Getting Remote Jobs

I run https://remotehunter.xyz . If you want to, I can review your CV and cover letter. In my experience, the space is really competitive and you need to stick out.

Here are some that could interest you:

• https://remotehunter.xyz/job/e29b126f/Back-End-Engineer

• https://remotehunter.xyz/job/43a4cf62/Senior-Python-Developer

• https://remotehunter.xyz/job/5627ca11/Python-Developer-Web-Crawling

Great question! I'm not sure if you are asking about a single full time job or freelancing, but I think my methodology would apply to both.

All of my remote freelance work (doing Django/Python actually) has come from "being lucky". That is, I was in the right place at the right time and met the right people who needed the skills I had and hired me.

You can make it work to use job finding services, but I'd argue the best way to find clients who will pay good rates and not micromanage you and respect your expertise will come from referrals and networking.

Everything is luck, so let's get lucky! There is a lovely concept of "increasing your luck surface area" - that is, there are things you can do to increase the number of serendipitous things that happen in your life. In the case of finding work, it boils down to:

1. Make yourself easy to refer by specializing in something people need

2. Put yourself out there as much as possible

First, specialization. You tell me: "I am a developer." Cool! I have no idea what you might be able to help me with. If someone tells me, "I need a Django web developer" I will not think of you, but rather someone like Ben Lopatin of https://wellfire.co/ who specializes in Django. The more precise your specialization, the easier it is to refer you. Web developer is better than developer, Python developer is better than web developer, Django developer is better than Python developer. Picking something in-demand can be helpful due to market size, but picking something more niche can mean less competition and maybe even higher paying.

Second, put yourself in front of people. In-person networking is great. Things like:

1. Going to meetups (the recently pushed for Indie Hackers meetups are a great example) and talking to people. Don't try to sell yourself, just make connections. People will ask what you do, so tell them you are a Python/Django/whatever developer.

2. Speaking at meetups is even better. Meetup organizers would absolutely love for you to speak at their meetup. There's always a shortage of speakers. If you can present a good talk related to your area of expertise, you gain "star power" in the eyes of the audience. You just proved you know what you are talking about by talking intelligently for 10/20/50 minutes.

3. Participating in online communities. Don't try to sell, just offer help on your expertise. Make it easy to find you.

Okay now you've put yourself out there. But the most important strategy I use: Send lots of emails.

Fun fact: you are allowed to send emails to cool/famous/important people and sometimes they respond! This was something I only really realized about a year ago. Liked that article someone wrote? Send them an email thanking them. Liked that podcast interview they did? Send an email telling them why you liked it. Do you admire someones' work? Thank them for it. Know two people who you think would benefit from knowing each other? Offer to connect them. Again, don't try to sell them on things, just start a conversation.

Now, put everyone you've ever talked to in a CRM. I'm using ActiveCampaign, I've also heard of people having success with Pipedrive, Streak, Nimble, or a Google spreadsheet. All we really want here is a way to keep track of literally everyone we've ever met.

Set it up so that you regularly reach out to each person in your CRM with some kind of regularity. Ask them how things are going. Ask about details you remember them talking about the last time you met them. Provide value somehow. One of my favorite articles on this subject is Derek Sivers "How to stay in touch with hundreds of people".

I currently have 4 clients, and here is how I got each of them:

1. Person in my college class gets a job and two years later contacts the computer science department at my college and asks if they "know any freelancers." I had made it known to my professors that I was going into freelancing and they connected us. Client for 3+ years.

2. Went to a coworking space and chatted with a guy. Mentioned I do freelance work. 3 weeks later I'm siting in the coworking space and he comes up to me and says "I am getting a full time job and can't keep this client. Do you want them?" Client for 3+ years.

3. I was a teacher's assistant at a college class about software engineering. Made friends with a student. 3 years later his friend was graduating and interested in freelance. The first student connected us. I went out for coffee with the younger student, told him everything I know about freelancing. 3 months later he contacts me and says "I decided not to freelance, but this client wants a site, do you want them?" $8500 gig.

4. I discovered a podcast I enjoyed by a thought leader in the consulting space about how to find a niche. I sent him an email saying "Hey I liked your podcast. My niche is Django development." Later another person who does Django work contacts this thought leader, he shows this person my website. This person joins my mailing list. I see that person has joined and so sent him an email saying hello what up. We connect over the fact that we both do Django. 3 months later he says "my primary client needs more help with a Django site." This is how I got my current primary client.

In none of these instances did I ever do any hustling or pitching or convincing even. I never had to prove my abilities or even show a portfolio site. This is the power of putting yourself out there and trying to provide value to others in any way you can. It's certainly not a short term solution and requires rampup time, but it's the most powerful way I know to make good things happen.

Fun fact: all of these skills are really useful when building products, but without the added complication that building products bring. As such remote freelancing can be a great stepping stone to building products.

I've been working remotely as a developer for 9 years. Literally all my work has come through referrals.

Applying for jobs through Upwork, RemoteOK, WeWorkRemotely, etc. is an option, but it takes a lot of time and never amounted to anything for me.

If you want remote work, best advice I can offer is to tell people you already know that you're looking for remote work. Maybe even ask your current employer if they'd allow it.

You never know unless you ask. :)

My main tip is to follow-up and make your application to the companies you're emailing more about them and less about you. Following up with them over the course of weeks or months will help build your relationship and prove you really do want the job (just don't badger).

An example of how you can make it more about the company than your desires, instead of mentioning your desire to make good use of your time, what is more important to the company is what you can help them do and accomplish, so lead with that instead.

This advice comes from a 12-month session I had with freelancers replying to remote jobs on my service who were having trouble hearing back. These are the top tips we saw that made an improvement in their response rate from companies.

Applying through StackOverflow Careers has worked for me in the past - think I've landed 3 full-time remote positions that way over the years.

Keyvalues.io has a remote-ok filter when looking at companies

Obligatory plug for my own job board: https://remoteonly.io -- it aggregates jobs from about 15 places including RemoteOK, SO and WeWorkRemotely.

Here are some sources:

• AngelList Jobs (with Remote OK tag)

• RemoteOK.io

• WeWorkRemotely

• Workable

Try https://remoteok.io/ I just did a quick search for python and there are a few,

I've been remote for about 10 years now, I was working for a company from an office and we decided everyone to go remote so everyone working from home.

I've since moved on and started my own business so still remote and I don't think I'll be going back.

If remote freelance work interests you, I've had excellent results working with Gigster. They have a full pipeline and take care of invoicing, payment, project management, etc. They've kept me busy for two years now (I do product management through them).

For me, it was a matter of listing out what I wanted in my next job. Shortening my commute was near the top of the list, so that lead me to seek out remote positions (and to make a small saas to help me in my search: https://remotematcher.com)

Once I started talking to companies, looking the rest of the things on that list came in very handy: It helped me stay focused on what was important to me. It lead me to realize that while I could do certain jobs which I'm not excited about (full stack), I really wanted to work on backend Python.

So I focused in my job search and stopped applying for jobs that were "close enough".

The end result was it took me a few weeks longer to find a job, but when I did I hit the jackpot! I'm now 100% remote doing 100% Python with a company I really like.

I actually worked for my current company for a year, making myself quite valuable during that year and working from home more often to prove I could be productive outside the office. Then asked if I could go fully remote and I've been traveling fulltime in an RV and working for them for the past year.

If your company has any kind of work from home capability, I'd say just asking them if you can go remote is probably the best, first place to start.

Not trying to pimp myself here (I've decided not to promote via IH for the moment) but I'm currently releasing a lecture series on successful remote freelancing. The first lecture is free, but there are 10 parts in this course. Things start to ramp up around part 2 or 3. Check it here: https://members.zeropattern.com/2018/07/20/10-steps-to-10k-•-step-1-of-10-your-niche/

• Youssef

https://zeropattern.com

Check out We Work Remotely!

P.S. We're hiring a Head of Growth & Marketing via WWR and we've gotten some pretty qualified candidates there so it seems legit. Also, if this is anybody's cup of tea, feel free to apply.

It is a kinda hard find a remote job, I am looking for one , but I am not good at this. hahaha

My experience looking for remote jobs was surprisingly good. It took me a month to land a job at an amazing remote friendly company.

I used the popular sites mentioned below and applied to different companies.

I also found a list of remote friendly companies, then I cold email their CTO or similar.

At the end It was a numbers game, I applied to around 10, 3-4 where interested, and at the end I got 2 offers in 1-2 months of looking.

Maybe I was lucky, I think timing and perseverence is quite important

A lot of great resources posted here, so I'd just echo what some others have said - remote jobs are more competitive than regular jobs (applicants aren't bounded by geography and they're more desirable positions overall), so expect to have to apply to a lot more than you might expect.

Another tip is to try to focus on applying to places where you send a direct email over a form submission. While it's not a guarantee, an email increases the odds that a person is at least looking over your app versus a form which might filter certain things out. In my experience, it also made follow up much easier, and it's completely reasonable to follow up in a few days if you haven't heard back from someone.

First of all, good luck on your job hunt! Secondly, I'd like to share from the perspective of the employer looking for remote employees. Where I live, there aren't any developers besides myself, so I have to find people remotely for some more complex development work. It is super competitive. You have to really be proactive about getting your stuff out in front of the employer and do a good job of showing you're a great communicator. I've hired maybe 20-30 people in the last 3 years and only 3 of them do I currently still use because the rest don't care, or are bad at communicating. That may be one thing that will help you stand out.

I have just recently launched a job board but it's strictly for accountants called accountical. (https://www.accountical.com) and we've got about 200 accountants signed up already. Looking at some of them they're impressive. So good luck in your field and there's a lot of good advice here!