Hacks to find a remote developer job
I’ll be covering 2 big topics to help you find and land your next Remote Engineering role. The first is understanding how to best showcase that you’re open and ready to work in a remote work environment. Secondly, I’ll show you a few sites that have truly worked for friends in the past to find and at least get an interview for a remote role.
Building and starting to showcase your remote experience
Here are few ways to spin remote work experience and showcase it if you’re applying for a job that requires remote experience:
You have worked with a remote team before - this one is obvious. If you have this experience you’ll probably be solid from the remote work front if a company requires it. This can be in the form of a full-time role or a contract gig where you were not in the same physical space as the rest of the team.
Your local company has let you work from home a few days a week - this is remote work experience right here! Working from home 2-3 times a week while the rest of your team either remains in the office or is similarly working remote, you still had to encounter a lot of the work style, communications, and asynchronous responsibilities as a full-time remote worker.
You’ve developed a product with a team that was spread across timezones - another great way to spin remote work. Communicating and developing a product in a non-physical space is difficult and if you’ve done this before you have some of the chops to say that you have remote work experience.
Start with these 3 Remote Job sites
WeWorkRemotely -We Work Remotely is the largest remote work community in the world. With over 2.5M monthly visitors, WWR is the #1 destination to find and list incredible remote jobs.
Remoteok - The biggest remote job board on the web with over 25,000 remote work positions for digital nomads, remote workers and people who work from home.
AngelList - AngelList is where the world meets startups. Find a great startup job, invest in a startup, or raise money.
What to look out for while looking at job descriptions?
These are a few core things you should look out for:
Product - ensure that you have some interest in the product and users the company targets. You don’t want to lose interest after landing the job and end up quitting because of it.
Soft skills - we know that the hard skills are pretty straightforward but take a look at the soft skills mentioned in job descriptions. It can truly help with crafting your resume, cover letter, introduction to mention a few of the soft skills the company is on the search for.
Remote experience - if a company doesn’t have
MUST HAVE REMOTE WORK EXPERIENCE
in their job description, this could mean it’s not a top priority. So, if you’re coming from a background with little remote work exposure these are good roles to look out for as you may have a higher chance of getting an interview even though you have no remote work experience.
Good luck! If you need specific help, don’t hesitate to reach out.
About Me
My name is Irma Mesa. I’m a Product Manager in the ed-tech space and I love love love talking to and meeting new people. I’ve learned a ton through my years being in tech, at times being the only woman on a team, working remote and having incredible mentors. Now, I’m paying it forward.
I run remote consulting for companies and teams of all sizes, email me if you’re interested. And most recently inspired by Ali Spittel I’ve started running office hours, check it out here.
Talk soon.
Irma