The Importance of Breaks When Remote Job Searching

5 Reasons Not To Panic and to Embrace Pauses

Counting my first attempts to my last attempts, I spent more than 1 year looking for a new remote job, from February 2021 to April 2022.

I knew by then I wanted to leave my current company eventually. But I took MANY breaks, and I don’t regret any of them at all.

Here’s 5 reasons why:

At first, you probably won’t know what you want.

I definitely DIDN’T!

I spent a few months (February-April) just looking at jobs I thought would be fun/ But I actually had no idea if I would like them, or even like the company.

So when I looked, I was really just doing it to fantasize, but I never applied because I genuinely wasn’t sure I wanted any of the jobs. This eventually prompted me to take a break and try to focus more on my main job and developing my skills.

If you spend all your time looking, you’ll miss cool opportunities at work.

Because I stopped looking for work, I was able to change careers and become a Product Manager. This is a role I had always wanted, and landing it was one of the best feelings.

I sometimes imagine what would hav happened if I had stayed in my old customer support manager job. Would I have been able to become a Product Manager like I am today? Probably not, I didn’t have any of the skills. But by switching INSIDE my current company, I was able to devlop my skills and more on.

The right roles won’t always be there

In fact, sometimes the right role will be there when you aren’t looking. I say this because while we tend to look hard for roles in a fixed period of time, as if hunting, the better approach to finding a good role is often to graze.

Imagine for a second that you’ve picked 10 companies you’d like to work with, or even better, 1-2 types of companies (Adtech, Web3) that you’d like to join.

You could hunt for jobs in these companies for 1-3 weeks, something I did at one point, you may find a few roles that are in the functional area you like, eg: Product Management, Sales, or Marketing. This is good, but if you don’t like any of these roles, or worse, you apply and don’t get them, imagine how you will feel!

Alternatively, you could graze, looking at each of the 10 companies twice a week for roles that suit you. Any time 1 appears that suits the kind of work you want to do, you can apply. This might mean 1-3 applications per week, and you can focus on doing a good job and getting into an applying habit.

Eventually if you do this, like I did, you’ll come on the perfect role at one of the companies you marked. Because you’ve practiced applying without attachment, you’ll make a better application and be more able to land the interview.

There’s more time to build your network

And that might lead to places you don’t expect. Rather than focusing heavily on applying to jobs, you can do a lot of networking. This is something you should NEVER take a break from: building your network is a great way to make sure you are known, and in being known, you can often have a job handed to you that you don’t even need to apply for.

For example, by building my network in 2018, I was able to land multiple opportunities for my startup, and later, the relationship I built with my friend Jonas Wolf got me my first remote job. Even before that, relationships in Beijing got me my first developer job in 2019. I firmly believe networking is more important than applying for jobs, and while you might land a job through applying, you’ll definitely land one through networking eventually.

More time for personal growth

When was the last time you took a course online? Or learned a new skill? This can often be a gateway to a new job, or even just more satisfaction/opportunity in your existing job.

I took a break for 3 months in 2021 to focus on learning coaching. It helped me to become a team lead, and later to negotiate my way into a new job as a Product Manager. I then started looking again for about 1 month, but stopped to focus on learning more about product management through books. I read 6 books and applied my learning, and then started looking again in the winter. However, I again couldn’t find anything, so I went back and studied even more about product management.

Then finally, in spring 2022, my learning had compounded in value enough that I was able to land multiple interviews and impress interviewers, leading to my current job.

My point? Learning made a huge difference for me. It can for you too, and it doesn’t need to be expensive. Most things worth learning are available for free, or very little money. But the one thing you always need, which can feel scare when you are highly focused on the job search, is time

It’s a marathon, not a sprint

Finding a remote job will take time, and there will be moments when you will feel stuck. Don’t push through those stuck moments: instead, take a break and get back to applying after you’ve really invested in understanding what you want and how to get it.

And take it slow. Sometimes the best opportunities don’t come from looking hard or random searching, but instead from becoming better, more connected, and more detached. This can sound like privileged advice but trust me when I say, 2.5 years ago, when I started my first remote job, I was NOT in a good situation. In fact, I was living in a tiny room in China, supporting my girlfriend and myself on less than $1,000 in salary, in Chinese money, per day.

I would give myself back then the same advice I’ve given you, and I believe no matter your circumstances, this way of doing things, slowly, deliberately, is far better than the typical desperate hunting method I see many people take to the remote job search.

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