A guide to getting remote work

• In this talk, I will explain useful ways to find remote work and give tips based on my personal experience.
  • What is remote work?
  • How to get a remote job
  • How to get paid
  • Working effectively in a remote environment
  • Questions

Remote jobs allow you to work from your home, cafe's, co-working spaces or any other location you choose.

• Remote jobs are becoming more prevalent with each passing year because they allow for flexibility in choosing your working hours and work location.
• Working from outside the corporate office.
• A working style that allows professionals to work outside of a traditional office environment. It is based on the concept that work does not need to be done in a specific place.

Remote employees work in a way that makes sense for their lives.

Co-working spaces -- Small offices for remote workers

Annual work weeks for all remote employees

• Flexible work schedule
• It is a good way to make a living in these tough economic times.
• Possibly higher pay
• No cummute
• You'll save money
• Fewer meetings
• Avoid office politics

• Easy to underwork
• Easy to overwork
• It gets lonely. You may feel left out
• The burn out is real
• We currently don't have financial structures to support freelancers
• Lack of community and cultural differences.
• Inconsistent earnings

Getting a remote job is no more difficult than getting a regular job, it is just different.

• The process is the same, you either apply for the job through a job post or you get a referral
• Create a good CV
• Ace the interview
• Sell yourself to the client
• Be disciplined and develop excellent communication skills

To improve your chance of success, you need to know the right way to find a job

• Traditional approach: creating CV, filling out online application and submitting CV
• Thinking outside the box

• This approach works, but it isn't the best way to get a good job

Before you start filling out job applications, create your CV and make sure your it is up to date

There is cutthroat competition for remote work. You want to make sure your application has the best chance of getting selected.

Fill out as many job applications as you can to improve your odds

ProTip: Narrow your search down to job boards that have a higher chance of having remote jobs

• Indeed
• Glass Door
• StackOverFlow Jobs
• weworkremotely.com

• remotepython.com
• pythonjobshq.com
• djangogigs.com
• python.org/jobs

Freelancer marketplaces offer jobs that range from simple scripts to complex systems

• Upwork
• Toptal
• Fiverr

The traditional approach isn't very efficient, it leads to a lot of wasted effort. The majority of jobs, especially good ones are not advertised. How can you tap into these jobs?

People are selfish, they don't care what you want, they only care about their needs.

When networking, think of what you can do for other people, find the best way you can serve them.

Have a reputation in your community that is so good that when someone hears that you're looking, you have companies scrambling to get you into their teams.

How do you build up a reputation like this?

To build a strong network, you must be willing to invest the time and resources before you need the job

Offer as much value as you can to members of your community.

A good place to network is at programming events like conferences and meetups

One way to offer value to the conference organisers and attendees is to offer to present, speak or volunteer during the conference.

When attending conferences:

• Look up people's names before the conference. Make a list of people you are interested in meeting. Find them, talk to them.
• Stick to what interests you
• If a track/talk is uninteresting, leave and check the hallway. Find someone to talk to. If there's no one to talk to, find another session that might be more interesting.
• Setup meetings with people you would really like to meet. @ them if you can. Leave nothing to chance.
• Make it easy for people to talk to you
• visit company booths, talk to people. If you're looking for a job, ask if they are hiring.

• Think of what you can do for other people. Do they blog? Read, Comment and share their content`
• Help their tweets get more coverage, engage them on social media
• Do they have an OpenSource project? Offer to help, contribute
• Volunteer to help with their meetups/conferences
• Introduce people to each other

• Excel/Word
• Wave Apps
• Free Invoice builder

• Payoneer
• Western Union/World Remit/ MoneyGram etc
• Wire Transfer

What does it take to succeed in remote work?

Communication is the lifeblood of an organisation, without discussion and collaboration, little innovation will take place

There are a slew of tools designed to make communication easier:

• Email
• IRC
• Slack
• Trello
• JIRA
• Skype
• Hangouts

Visibility is key

• be proactive, over communicate
• relay results in a clear and concise manner. Lot's of info flowing around, get to the point
• Communicate everything; If you're going to deliver late, if you have extra time, if you're waiting on something. If you need something.

• Learn to separate important issues from noise.
• There's no way to know what your teammates are working on. The reverse is true. You must be proactive to get this information shared.

• Follow along what's happening in your company
• Be highly responsive. You should always be reachable during the workday and within minutes, whether by email or by phone.
• Respond to emails within 24 hours

• Vuyisile Ndlovu
• @terrameijar