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Working From Home? I know a lot of people who would LOVE to work from home. I am one of the lucky (?) people able to from the convince of my home office.
I'm sure that most people think that it is an ideal situation. No boss breathing down your throat, you can work in your jammies, if you have kids, you don't have to worry about day care, if you have health problems then you don't have to worry about missing work. These are all legitimate reasons to WANT to work from home.
It's not always so cut and dry though. First of all if you have young kids, like under 5 years old, it is very difficult to juggle working at home and taking care of your child(ren). I have four children, ages 10, 7, 5 and 17 months. Trying to wear all of my "hats" during the summer is extremely stressful. I want to be super mom and super employee and super "house-wife" but trust me, only a true superhero can be all three at one time. I've found it virtually impossible to have any kind of professional "phone" persona with young children running wild in the background. And if you do have an office with a closed door, there is no way you can let a 1 year old run around the house for 8 hours a day unsupervised. Or even 1/2 hour! So my office is the front room with a baby gate in place. The baby stays in here with me. If the older kids or hubby is home, I may keep the kids on the
other side of the gate while I'm on conference calls. But luckily the people I work with know that I have young children and work with me. I don't have a call center job and only have to touch base via phone to clarify projects. Most of my communication is done through email.
So to recap, working from home with small children takes a very disciplined structured home environment and tons of patience, as well as the willingness to give and take on your expectations.
You may be wondering how people get work-at home jobs. If you have already been searching you may be extremely discouraged, because most searches for work-from-home jobs will show you results that request money for the privilege of giving you information that
may lead to a legitimate job. BEWARE. If anyone asks you for money RUN AWAY! Hang up, don't look back.
I've been working from home since November of 2005. My first gig was as a transcriber for a company in Canada The work was fine. My husband worked 2nd shift and I usually worked while the kids were sleeping or in the mornings when my husband was awake at home. In 2006 I answered a craigslist ad for a web developer position and ended up becoming more of a jack-of-all-trades. I've been with that company every since. I've also picked up some editing and writing gigs. The pay isn't much for my main client so I'm always scouting supplemental work. Along the way I've applied for hundreds of other jobs. Some scams and some I've never heard from again. A few short gigs have resulted.
From my vast experience with applying for virtual jobs, here is a hint that may help. On your resume, remove any personal information if you are going to apply to a job with an unknown company. I have a resume specifically for applying to work-from-home jobs that only lists my email address and phone number. I don't list my home address for virtual jobs. You never know where you are really sending your personal information and better to be safe than sorry.
LEGITIMATE FREE RESOURCES:
Ratrace Rebellion. This is a great website. The people that run the site give you FREE leads every day. They also list companies by category (ie type of work) that typically look for home based workers. RRR even shows you great keywords that you can use in a search for your own work-from-home leads. I have to say on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest I give them 11 stars. They are totally legit and a great resource to begin your search.
WAHM.com: I have been looking at this site for about 7 years now. Several times a week they push out new screened job leads on their jobs page. Since they screen the leads it helps focus on more legit opportunities, but most of the leads are from craigslist. Be very careful about replying to craigslist ads. Never give all of your personal info, and never give out your credit score. I encourage you to check out any lead you have with the
Better Business Bureau. Make sure the company is legit. Another thing to note, there are a LOT of ads on WAHM's site. As of the publication of this blog entry, the top of middle column of the jobs page is an insert from indeed.com. You may find legitimate job leads there, but the job leads screened by WAHM.com will be below that indeed.com box. I usually check those out first.
QUESTIONABLE RESOURCES:
VOT appears to be legitimate, but I've never had a call back for any job I've applied for and VOT wants you to purchase software to be certified or
qualified to apply for jobs.
Craigslist You may be able to find a good work from home job on craigslist but be weary. The way to look is to click on the JOBS heading to give you ALL jobs in a given location, then click the Telecommute box to narrow your search. You may find a pearl hidden there. And you don't have to limit your search to your local home town. Try all over.
PAID RESOURCES
There are a few good lead generators that you can have access to with a subscription service. I've tried a couple, and the one I liked the best was
Virtual Vocations. I believe it is about 15.00 a month, but you can check out the job leads before you purchase a subscription. They will let you know the job description for free. The contact information comes with the subscription.
