You have a choice:
100 job applications in 2 days, then 0 for 28 days
or
10 job applications anytime you want in 30 days.
Which one will you choose?
Many of you will go for quantity. More applications = more chances, right?
Others will think somewhere in the middle: maybe fewer (50?) applications. Some quality, but still quantity. Balance leads to success, no?
And some of you will be thinking: “I tried doing just a few applications very well, and it didn’t work.”
Thing is, there’s no right answer. Because it’s not about numbers.
What is a Remote Job, Anyway?
You’ll spend most of the best years of your life working.
In those years, you’ll have the energy to run a marathon if you want to.
In those years, you’ll have the strength to pick up another person (or many) if you want to.
In those years, you’ll have the brainpower to learn anything if you want to.
And then, when you retire, you won’t have all of those things anymore, or maybe not any of them.
A remote job is what you get when you trade away using the full capacity of your mind and body.
Let that sink in. Once you have a remote job, most of your day will be spent in front of a computer. You will probably be sitting for between 6-8 hours a day.
You will be on calls with colleagues you may never meet, do not like, and who don’t care about you.
This is what a remote job is. It’s also:
A way to set yourself free from going to an office
A way to work and travel if you want
A way for you to spend more time with the people you love
So there are good and bad parts about it. But getting real for a second:
Are you really willing to work for all 100 of the jobs you applied to? Would you be happy to sacrifice some of the prime years of your life for any 1 of them?
I hope not, and I hope you are getting my point:
It’s better to apply for roles you really want than to just applying for as many as you can.
Finding A Job You Really Want
Sometimes knowing what we want is hard. This is even more true for jobs. How can you know if a job is good for you? Besides knowing what kind of job you want, how can you know whether or not the job advertisement is honest?
You can’t. But you can get a lot closer to the truth than you might think. It requires a 2 step process that starts with you.
Step 1: Getting Clear On What You Don’t Want
It’s easier to know what you don’t want than what you do want. You can take a combined approach to identifying this.
Start by list out all the things about work that you don’t like.
Here’s my list:
Irrational decision making
Lack of strategy
Lack of focus
Too Much Hierarchy
Notice I didn’t say “Long hours” or “Lots of responsibility”? I don’t mind these things. But maybe you do! It’s incredibly important to be honest with yourself.
Once you have the list, every time you look at a remote job ad, you should ask:
Does this job contain any of the things I don’t like about work?
If it does, ask yourself:
Can I accept that?
If yes, then you can continue evaluating the job.
If no, it’s time to move on.
This will help you eliminate between 60-80% of jobs you apply for.
Step 2: Find Out As Much As You Can About The Company and The Team
If you’ve found job ads that pass the first step, it’s time to investigate the company and team further.
Here are some of the things you might look for:
-A sense of how the team and the company communicate. Do they prefer asynchronous communication (messages and videos) or synchronous communication(meetings and live chat)?
-What is their pace of change? Do they make many changes very fast or very slowly?
-How fast can you grow in the company?
-Who are the customers?
This takes work. There are typically 3 ways to find this information. Here they are.
Connect with people in the company on LinkedIn. Ask them questions about their experience. Get them to tell you what they’ve experienced. This is the hardest but often the most effective way to get information. If you do this, make sure you ask open-ended, curiosity driven questions that produce clear answers.
For example, if you wanted to know about growth opportunities, you might ask: “How long does it typically take someone to get promoted?” or “How fast can a person take on new responsibilities if they want them?”Look at their website and LinkedIn. This works well to find out what they want to tell the world about how they work. That can often be enough to help you decide whether or not you want to work for them, but be aware not every company lives up to its values.
Check Glassdoor.com. This will tell you a lot about former employee’s experience. Keep in mind as you read through employee profiles that some people have an incentive to make things up, or complain about how something was worse than it really was. Take the time to read through as many comments on Glassdoor as you can before passing judgement. Look for patterns and how recent the last post was. If there are many negative posts made but they are from 3 years ago, things may have changed!
Once you’ve taken this step, you should have eliminated anywhere from 5-15% of the remaining jobs you’ve found. That leaves a much smaller set to apply to.
Now Comes The Challenging Part
You’ve done your research. You have a short list of jobs you are considering applying for.
Now you have to put in the work and apply for them. This week I’ll be exclusively covering the application process starting Monday. Tomorrow I’ll be sharing a short motivational piece on my own experience switching remote jobs.
If you found this piece useful, leave a like. If you have questions, leave a comment!
I’m committed to helping you get a remote job. Let’s work together to make it happen!