A few days ago, I posted on my Insta about working remotely and someone commented saying that she’s a lost cause and has zero skills.
This broke my little workin’ from home heart. Because it’s just not true!
I asked her what she does for a work currently and she said that she does telemarketing. BOOM! She’s got skills:
- Sales
- Customer Service/Call Center
- Data Entry
- Computer
I think people get so intimidated by the idea of remote work because most of the people they see doing it are developers, designers, and others with very specific skills.
I’m here to tell you there are plenty of remote jobs that fit the description of general or entry level skills.
Here’s a newsflash, my very first work-from-home job was as a customer service representative for a well known telemarketing firm called West. I worked with them previously doing telemarketing and when they expanded into the world of customer service, I jumped on the opportunity to make the switch. I worked on one of their biggest clients at the time, Toys R Us during the holidays, helping customers navigate the BIG TOY BOOK and the online site and even placing orders for customers.
My next remote job was a customer service representative for American Express! The skills I had were answering phones and handling customer issues. If you’ve ever worked at any retail store, fast food spot, or anywhere that interacts with customers, you have customer service skills. Even if you were just working your aunt’s table at the flea market!
Here are a few general skills position that I know are great for remote work:
- Administrative – there is a huge boom for Virtual Assistants and admins these days and the possibilities are quite vast. From getting hired by a company like Amazon in an Administrative role, to working for a Virtual Assistant based company such as Belay, to freelancing on your own via Upwork or Fiverr!
- Social Media Manager – there are SO MANY soon-to-be influencers and small businesses trying to grow their brands but because their hands are in so many things, they don’t have the time to post photos, comment and like photos on other accounts, and interact in a way that will grow their following. They could use an extra two hands doing this. I think this is something really easy to set up on Fiverr or Upwork or even drop into business FB group and start offering services.
- Data Entry – As much as we’re moving to technology and automation, we’re not all there yet. In fact, there are lots of companies who need help transitioning their data from scans to systems. There is still work for those who can type to do data entry…from anywhere!
- Customer Service – I mentioned this earlier as the way I broke into the remote work arena. In the last decade, a lot of companies have “on-shored” their customer service operations back to the US to increase their customer satisfaction ratings. We know labor in the US is much more expensive than it is offshore, so in order to keep costs low, they’ve moved their call centers to virtual one. That said, there are so many more virtual customer service positions available. And guess what? Not all of them are over the phone. There are chat and email customer service positions as well!
“Ok, Lib. I get it, there ARE remote jobs out there even if I don’t have specialized skills. But WHERE are they??”.
I’m glad you asked. I have a few fave places to find remote jobs as seen here in my GUIDE TO MY FAVORITE PLACES TO FIND REMOTE WORK.
But let me point you to some specific spots for the types of jobs I’ve listed above (these spots are also in my guide).
SKIPTHEDRIVE.COM
REMOTE.CO
If you feel a bit better about the prospect of grabbing a remote job now that you know you don’t have to have specific skills, drop a comment for me…then share this blog post!!!
