Double check yourself, before you double wreck yourself. Make sure everything you send to a company, whether a résumé, an email or a portfolio, is good to go. Double check your grammar and wording, and for God’s sake use spell check! This is especially important when it comes to the company’s name. Don’t spell their name wrong and be sure to type it how they type it (e.g. Problogger, not Pro Blogger).
Consider ergonomic best practices when choosing a desk, chair, keyboard, mouse, phone or headset, and other core pieces of your workspace. Standing desks have gained in popularity and have been shown to offer huge health benefits. Pay attention to natural lighting, air circulation, wall colors, artwork, and plant life in your home office space to maximize its wellness powers.
When you work in an office, you can ask your boss about the details of your upcoming presentation when you see her in the company kitchen. But if you telecommute, she’s just another email in your inbox. From letting her know if you’re going to miss a deadline or getting clarification on an email, you’ll have to be proactive about communicating all aspects of your job and any questions you might have with her.
If you offer freelance services or have a physical services business, then creating a blog is a must. On your blog you can write about the services you offer and how they will benefit your clients. Importantly you can add a ‘Services’ page, outlining the services you provide, what they include, and any other important information potential clients may need. This is an effective way to promote your services, generate leads, and increase your revenue.
When it comes to a company’s work from home policy, everyone is different. Your productivity and overall success as a remote employee depends entirely on your preferred work style. That’s also the reason it’s hard to find any solid data on whether or not people are more productive at home. Anecdotally, it seems to boil down to personality type and the job you do. We’re all different, and some of us can’t fathom getting work done with a TV nearby and all our comforts of home surrounding us, while others find it a struggle to stay focused among office chatter and other distractions.
What Employees Say: “VIPKID pays between $14-22 an hour, plus more in incentives some months. Most kids are fun and well behaved. You create your own schedule and work as little or much as you want. The materials are already provided, you just have to review them beforehand and plan out how you want to teach the materials and which props you want to use.” —Current ESL Teacher
Online savings accounts usually come with crazy good interest rates to help you grow your money faster (regular in-person banks can’t offer rates as high). We’re fans of CIT Bank and Discover Bank (among others) because their interest rates are often over 25 times the national average. That means the money in your savings account will grow 25 times faster than the pace it’s most likely growing at now. Really, though, you can’t go wrong with pretty much any online savings account that offers over 1.50% APY 🙂
What’s more, it’s time to get those list-making muscles in working order. Without face-to-face communication, it’s easy to let things slip through the cracks, so you’ll need to find ways to be as organized as possible. You might find that you like to write things down in a notebook, or perhaps you prefer calendar notifications. Find what works best for you to keep you organized and on task.
It is vital for organizations to convey to teleworkers that data protection and information security are important to an organization, and employees’ actions make a difference in achieving the overall goal of protection of sensitive data. Despite increased awareness and training on security issues, many employees do not take the necessary precautions for deterring security risks.
Edmentum provides curriculum, assessments, practice programs, and online classes. Edmentum frequently hires both full-time and part-time Virtual Teachers to teach math, science, English, history, and a variety of other subjects. Teachers are required to have a bachelors degree and teaching certificate in which the state they’re hired. Job search tip: Virtual teaching positions aren’t listed as “remote” under location; search “virtual” under keyword instead. Full-time Edmentum teachers report earning between $55,000-$65,000 per year.
TeleReach offers telephone marketing services. This company hires home-based positions in appointment setting, lead generation, information gathering, seminar reservations, website marketing, product introductions, trade show follow-up, direct mail follow-up, prospect education, script development, list development, list updating, database sourcing, list merging, prospect, identification, tracking reports, prospect feedback and program evaluation.
This is a much less important step if you have a regular gig with set hours, but if your workday is a little more amorphous, it’s still important to create some structure. “One of the biggest downsides of working from home is lack of routine,” says Goali Saedi Bocci, a psychologist and author of The Social Media Workbook for Teens: Skills to Help You Balance Screen Time, Manage Stress, and Take Charge of Your Life. “If your schedule is not as structured, you can end up sleeping in all day.”
ArborBridge offers personalized test prep tutoring and courses for the SAT, ACT, ISEE and SSAT, and the GRE and GMAT, as well as specialized subject tutoring in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Literature, Math Levels 1 and 2, U.S. History, and World History. ArborBridge requires tutors to have a bachelors degree and one year of experience. Tutors work part-time, flexible hours and earn $45 per hour, plus pay for administrative time.
How to Get It: Customer service is the biggest work-at-home field, with companies including Spiegel, Hilton, Best Western, HSN, 1-800-FLOWERS and many others using at-home reps. Fill out an application with staffing companies such as Arise, Alpine Access, VIPdesk, LiveOps, and Convergys, all of which vet the companies who are hiring through them. If you need benefits, search through a staffing company that will hire you as an employee (Alpine Access, VIPdesk and Convergys do this) rather than an independent contractor. If you're a contractor, you may be asked to pay a small fee (between $15 and $35) for a background check. While a fee can be a sign of a scam, independent contractors are responsible for their own expenses.