I have enjoyed working from home and I thought it might help if I shared how I got my job with others.
Have less common skills. If you are good at something and it is less common, you have leverage against a company that wants you to work in an office. Since I work in IT, it is more common to work from home in that industry.- Be willing to say no. You can get more money by working on-site, but that doesn’t count the other costs of working onsite. I like being able to spend time with those I love, and I am more efficient working in my home environment. I am an HSP and that means that too much stimulation makes me less focused and more tired. Working from home has improved the quality and quantity of my work.
- Invest in your home office environment. I bought a top-of-the-line internet connection, router/WiFi, and equipment. I can work more reliably here and faster than I could in the last office environment I was in. This is a fact because my internet connection is 10 times faster. In IT the speed that you can download and move information is important to be efficient.
- Have a company do your resume professionally. I can’t state this enough. The single biggest thing that has helped my career is paying for Storeyline Resumes to edit my resume. I do not get any benefit from sharing this. After I used their resume I got 10 times the number of people contacting me and continue to get daily and sometimes multiple times a day recruiter interest.
- Have a quiet environment in which to work. If you can’t have a quiet environment, then buy excellent headsets that are wireless. I like two for different reasons and use them regularly. One of them is Razor Blackshark ($150), and the other is the Sennheiser Accentum.
- Make your LinkedIn profile stand out. I talk more about that in this article.
- Read my suggestions on how to make your LinkedIn Profile stand out.
- Use LinkedIn learning to complete subjects/topics to demonstrate that you are knowledgeable about a topic. You have to give recruiters a reason to believe that you are real and knowledgeable. I pay for a premium account to use this and also to allow other people to message me if they might want to connect. If you have valuable things to share, people will connect with you on their own accord.
- Post each day. I have been posting for more than a decade and posts show that you are wanting to share what you have learned and also demonstrate that you know something. People want the information you know, they just don’t know how to ask for it.
- Be patient. With time, you will get people coming to you with offers. If that doesn’t happen and applying for jobs and all of the other things you are doing above will position you as someone who takes their career very seriously.
Good luck everyone!