If you’ve never worked from home or had a flexible schedule, how do you portray to a recruiter or hiring manager that you have what it takes to be productive outside of the traditional office?
These days, many people are working from home. However, if you’ve never worked from home or had a flexible schedule, how do you portray to a recruiter or hiring manager that you have what it takes to be productive outside of the traditional office?
Here are a few ways to show that you can (and will!) be just as efficient outside the office as in.
Connect It
First things first, think about the skills necessary to work remotely in general and in your specific industry. This could be self-motivation, communication skills, reliability and autonomy. Now, consider how you’ve demonstrated those skills during your career. These are the things you want to pull out from your career story and highlight on a resume.
For example, did you successfully run a project from inception to completion, including liaising with multiple people or teams? This shows effective communication, reliability and autonomy, you just need to phrase it to highlight those skills.
Try something like: Led a group of X people from different teams through multiple decision-making processes and completed project on deadline.
Or something like: Spearheaded cross-departmental process to [insert project goal] by hosting regular meetings and ensuring all parts of the project were on track.
Essentially, you want to paint the picture that you can work autonomously and efficiently so when a hiring manager envisions your work habits or how you would fit into a remote team, there isn’t a doubt that you can do it successfully.
Include It
Most resumes have a skills section, and if yours doesn’t now is the time to add one. This section of your resume is primarily focused on hard skills, or the learned skills you’ve acquired. But that’s not to say you can’t include soft skills, or the more interpersonal, non-tangible skills, too. While just about everyone will say that have communication skills, think about the soft skills you really excel at. Then include those.
For example: Problem-solving, leadership, flexibility and creativity.
Say It
If you have worked remotely in the past in any capacity, mention it on your resume. Typically, you’ll have a location for each position, so if you did work remotely, that’s the place to put it.
However, if it was only part-time or on an as-needed basis, you can add a line under that position that explains your situation.
It could be: Successfully worked remotely part-time for X months/years with manager approval.
Most importantly, remember that a lot of people are new to the remote work world. Hiring managers aren’t looking for candidates with 10+ years of remote work experience, they want someone who can demonstrate the willingness and flexibility it takes to navigate this new way of working. So, keep that in mind not only when you’re creating a resume, but when you’re talking to recruiters or hiring managers about the position. Your resume is a way to show them that you’re up to the task, but you still need to prove that what you’ve said on that piece of paper isn’t lip service.
