At the beginning of 2021, I was talking with a coworker about being remote. I was always working for companies in my city, so I never thought that this could occur with me. But when I talked with him about the possibilities, especially because during the pandemic and a lot of home offices happening, a lot of companies decided to hire more people outside their cities and even countries.

So, I decided to give it a shot, maybe could work, maybe not. In the beginning, I remember to apply for more than two hundred job positions. But, I was able to get close to 10 interviews and 2 offers after the process. Then, I decided to pick the company that I was most identified with and started to work remotely.

This guide is a little bit of experience to explain how to get remote jobs, great resources to study, and be well prepared. Especially things that you might need to consider BEFORE even applying, which are always important. The structure here is:

  1. Before getting that job
  2. Where and how to find that job
  3. What to do after you got that job

Before getting that job

There are some things to consider before getting your first remote job. Here are a few points:

  • English:
    • There are some good chances that you already know how to read and communicate with the English language, but still important to say here: having good English is essential.
    • If you are someone from a country that speaks Spanish and work for a company in another country that also speaks Spanish, that may not be necessary. But more and more companies are making calls, leaving documentation, writing code, all using English.
    • You don’t have the perfect, A-score or even certifications in the language. But having a good way to talk, listen and write. The ”perfect English” (if that exists for non-native) will come over experience on your remote job.
    • There might be some specific cases where you want to work for a company in a country that you are interested in moving to, and this country/region speaks a language that you are interested in having.
      • For instance: you want to move to Germany and having a company that sponsors your visa there would be great. So, learning German would be essential in this scenario, but my recommendation is always English first, then German, in that case.
  • Timezone:
    • The world is a pretty big place, so every time you apply for a job, consider the timezone of that location in the office. Most companies that hire remote have a timezone that they are comfortable for the workers to be in. This is important to pay attention before applying, see if there is something on the requirements of the job or maybe ask it on the interview.
    • My experience is to have a difference of 3 hours or less, more than that might cause very discomfort, especially for calls at midnight or tasks being delivered at 4AM at your local time.
  • Experience of being remote: This may be a weird requirement: “having experienced being remote to get a job for being remote?” - Kind of. Let me explain:
    • When you apply to certain companies outside your region or country, a few of them probably will ask you had any experience of working remote. Maybe the company that you are currently at doesn’t have a physical office, but people work at home and do regular calls. This is the type of experience that they might look for, maybe you hadn’t worked for other countries, but you had to communicate using Slack, Zoom meetings, text messages, and so forth.
    • My recommendation here is: try to get your first experience is working from home for companies in your country or city. So you can see if this is something that you might enjoy before looking for remote jobs outside of your region/country.
    • Some people don’t like the number of messages and calls that come in with remote jobs. They prefer physical offices and the people interactions, that is on you to do that requirement and decide for yourself.
  • Communication skills:
    • I already wrote here, but you will write a lot. Documentations, projects, analysis, text messages, and so forth. Probably you would’ve done all that because of being remote there is an important step of being able to communicate.
    • For most of us, is really easy to talk in person, because you can explain, see the reaction of the person, see the body language, ask a question when you have a doubt, and solve it fast. But when communicating through a computer, you can’t see physical reactions, people might take hours or days to respond to a simple question, and some of them probably won’t understand what you meant on the first try.
    • This is the way it is important to know how to communicate: use simple words, avoid long questions, document whatever you can so people can address to the doc instead of you all the time.
    • I believe that is also important to communicate and show the work you are doing. If you use some management tool: how do you show a long project being worked on? Is just one ticket that is being stuck for months or several small tickets? You are communicating every time you deliver something or waiting for people to ask for it? This part is tricky and depends on each team/company/field that you work on, but is important to give visibility on what you are working on and what has been delivered, to communicate properly to the others. Since is a remote job, most people can’t actually see what you are working on, so showing smartly based on your context would help them see the value of your work.
  • Technical preparations:
    • Some positions required specific technical elements, like knowing how to create an API, or build an ETL, something that involves engineering or system design. It would be important to do a great preparation here before applying. This could be to go for Leetcode and do a bunch of programming exercises, build visually several systems and diagrams, prepare projects to showcase, and others.
    • Do your homework here, because some companies demand specific preparations. In my case, I had 50% of my interviews for remote jobs creating and presenting a programming case (to create an ETL for open API, serving this data into a data warehouse and visualization, using some IaC and programming language) and other 50% of programming exercises + technical/specific questions (exercises for SQL, Python, Java. Technical questions like “How Spark works?”, “Why Hadoop is important in DE?” And others).
  • Requirements:
    • For remote jobs, they might demand specific skills or technical experiences of few tools. The best here would be to get 10 to 15 jobs that you like that are remote, see the requirements and see what you are missing. Work on those missing elements.
    • Is important here that you don’t need to be perfect, most companies request a lot of skills and experiences for an excellent candidate, but most people that are approved in the positions don’t have the requirements. Find the gap and try to close it, but don’t spend months on this specific step.

Where and how to find a remote job?

Now, let’s say that you have been prepared and considered all the points above. You are ready to look for a remote job. Usually, there are two ways to get a remote job:

  1. Thought an intermediate, like a consulting company that has a branch in the country the clients work with, and they outsource the work for you.
  2. Directly for the company, like a contractor or something similar.

There is no perfect scenario, I have worked with both cases and found an excellent experience. Usually, I find the consulting companies are great. After all, they provide a solid structure of payments and perks, when most companies that directly hire remotes lack because they are more startup or can’t provide perks because of legal requirements. But, consulting companies a good portion of your salary to pay for their structure. It doesn’t really matter which you pick, you will probably have a good experience with it.

  • Find a job: I’ve used the following sites to find a job. Some may work for you and your timezone, some don’t. Is important to try it out and see the best tool that you can explore the max of it.
  • Interviews:
    • After you applied for a few jobs, you will probably start receiving emails and contact messages from recruiters for starting the interviews. This is where the requirements will become more visible: they will ask about your English, your remote experience, programming exercises, and so forth.
    • My tips to be good in this step is:
      • Do a LOT of interviews, you might not get the initial ones, so quantity > quality here to get experience first.
      • After an interview, I usually do a review of my performance:
        • Things to keep doing,
        • Things to stop doing,
        • Things to start doing,
        • Learning points and
        • To do’s on my side to be better prepared in the next interview.
  • Offers: After you made some interviews, probably coded a bit, you might get an offer. This offer might be exactly what you are looking for or maybe not. You might have received several offers to compare and so forth. A good way to proceed here is to do, again, some homework. Study the company, the offers, the compensation, and the benefits. Here are a few materials that might be useful for you.

What to do after you got that job

You got the job and accepted the offer. Now what? Well, I have some final tips that might be useful and to consider.

  • Computers: some companies provide a machine for you to work, but since you might be far away from offices, your first weeks or month, you will probably use a personal computer (if they even provide a machine for your work). So, my advice is to have a decent personal computer to do the work during this period.
  • Internet/energy: obvious tip, but you will have a lot of calls, having a good internet service and a nice nobreak will be useful over time.
  • Office: To start, I would suggest for you have a specific place for you to work. Could be as simple as having a desk specific to only work into renting a space in a coworking environment. It doesn't matter, you need to have a ”wall” in your workspace from your living place, to have a good balance.
  • Grammarly and other services: It would be nice to have a tool that will help you revise Slack messages, emails, documentation, and so forth. This is great for non-native English speakers, but natives can benefit too with that tip.
  • Tools and peripherals: Have good headphones to make calls and listen to your coworkers. Having a decent keyboard and mouse, a second screen, a great chair, and so forth. Those items that we might take for granted when in a physical office, but that makes a great difference in our day-to-day job. I’m not the best person to recommend that, but there are several contents on the internet on how to pick the best chair, computer, headphones and so forth.

Conclusion

Now that you received this guide, put it into practice. See the gaps, prepare your English skills, revise your communication skills and start applying. If all goes well, you will receive an offer. Remember to compare with the market and make the calculations based on the benefits. If you decided to move forward, is time to prepare your space to work and build a good place to spend time. Good luck on your new journey!