How do you write a resume for remote working or a remote job? Our guide gives you the 5 rules to create your resume tailored to the remote world.
The possibility of making a living while never leaving the house is a dream for many. However, with the rise of COVID-19, working remotely has become a new norm.
If you’re considering making the change from traditional office work to a remote job or simply have no other choice, the transition requires tailoring your resume to fit the unique needs of this style of work. With that in mind, here are five tips to write a resume for remote working that’ll win you interviews and give you the chance to work from the comforts of your own home and get through the COVID-19 pandemic safely.
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5 rules to write a resume for remote working
1. Highlight skills and proficiencies relevant to remote work.
Landing a remote job requires you to get creative about the particular skills and proficiencies you can offer an employer. First, remote work employees must possess certain soft skills to help them maintain high levels of productivity when away from the office. When working online, circumstances change quickly and remote workers need to be adaptable to different situations.
Moreover, they need to demonstrate a history of working independently and managing their time well. These vital soft skills can be addressed in work experience descriptions or alluded to in cover letters. Either way, employers want employees who have the right mindset to manage working without direct or close supervision.
To write a resume for remote working successfuly, you should also highlight your competency in digital communication. Whether through social media or video conferencing programs like Google Meet and Zoom, remote workers need the ability to effectively communicate across great distances. Your skills section can demonstrate that you possess the tools for effective, reliable digital communication.
Finally, the skills section of your resume will need to address how you qualify for the specific remote jobs you’re applying for. Whether you work in web design, marketing, or copywriting, there will be tools or programs you’ll need to be familiar with in order to work remotely. Any coding languages or expertise with web design tools or programs like Photoshop should be included.
“Familiar with Microsoft Office” won’t cut it these days. Take the time to think about what special skills or tools are required for the particular jobs you’re applying for and include them in your resume. One caveat is that you must be prepared to demonstrate you can actually use these programs!
2. Consider a two-page resume.
If you ask the average person, they’ll tell you to keep your resume to a single page. Conventional thinking goes that hiring managers are incredibly busy and lack the time and resources to spend more than a few minutes on each applicant. This can be frustrating to job seekers trying to highlight all of their relevant skills and experiences in such a small amount of space.
Fortunately, a recent study turns conventional wisdom on its head, suggesting that the two page resume isn’t a risk but a potential benefit to applicants. It revealed that recruiters were 2.3 times as likely to prefer two-page resumes over one-page resumes. Not only did participants spend twice as much time with longer resumes, they also ranked them higher for their ability to “summarize the candidate’s work experiences and overall credentials.”
For applicants seeking remote work, this is good news. It gives them a little more space to really detail how their past projects or skills uniquely suit them to home-based work.
3. Provide evidence of your ability to do remote work.
You can’t expect a hiring manager to know you’re equipped to handle remote work if your resume doesn’t showcase that. The work section is an ideal place on a resume to provide evidence that you can do remote work. Even if you’ve never held a remote job before, there likely have been duties or projects you carried out that targeted remote work skills or at the very least demonstrated your potential.
Have you engaged in video conferences or communicated extensively through email or messaging apps? Are there projects you completed online or on software applications that could have been done from home? Maybe you’ve collaborated with a team remotely, completing and sharing work asynchronously? Were there ever times you were responsible for setting your own schedule for a work project?
Anything you’ve done in the past that speaks to a basic ability to work remotely should be included on your resume. Employers are looking for candidates who are accessible, self-motivated, and capable of maintaining working relationships from a distance.
Of course, it’s easy enough to claim you can do this sort of work. One way to boost the veracity of your claims is by linking to an online portfolio of sample work. There you can showcase the sort of deliverables employers can expect from you. These can range from websites, copywriting, specialized reports, or articles you’ve written.
From the hiring manager’s perspective, filling openings for remote work positions offers a unique set of challenges. How do you accurately judge candidates you may never meet in person? You can make their job easier by supplying them with evidence of your abilities.
4. Customize your resume for each job.
When you apply for any job online, a hiring manager may not be the first to see it. Increasingly, companies are utilizing the services of applicant tracking systems (ATS) to deal with the deluge of applications they receive for each job opening. These specially designed programs filter out applicants to produce a more manageable pool for employers to sort through.
Because of this, your resume may not even make it to an actual person if you don’t carefully craft your resume to the specifications of each job. Among other things, an ATS reads a candidate’s resume for targeted keywords to evaluate their qualifications.
To address this, take the time to really read through a job description. What skills or experiences are they looking for? Are there particular tasks you’ll be expected to perform? Certain software applications you’ll be working with?
These keywords and phrases should be incorporated into your resume, but take care not to simply cut-and-paste them. If your resume makes it past the ATS, a human being still wants to see original language. A cut-and-paste job sends the wrong kind of message, namely that you’re the sort of person who takes shortcuts and lacks seriousness.
The point is to customize your resume to match each job description. Show a hiring manager you have exactly what they’re looking for.
5. Don’t include your physical address.
Typically, a job applicant’s contact information is included at the top of the resume. Usually this information covers the person’s phone number, email, and physical address. This allows employers to easily reach job seekers and evaluate their proximity to the workplace.
However, by definition remote work makes a worker’s location irrelevant. Because the job can be done from anywhere (assuming a reliable Internet connection), job applicants don’t necessarily have to divulge their location on a resume. In fact, it could potentially limit your chances of getting hired. Employers might be reluctant to hire somebody living overseas or several states over.
A more useful step would be to indicate where you can be reached in digital spaces. Rather than a physical address of no value to an employer, job seekers can include social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter or even their Skype handle or Zoom account. This simple change shows the hiring manager that you’re easily accessible–a critical element to any remote job.
Final Take
When applying for remote work, the traditional resume simply won’t cut it. Landing a great remote job means being prepared to change the way you think about how you sell yourself and how you plan to work. These five tips will ensure that your resume reflects your commitment to remotely working.
