5 professional ways to describe teleworking experience in a resume
Even before the coronavirus pandemic, remote work has demonstrated a 44% growth over 5 years. Currently, 88% of companies encourage or require employees to work from home. Whether you’ve worked remotely for years or switched to this type of work because of coronavirus outbreak, your resume should reflect that you’ve performed this type of work, even if your responsibilities were the same as in the office.
If you search for a telecommuting job, previous remote work experience will be an asset for employers. Let alone the fact that listing tech and soft skills specific to working from home will give you more chances of getting noticed. Today’s article from creative writers resume will show you how to list remote experience on a resume and where is the best place to do it. If you are interested in how to make a resume with no experience at all, feel free to visit this article page.
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Why list remote experience?
Including work-from-home experience such as remote work or freelancing serves three main purposes:
• It increases your chance of getting hired for a remote role. All else being equal, an employer is likely to hire someone who worked remotely before. If you have prior experience, you don’t need to be explained the protocols and practices of working from home, and you can jump in and work remotly effectively from day one.
• It communicates a set of skills. In addition to the ability to manage time, priorities, and deadlines, experienced remote workers possess a number of valuable skills. Those skills include proficiency with certain remote software and tools, excellent communication, and other attributes that compensate for the absence of physical presence.
• It’s better than no experience at all. If you hesitate whether to include those freelance projects, in most cases, the answer is yes. Any relevant experience is valuable and better than leaving gaps in the resume. Moreover, you never know what company name will resonate with your target employer – maybe, the company you’ve done freelance work for is owned by their college friend!
Listing remote work on a resume: 5 tips
Below, you’ll see a list of strategies for how to put remote work on resume. You needn’t use all of them as they’ll overlap and make your remote job resume look cluttered. Use the appropriate strategy depending on your industry and number of remote jobs:
Incorporate it in your summary of qualifications
This method works best for employees who worked from home for years, not for someone who has jumped into a teleworking role quite recently. The simplest way is to write “Technical support representative with 3+ years of remote experience”. Thus, you instantly communicate how many years you’ve been working out of office and in what capacity.
Another option is to use remote work as a context for highlighting the rest of your skills. It may sound like: “Experienced in completing long-term digital marketing and advertising projects and driving ROI while working from a home office”. The good thing about listing this in a summary is that you instantly show remote experience – a recruiter doesn’t have to read the rest of the resume to see it.
Align it with a job title
Another obvious option is to incorporate the type of employment in the job title. For example, you might write “Software Developer (Remote)” as a job title. In this case, you inform the reader that this wasn’t a full-time office position, while not dragging the reader’s attention from the job title.
If you had plenty of freelance projects or jobs with the same job title and similar responsibilities, you can group them under the same title, i.e. “Marketing copywriter – Freelance”. After the job title, list the names of organizations you worked for and your responsibilities.
Did you have extensive history of teleworking but held different positions? Consider creating the section “Remote experience” in a resume and list all remote jobs there. Thus, you communicate that you have a good track record, and the hiring manager doesn’t have to read each job posting to understand whether this was a remote position or not.
Add it to a job description
This option is a bit less popular since one it’s not easy to understand at a glance that you worked remotely. Yet, if you worked from home not 100% of your time but on Thursdays and Fridays only, the best way to address it is in a job description.
In this case, you list responsibilities and accomplishments as usual and mention that some of projects or assignments were done remotely. For instance, you can write “Created articles for email newsletter and corporate blog while working from a home office”.
If you have a plenty of achievements to show off, the fact that you’ve achieved great results while working from your couch will add those achievements extra value. An achievement like “Implemented a new project tracking system that increased the project delivery time by 20% while working remotely” will look impressive on a resume of someone dealing with project management.
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Add it in a location
If you don’t want the fact of telecommuting or freelancing to interfere with your responsibilities, consider mentioning it in a location. In a place where you would normally write the company’s city and state, put “Remote”. If, for whatever reason, you want to keep the company’s location, consider listing the fact of telecommuting in the very first bullet point.
By doing so, you subtly hint that your location shouldn’t be the problem for the prospective employer since you excel while working from the home office.
List skills specific to remote work
To prove that you’ll make a successful remote employee, it’s important that you list not only the fact that you worked from home but also the skills and competencies that helped you to excel. In particular, employers expect to see that you are proficient with specific remote work software, such as Zoom, Google Hangouts, Dropbox, Google Suite, MS Office, Trello, and more. These remote collaboration tools are used by most organizations so knowing them well will give you a plus.
Additionally, you’ll want to list plenty of soft skills as well. Focus on such skills as digital communication skills, time management, cross-cultural literacy, and organization. Mention that you have a reliable equipment, stable connection and a set up home office – this will show that you take work from home seriously.
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Give your resume a quality update
Updating your resume with the recent remote positions is important. Yet, it’s just as important to ensure the document makes a good impression in general. To give your resume a quality makeover, follow the next steps:
• Include links to your work. For remote employees and contractors, it’s important to demonstrate the work samples. If you’re a copywriter, web developer, or graphic designer, create an online portfolio and collect your best work there. Then, include a link to that portfolio on a resume. If you cannot present the examples of work, consider showing it off in the form of case studies in a blog.
• Remove what’s irrelevant. The best resumes out there are focused and free from fluff. Be sure to remove the career details that don’t add much value: jobs that are older than 15 years, irrelevant positions, outdated skills, and more. This will make your career story more coherent as well as cut down the resume length.
• Use plain professional language. On the one hand, the resume has to clearly portray your contribution and accomplishments in your niche. On the other hand, it should be easy to understand for someone outside your line of career. To strike balance between the two, use plain professional language, no abbreviations and slang, and rely on strong action verbs. Here are some examples of good words to use in a CV.
• Format well. Don’t underestimate the importance of formatting. A neat, well-designed resume will keep the hiring manager reading the document whereas a cluttered one is likely to be put aside. Use distinctive section headers, add colors sparingly, and consider using graphics or charts if you want to show off some accomplishments.
• Proofread thoroughly. Never submit a resume in a rush – a few typos here and there can turn off the hiring managers. Use online spell checking software (such as Grammarly.com), read the document aloud to ensure each bullet makes sense. Format consistently – if you use period at the end of the bullet, be sure to do so throughout the document.
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Remote work resume sample
Bonus: Advice on finding a remote work faster
Responding to job postings on the most popular job boards is the most evident way of job search. Yet, there are more ways to find your next remote employment:
• Use sites that specifically look for remote employees
Websites like FlexJobs.com, Remote.co and Upwork.com specialize in posting remote and freelancing jobs. Browsing job boards that advertise remote and flexible opportunities only will save your time as you don’t have to set the filters and weed out the full-time openings.
• Consider cold emailing
How about looking for jobs which weren’t advertised yet? Create a target list of companies which might be interested in your services (note: make sure that their corporate culture encourages telecommuting). Reach out to their HR managers with your pitch and offer to work for them. If you have something great to offer, chances are they’ll create a position specifically for you!
• Be one of the first applicants
Some hiring managers interview and hire the people who apply first and seem a good fit – simply because the hiring process might be too time-consuming. You want to apply early on – within a few hours after the job was posted. To achieve this, subscribe to notifications and alerts from job boards and have a copy of resume at hand.
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