come across the right fee-based site, you are
doing well. However, if you buy into the wrong one, you’ll end up in a
mess: applying to companies that don’t really hire home workers, or no
longer exist, or do not want their job ads posted on work-from-home web
sites. Investigate each site before you pay them their fee.
Just like spotting for scams, you should so some research
before you join a fee-based job site. You need to check into the following:
1) Their guarantee of employment
2) The type of advertising they do
3) Their reputation
4) The length of time they’ve been in business
5) Verifiable references they provide
6) Contact information
Guarantee of employment
If a fee-based job site offers you a guarantee stating
that by joining their site you will get a home-based job, run. Whether
home-based or other wise, I think we all know that being employed is probably
the last thing anyone can guarantee us!
The type of advertising they do
If you find that a fee-based company advertises itself
on job boards as a company that is hiring, be wary. Advertising is fine;
however, if they are trying to lure you to their site by posing as a hiring
company, take that as deceptive advertising. If they can’t be upfront in
the beginning, then don’t trust that they will be upfront throughout your
membership.
Their reputation
Before you invest in a fee-based site--no matter how
low the fee is--ask around. Visit telecommuting message boards and chat
groups and ask members for their opinions of a particular site. Does the
company respond to customers’ questions or complaints? Does it refuse to
give refunds when reasonable?
Length of time in business
Just because a site is new doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable.
However, if they make claims that they’ve helped thousands of people, yet
they’ve only been operating for three months, then you should stay clear.
You can usually check a site’s age by looking on Whois.net. While new companies
might have the best intentions, due to unforeseen circumstances they might
not last. If you invest money into a membership with one of them, and it
folds in three or four months, you’re back to square one.
Verifiable references
Testimonials look nice on web sites, but are they real?
Ask a site’s owner/manager if you can actually contact previous and current
customers. Is the owner open to letting you hear from other members? There
is nothing wrong with doing this. It’s just like any other service. Find
out from these references if they ever found work through the site in question.
If not, was there at least an ample amount of leads that could have helped
someone? Also find out what kind of support was available to members. Was
there someone to talk to when they had questions?
Contact information
I can hardly tell you how many times visitors of my own
web site have called and were surprised that they were actually speaking
to me. It wasn’t a miracle; I simply posted my real contact information.
If a site is asking you to pay for their service, yet doesn’t provide a
way for you to reach them, be leery. You have the right to know who’s behind
a service you are paying for.
Take the time to look into these points before you sign
up with a fee-based job site.
It’s your money; don’t lose it trying to make it!
WORK-FROM-HOME WEB SITES
Another option to consider is the numerous free work-from-home
web sites out there. These sites are usually graciously run by stay-at-home
moms, for other moms. Although they have only a fraction of the job resources
that a good fee-based web site has, and often contain non-job-related content,
they are still worth looking into. If you find just one applicable job
lead, you haven’t wasted your time.
FREELANCE WEB SITES
A quickly growing type of web site is the freelance site.
AllFreelance.com is a one such site. Jobs posted on this site typically
are projects, as opposed to long term, steady employment. Companies that
have projects to be done, such a writing a manual, sewing a line of dresses,
or creating a database, can post these projects online and let freelancers
bid on them. The person who seems the most qualified at the right price
wins the job.
CREATE YOUR OWN JOB
Staffing firms, job boards, and job lead services are
all valuable tools to use when seriously looking for a legitimate home-based
job. Another option is for you to create your own telecommuting job.
If you are a technical writer or medical transcriptionists,
for example, why not contact a company who is looking for such a person
to work onsite, and then meet with them to discuss working from your home?
Some companies are leery of using home workers. But, if you get an interview
and go in with solid qualifications and a clear blueprint on how this type
of work arrangement will actually help them, you have a pretty good chance.
This works particularly well with very small or very large companies.
Just remember that you not only have to be qualified enough
for someone to hire you for a job onsite, but you must spell out how you
will be able to perform your duties just as well--if not better-- offsite.
To help negotiate the arrangement, be willing to make a few sacrifices.
For example, since you won’t have the commuting costs that other workers
have, maybe you could agree to take on a more difficult project. Perhaps
you could cover the office for them on Saturdays. This will help you get
your foot in the door, at least.
There are numerous jobs that can be performed from home.
With a computer, a telephone, and a fax machine, there is almost no limit
to the jobs that can be done remotely, partially from home, or occasionally
from home. If you are clear on what your skills are and if you can sell
yourself properly on a resume and in an interview, you can use the vast
online resources to find a home-based job. It takes effort. But if you
use the ideas we’ve discussed here, you can find a job that’s suited for
you.
Job Career Home : Working
At Home Part Time Jobs
| Computer Work
At Home Job |
Home
Based Employment | Work
At Home Jobs |
Data Entry
Jobs | Online
Survey Job
(c) www.gotothings.com All material on this site is Copyright.
Every effort is made to ensure the content integrity.
Information used on this site is at your own risk.
All product names are trademarks of their respective
companies.
The site www.gotothings.com is in no way affiliated with
or endorsed by any company listed at this site.
Any unauthorised copying or mirroring is prohibited.
|