Why You Should Spend Less Time on Your Remote Job Search (and What to Focus on Instead)

You might be surprised to hear that the first thing I tell my coaching clients is this: Quit spending too much time searching for remote jobs.

But, it’s true. An important piece of advice I give to everyone I work with involves spending less time on the search part of their remote job search.

Many people are confused by this. After all, job seekers are often told “looking for a job is a full time job.”

Honestly, this is only partially true. You see, dear job seeker, there are a lot of activities that go into a job search. Yes, searching for job leads is part of it. But that’s just a small sliver of a job search.

3 Other Important Parts of a Remote Job Search

1. LinkedIn Networking

LinkedIn is a critical part of your job search, but not a lot of remote job seekers spend their time here. However, it’s a good idea to take time away from finding job leads and using it instead on LinkedIn.

Why? Because a lot of connections and hiring decisions are made on LinkedIn. Let’s check out these impressive LinkedIn stats:

• 87% of recruiters use LinkedIn
• 20 million job openings posted on LinkedIn
• 122 million people got a job interview through LinkedIn

Impressive, right? Needless to say, you need to spend more time on LinkedIn. Period. It all starts with your profile. Of course, you can’t just have a generic LinkedIn profile. Instead, you need to craft a powerful LinkedIn profile that leads to interviews. To do this well, it will take some time.

Plus, it’s a good idea to be active on LinkedIn. It’s one thing to write an amazing profile. It’s another to be engaged, active, and create meaningful connections. This can be done by sharing, posting, commenting, and participating in groups. You can even follow remote-friendly companies to be the first to know when they are hiring.

The more time you spend on LinkedIn, the greater your chances of remote job search success. You’re never more than a connection away from your next interview.

2. Perfect Your Personal Brand

Today, more than ever, it’s important to spend time on your personal brand. This is especially true for remote job seekers, like you.

Your personal brand is essentially the professional persona you project online. A well crafted personal brand make you a no-brainer hire for a position. A bland personal brand allows recruiters to pass you over for interviews.

Don’t forget, as a remote job seeker, you won’t get to make an in-person impression. Remember, the entire application process from hiring to interview to onboarding is done virtually. That means recruiters and hiring managers will turn to good old Google to develop their own impression of you. Don’t let it be the wrong impression.

An estimated 77% of companies will google you before they invite you to interview. And Google will show them everything they can possibly find on you including, but not limited to:

• Facebook Profile
• Blog Posts
• Instagram Profile
• Twitter Profile
• News Mentions

Essentially, anywhere your name shows up online will come up when someone (including employers) google you. Potential employers will use what Google gives them to form an impression on you. And this can make or break your chance of getting an interview (or job).

So, instead of spending all your time job searching, hop online and clean up your personal brand. Make your Facebook profile private if you don’t want recruiters to see what you share here. Delete politically-charged tweets that might make you look aggressive. Go the extra mile and create your own personal brand website.

Making your own website takes back your online presence and gives you greater control over what Google decides to show about you. That’s because a website with your name as the domain (i.e., yourname.com) is likely to rank higher on Google searches than anything else.

All of these personal brand job search tasks provide greater return on time investment than scouring job boards for hours on end.

3. Optimize Your Resume

Writing my resume is fun, said no one ever. And it’s even less fun when I tell job seekers that not only do they have to write their resume once, but re-write it for every single job they apply for.

At first, this is time consuming. But, trust me, it is time well spent. That’s because the majority of remote job listings are posted with an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). ATS is a special type of software companies use to make hiring easier.

That means when you upload your resume to apply for a job, it’s being scanned by ATS to determine whether you’re a good fit for the position. If so, great! Your resume is passed on to a real person. If not, then your resume is placed in limbo, and you never get an interview or a rejection letter. Being in resume limbo is the worst because you never know one way or another what happened with your application.

The best way to avoid resume limbo is to keyword optimize your resume. This means taking hard skills from the job ad and placing them in your resume. It takes a few extra minutes to do, but it pays off — big time. Now when you submit your resume, the ATS sees you have the hard skills from the job and instantly places you in the “yes” pile, exactly where you want to end up.

Spend less time tracking down and verifying job leads and more time optimizing your resume. In the world of remote jobs, it’s all about quality over quantity. That is, it’s infinitely better to apply to fewer positions with an optimized resume than to mass apply to many positions with the same resume.

How To Spend Less Time Searching in Your Job Search

It’s easy to get caught up in the searching part of your job search. After all, you can’t apply to jobs if you don’t find them, right?

That’s true. But even still, you don’t have to spend too much time on job boards seeking out remote jobs.

Automate Your The Search

Instead, automate your search as much as possible. The best way to do that is to sign up for job alerts.

Job alerts can be scheduled daily. That means once a day, you’ll have all the newest remote job leads delivered to your inbox. It’s much quicker to glance through an email than to scroll through a job board site.

Use Remote Job Boards

It’s also a good idea to stay off the big-name job boards like Indeed or Monster. Sure you can find remote job leads there. But there’s also a TON of non-remote jobs in the mix too. Avoid sifting through these by sticking to remote-focused job boards. That way you know every lead coming your way is actually remote.

Take Advantage of Hand Curated Sites

Another major time suck of remote job searches is determining whether something is legit or a scam. Save time by searching job boards that hand pick their leads like FlexJobs. These job boards do the hard work for you and ensure each and every listing is the real deal.

The Effortless Remote Job Search

To help remote job seekers make the most of their time, I’ve created The Effortless Remote Job Search.

In this crash course you’ll learn where to quickly find real remote jobs, how to save time, and best practices for avoiding scams.

Bonus content includes:

• LinkedIn Profile Checklist
• List of Hundreds of Remote-Friendly Companies
• Job Search Tracker
• Now Hiring Spreadsheet
• Scam-Guard Checklist

Ready to make your remote job search as easy as possible? Sign up for The Effortless Remote Job Search Today for just $27.

It’s never been easier to find real, scam-free remote job leads.

Have questions? Hit me with them in the comments below! You can also email me. I answer every one!

Happily,

Ashlee

P.S. This post might contain affiliate links. Check out my disclosure statement to learn more.