How to Tailor Your Resume for Remote Work

There’s no question that you need to include all the hard skills necessary for the job. This is true for both remote and office-based positions. Despite this, certain soft skills carry more weight when you’re applying for a remote job since you need to demonstrate that you can actually work from home. The main ones that need to be on your resume are:

Digital communication

Interpersonal communication is great, but for remote work, you’ll be speaking with your coworkers via chat, email, and web conferencing software more than anything. So, it’s essential to show that you have everything it takes to maintain a smooth flow of communication online.

Organization

One of the greatest things about working remotely is being able to set your own schedule. However, this also means that you need to have strong organizational skills to make sure you don’t switch off and miss deadlines. To make this happen, you need to be organized, have great time management skills, and a strong work ethic.

Proactiveness

Besides interruptions from your pets, chances are that working from home means that you’ll be working alone. In other words, there isn’t a boss peeking over your shoulder to ensure you’re doing your job. Moreover, depending on your working schedule or time zone, it may be that you won’t have a coworker to turn to when you have a question. That’s why it’s essential that you convince the recruiter that you’re a self-sufficient and self-starting employee.

Showcase proficiency in remote work software

If you’re joining a remote company, you can be sure that there will be a few applications that you’ll have to use on a daily basis. From project management tools to productivity and time management apps, companies with remote workers have reinvented themselves to ensure their employees have everything they need to perform their jobs. Here are some examples of software you should know your way around:

• Project Management: Basecamp, Trello, and Asana.
• Team Collaboration: Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Docs.
• Cloud Storage Service: OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive.
• Productivity: Krisp and Todoist.
• Time Management: Hubstaff, Kickidler, and Teamwork.
• Web Conferencing: Zoom, GoToMeeting, and BlueJeans.

While you might not have hands-on experience using all of these apps, you can at least show that you know how the software works by doing some prior research online.

Include remote work experience

There are various ways to mention your past remote work experience on your CV. You can add your total remote experience in the resume’s summary or write ‘remote work’ in the location section under each past professional experience. If you’ve worked remotely before, you can even include a dedicated section with all your past remote work experience.

Link your portfolio

While many more companies are going remote, some of the most common remote jobs are still creative positions such as writing, design, and photography. Anyone wanting to get a creative role should have an online portfolio showcasing their best work and include a link to it on their CV. The resume may be enough to pique a recruiter’s interest in you, but an online portfolio will make you stand out even more.

Tailor your cover letter for remote work as well

If you don’t write personalized cover letters for each job you’re applying to, you’re doing it wrong. Cover letters are an essential factor to catch a recruiter’s attention, and you should always attach one to your resume. As you can expect, all the rules to write an interview-winning cover letter for an office job apply to remote work as well. However, you should also mention why you’re interested in a remote position and why you believe you’re a productive employee when working from home.

Writing a resume isn’t easy, and it’s even harder when you need to tailor it for remote work. However, if you take all of this into consideration, you’ll have recruiters reaching out in no time.