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There are many reasons why people look for remote jobs. Maybe they can’t stand the commute, prefer the productivity of the home office, or want more flexibility to balance work and life commitments. But what this all means is that competition for remote jobs is higher than ever, especially since it attracts a bigger pool of candidates since they aren’t restricted by geography in the same way.
So, how can you stand out and make yourself an attractive candidate for remote positions? Below are four essentials skills that should be included in your resume and highlighted in your application to increase your attractiveness as a remote candidate.
1. Previous Remote Experience
When hiring, businesses are often looking for people who can hit the ground running and won’t take months to learn the new necessary skills. If the job is remote, working remotely is one of those skills. If you are accustomed to working in an office, it is not always easy to transition to independent time management and online communications tools while remaining productive, communicative, and effective.
For this reason, many businesses while prioritize previous experience working remotely when hiring new remote employees. This is now a skill that many people have, since so much of the workforce went remote for a significant time during the pandemic.
If you are just entering the workforce, you can highlight parallel experience, such as studying, which also requires you to manage your own time and self-motivate to get things done on time.
Moreover, you should highlight the skills you have developed working with and managing remote teams, even if that is something that you did from the office. Even if you are not remote, do you manage or work as part of remote teams spread across the country or even the world? Do you use digital tools to coordinate with colleagues in different divisions or time zones?
Where possible, don’t just talk about your experience working remotely, but tangible outcomes for the business that can be linked to your remote work experience. Were you able to recruit and manage international talent that otherwise would have been inaccessible for the business? Were you able to outsource junior level jobs to more affordable remote employees, saving the company’s bottom line? Were you able to introduce new systems and practices that allowed remote teams to work more effectively and boosted company productivity.
The person on the other side of the hiring table often finds hard facts about what you did and the impact that it had a compelling reason to hire.
2. Collaboration Skills
Many remote workers consider themselves to have fairly independent jobs. Perhaps they spend the whole day writing code and only check in with the team a couple of times a week. Maybe they are responsible for running the website and only need to provide stats, feedback, and requests on a monthly basis.
But the truth is that no one works in a silo, and when people work too independently, that is when things slip through the cracks. Maybe a feature has been scrapped and you waste half a day coding for it before you are told it is no longer necessary. Maybe there is a spike in website activity that the sales team could capitalize on, but by the time that filters back, the wave has passed.
This is why the ability to collaborate remotely is an essential tool. While no-one wants talent to be checking communications all the time, diminishing their deep work time and productivity, being able to stay closely connected to the rest of the team and keep an eye on the bigger picture that you are contributing to is essential.
Being able to show how you ability to collaborate has been valuable for the company, by avoiding pitfalls or jumping on opportunities quickly, will impress.
Many companies will list the collaboration tools that they use in the job description, such as Slack, Asana, and Trello. If you can demonstrate your experience working with these specific tools that is a bonus. But don’t forget to share the other collaboration tools you are familiar with since businesses are always upgrading and optimizing how they work.
3. Presentations and Online Communication
When you aren’t seeing people face-to-face in the office, your main opportunities to show others what you are doing and why it matters tend to be in video call presentations and email communications. Companies appreciate remote employees who are very good at both.
These days, many people feel like their days are dominated with back-to-back Zoom calls that aren’t always directly relevant. Consequently, it can be hard to engage colleagues in this mode. Being able to deliver dynamic presentations that immediately highlight why what you are saying is important and then quickly provides colleagues with the relevant information that they need to make decisions and adjust their own work is essential.
Doing this effectively relates to how you structure your content, how you deliver it personally in the call, the visual aids that you provide, and the follow up documentation that you provide to colleagues who need to know more. Knowing how to use the video conferencing platform of choice is also key, as there are few things more frustrating that watching a colleague squint at the screen while they try to figure out how to share things with you.
This same principle extends to email communications. You might often be required to send an update to the team via email or similar communication platform, but you probably aren’t communicating your message effectively if you send a 10-minute read with text-dense attachments. Again, your colleagues should know why this email is important and get the headline information without having to scroll. Producing great infographics and visual aids that communicate things at a glance can be a great skill to stand out in this area.
Since the person who is hiring you is likely to be one the people sitting through your presentations, reading your emails, and dealing with team issues when communication fails, these are skills that will stand out during the hiring process.
4. Data, Analytics, and AI
Many businesses are now moving towards a data driven approach. Boards are less impressed by gut instinct that they are for data that shows what works and what doesn’t and where the gaps and opportunities are. People who are good with data are among the lucky few that kind find remote work across international borders. They are just that valuable.
If you are good with data and you have successfully optimized work processes, created predictive models that have improved engagement, or found hidden pain points in the customer journey, these should be highlighted in your application. Businesses want to believe that you can bring this same magic to their company and will be impressed if they can identify you as a potential changemaker.
In addition to this, many businesses are considering how they can leverage AI to automate aspects of their pipeline and improve productivity. But many businesses don’t know how best to leverage AI or implement it. If you can demonstrate experience in these areas, even if it is not a direct requirement for your job, they may see you as the missing piece of a puzzle.
There are plenty of online data and AI courses that you can take to start developing your skills if this is an area that interests you. Data Camp can be a great place to start.
Remember to Make it About the Business
While highlighting all these skills will certainly help your application, remember when applying for remote jobs make the attractiveness of remote working about the business and not you. Yes, employers understand that people want to work remotely for their own personal reasons, and they are willing to offer flexibility to attract and retain the best talent. But, when it comes to hiring, they won’t be impressed by someone who is mostly attracted to the role because it is remote, and they want the convenience of not coming into the office.
Of course, you should not lie about your personal motivations, as that would seem ingenuine. But remember to highlight how you working remotely will help the business. You enjoy the challenge and inspiration that comes with working in diverse, international teams, and you have the skills to make this kind of complex collaboration work. You are more productive when you work remotely because you can engage in better deep work, but you know how to stay connected with the team so you don’t end up working in isolation.
Whatever you talk about, always frame it with the needs of the company in mind.
