Finding At Home Work During A Pandemic

I accidentally prepared myself a career that would keep me employed during a pandemic. For the past four years I floated between being an insurance agent for a huge brokerage back to being self employed selling insurance at home. It was a struggle for me because when I went out of the house I made more money and had more benefits. On the other side working from home allowed me the freedom I needed to be happy with my work environment. Recent struggles with health issues/personal issues have made me question if I really wanted to make the jump to full time at home work. I mean looking at the pros; no commute , extra time with my kiddo, not a lot of micromanaging, wear whatever you want, literally roll out of bed for work, and most of all extra time to manage my home life and work life towards a healthy balance. The cons at first can outweigh the pros. It was very hard to get started finding work from home. The internet can sometimes drag you down a rabbit hole of information and there are plenty of scams. I even went to freelancer.com and was suggestively asked to take my clothes off on camera. I was hesitant but ultimately just went back to what I knew and that was insurance. The place offered me a 1099 contract in 2018 and I took it because I was desperate to find a place to call home and also work from home. It was not bad at first but there are a lot of things to consider when being a freelance/contract worker. You have to file your own taxes, you are now solely responsible for keeping yourself motivate, you have to be a very organized person, and sometimes you forgo any benefits and have to get them on your own. For me this was not hard because I was and insurance agent and knew how to get my own benefits online but for other people this may not be something for you. Eventually I got tired of that company because of inconsistency in pay etc. The place I worked for before worked like a well oiled machine and it was hard to find something to compare. Eventually I went back there but it was short lived. By February of 2020 I had again walked out of the insurance world and took a step back.

Finding a good work at home job with a legit company is not as easy as it sounds. Some articles I read send me places that are one of these things; sketchy, not worth the time I spend for the money receive, some stupid app that is probably scam. Granted I am not dogging all blogs or websites etc. Just know you will spend a lot of time doing research on working from home before you actually find something that fits what you would like or enjoy to do. I am hoping if I show you how I search for job, give you some resources , and share my experience you will get a lot more out of this than some of the not so legit sites out there. Currently I am a sales development rep for a marketing company, I test websites (usertesting.com), and am currently venturing into the freelance writing realm.

Lets talk about how I find the work I want.

Searching For Remote Work

1. Indeed.com

When going to indeed there is a couple different ways I like to search for remote work. On the front page there is a what and where bar.

On the where bar I usually type the type of work I am looking for. Are you and insurance agent, teacher, writer, or real estate agent? You can even just type experience in the where bar as well customer service, management, data entry, etc. Then in the where bar simply type remote. Now, sometimes this can yield a lot of results and sometimes send you to not so great companies but fortunately you do not run into too much of that on here. If you want to yield smaller results you can do this another way. It also helps to do it this way if you are dead set on finding a company close to home that you feel you can trust.

In the what bar type remote and in the where bar type the city you want. This will produce less results and pull back any kind of remote work near you. This can be helpful if you have no experience from home and need general search results to figure out what you want to do from home and what would best suit your experience.

2. ziprecruiter.com

Now there are plenty of other sites that these two that are out there. I am trying to keep this simple and just post the ones I use the most. This is my second favorite for job searching. I feel like I get a lot more action email wise but less interviews with this site. With this search it is way different. You cannot type remote into the location spot.

This will push back unknown results. You have to use a similar idea to the second way I showed you to search with indeed. Type remote into the the bar with the magnifying glass.

You can put whatever location in the search bar you want. The way I get around the fact that it wont let me search remote work in the location bar is to change your location to 5000 miles out and you will have the ability to control how many search results come back.

Resume Rehabilitation

The other thing that helps me a tremendous amount is sucking it up and redoing my resume. Every time I look for work I completely revamp my resume. It is not that hard, put your big kid pants on and diy it up with your resume. There will be many ways you can do this. I am going to share how I do it my way. To me it is the easiest way. Now there is two different ways I go about my resume.

1. The app store on your phone

I start by typing resume builder free in my phones app store search bar. The two I use are resume builder + and quick resume. Quick resume is probably my personal favorite but they are both very similar and pretty close in rank for usability etc.

It is a pretty simple process. You download it and it literally walks you through your resume step by step. You fill out a form and categories like education, work history, skills, and subjects like that. At the end of filling it out you hit save and then can preview your new resume. If you want to get extra styles you have to go under settings and click remaining styles to get a different on if you want. This is the one I most commonly use and I also feel like it is the best way to whip up a resume in a jiffy. For me personally I have only been turned down twice out of twenty interviews with my resume/interviewing skills.

2. The second thing I use for resume is Some type of word processing service. I.E. Microsoft Word or I currently use WPS office. I started using WPS because at that time I had and outdated version of windows and did not have access to it until I upgraded to Windows 10. WPS is free to download online and offers a lot of free templates.

When you go to the document tab when you first open WPS office you can see a search bar on the right side. Simply type resume then search and the ones without diamonds are free to users. I always feel like this requires a little more effort and ingenuity but it is great for people like me who love to get creative. That is the quickest way to get a resume going but there are many other tips that are helpful for not only building a resume but also putting it out there.

A Few Helpful Tips for Utilizing Job Search Engines

You finished your resume, now what ? Well, when I am on indeed I go to the little guy in the right hand corner click on him and a drop down box will pop up. In that drop down box you will find a resume button. Click that and you will have the option to either fill out the sites generic resume or uploading your own. Personally, I have both filled out. The option add your own is on the right hand side. There is also a spot for the resume privacy settings. If you click private the only people who can see it are the ones you apply to. Some people I have talked to worry about their employer firing them for actively searching for other work so they prefer to keep it private. Public is by far my personal favorite options. I have used both settings and have found more success making mine public in the settings. I still actively apply and keep it public this seems to give me twice the amount of responses and more opportunities for employment. When I am using zip recruiter I just simply filled out my profile and the right hand side has three dots that you click. Then you will be able to see the resume spot and click it. This will take you to a page where you fill out your profile and add upload your resume. Then you are set to one click apply to many potential work places.

Do your research!

I cannot stress this enough. This was the part that was fun until it was not. When you first start looking for work from home places it is easy to get sucked in. Here is my suggestion on how to handle this. Before you quit your day job consider that many suggestions online from writers, bloggers, and general google searches can send back great ideas. Keep in mind all these great things like being a general freelancer, writer, data entry, affiliate marketing, selling handmade stuff online and many other proven lucrative ways to make money online do not happen to make you money overnight. I repeat a lot of these may take a few months or even years of finding your specific niche or personal secret for making money online. You also need take into consideration that lots of these places are 1099 and you have to file your own taxes. Which can be easy if you do the proper research and use the proper resources. Diving into this online world blind can sometimes be a bad thing or not always produce the rewards expected for a long time. It takes patience, great organization, and a great understanding of how working from home really is. Whenever I land an interview I immediately go to google , type the companies name, type reviews, and search. It sounds basic but has been very helpful in my work from home experience. Before you get on the phone for an interview or after and you are trying to decide if they offer the job will you take it? Take the time to review them and see how they treat their employees, how much they pay, and other general information you want to know. My favorite site to look on is glass door and indeed is also a good resource to research a salary if it is not listed on the job description. If you google your potential job prospect you can even type their name and revenue to find how much revenue they are expected to produce annually. If they have made only 10k annually and offer you a 60k job and they have only been in business a couple years you may rethink getting hired by them.

You may not want to quit your job yet

I personally wanted to just quit everything and go 100 percent freelance, get out of insurance, and do whatever I feel but realistically I still have bills to pay. Google, youtube, and personal blogs was another great resource for me but like I have said it can sometimes send you down and informational rabbit hole. What I personally did was this; realized I am a work from home person, I love being my own boss enough that making a small sacrifice for a short time is worth it, did not completely walk away from my field but cut back on the time I work in a soul sucking call center environment, set limitations for what I am willing to do for work and how much time I am willing to commit, split up the time I work a "9-5 job" with time I spend working on my side projects or jobs, started doing more things I am passionate about, spend five hours at my day job and five hours doing my side hustles I.E. writing and website testing. Just to remind you it has taken me four years to master working from home and making enough to pay my bills. The first year was crappy pay. I am still making half as much as I was used to as an insurance agent but my income is growing month over month.

Keep in mind what I do may not be what you like.

Maybe you are a dog walker/ groomer, driver for uber, medical coder, data entry specialist, blog writer, influencer, affiliate marketer, and etc. After personally researching and experience I am finally able to work from home full time comfortably. At this point I do not want to walk back in an office. Especially with Covid-19 going on. At the beginning of this I said I accidentally kept myself employed through this pandemic. I meant to attempt to work from home full time again in February but was not sold on it and even considered working part time from home and part time out of the home. Just a couple months later we were on lock down and now I suddenly did not have a choice. So here I am a few months later happier than I have ever been in both my career and personal life. My next step would be to make enough money writing I could do that full time and shed the "9-5" completely. Currently I am writing my autobiography of my life at a young age up until now. I dream in the future I can do so much more that that. Personally I feel I am awhile away from that so, for the time being I will keep doing what I am doing.