12 steps to find remote work

Hi, my name is Igor. I worked in the office for ten years, but a year ago I decided and switched to remote work. To begin with, I’ll say that now you can’t drive me into the office with a stick! Going to a remote site was the best decision in my life.

I can work with any city in the world and from where it is convenient for me. Now in front of me there is a huge selection of vacancies and I can work where I like. I easily changed several jobs, choosing what I like. At the moment I’ve been in a medical startup for several months and am satisfied with everything: the team, the technology stack, and the project itself.

I walked the list of steps in this article for ten long years, reading articles from various recruiters, recommendations from Google, psychologists, and simply successful people. I rewrote my resume four times, and the amendments and additions were just dark. I have several resumes for different vacancies: in each I focus on what is required in a particular vacancy. There are still two resumes in English. I posted my resume on dozens of job sites - both Russian and foreign.

Recently, I have often been asked to help relatives and friends with my resume and job search. Repeating some recommendations over and over again, I decided to write a guide and share it with you)
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0. Writing a wireframe resume

In order to write a resume, you must write a resume :-) These will be the first drafts of your resume. To begin, indicate all your places of work, what position they occupied, what tasks they performed. Describe ALL the actions that were performed at each workplace, even if it seems insignificant to you.

When applying for a job, you should always record significant events in your work. Since then you can forget about them, and in the resume they will be stored for a rainy day.

If you participated in something - big or small - record in the resume. This may be the execution of some action (writing a plug-in for sending mail \ organizing a meeting of shareholders \ setting up a mail server, etc.) or passing training, or participating in a seminar. If you have undergone additional training before or during work, be sure to include it in the resume.

Indicate your personal experience with any technology, program. Or a book on Time Management, which you know by heart (the latter is best indicated in the About section).
If you want to start working as a designer and at the same time have finished your artwork, BE SURE to indicate this! For creative professions, I also recommend filling out a portfolio of all my works, absolutely any, including those that I painted by hand or did for fun on a computer.

Pay a lot of attention to the section about yourself. Describe what you expect from the new job, what size team, what area of ​​activity, and what you are ready to offer your employer.

Now write everything as YOU see it all.

Then re-read several times and evaluate how well the coherent text has turned out.

A little trick to make it easier to get started. On the hh.ru site, fill in all the fields, and already get a more or less decent structure of the future resume.

1. Market analysis

I opened the site hh.ru went into vacancies.

I chose the IT industry. I chose my city. And he indicated a programming language that I know for finding vacancies where it is required. I appreciated the empty list and realizing that I live “in a remote province” and began to look at any vacancies from the IT sector in my city. You can choose related to your vacancy. Try different names of the same or something from your industry.

Then he looked at vacancies around the edge. Then across Russia.

Then I selected deleted jobs.

I advise you not to specify the salary in order to assess how much you are willing to pay at all.

Opened several dozen tabs. I read what technologies and what requirements for my position are needed. Compiled a short list for what needs to be studied or tested.

In general, I advise you to always keep such a list, and when looking for a job, you need it to write down all the questions that you couldn’t answer at the interviews. I speak in the plural, since getting into a vacancy by the first response is extremely unlikely.

An important stage in my career, I consider passing about fifty interviews (including interviews in English, but more on that below)

From these vacancies, it is worth drawing phrases and a description of skills to indicate in your resume. Never indicate in the resume what you did not do or at least did not try the technology by touch.

2. Competitor analysis

Previously on hh.ru in order to see profiles of other candidates, it was necessary to create another account on behalf of the company. Now you can simply switch to search profiles there.

We open the search for profiles and drive in what interests you in the general search (I drove C #). Without reference to the region or city.

I chose profiles that want to receive as much as possible (of course, like me), but these turned out to be leading experts and team leaders. And he began to compare what they were doing and what words they described it.

3. Resume writing

So, you already have a resume framework. Now work more carefully over your entire work experience. If you are writing a resume for a specific vacancy, remember all your skills and responsibilities that somehow related to this vacancy. Use phrases from the vacancies themselves to describe your skills. Use competitor phrases. Most importantly, do not write in imperfect form - "I did," or "I did." Write in perfect - “I have done”, “I have completed”, “I HELPED the firm to improve its performance”, etc. The process of writing the resume itself in this article is very well described.

3.1 Writing a Summary for the Canadian Market

One of my favorite channels in the MariCanada Telegram ( link ) is the best way to write a resume for Canada, the cardinally opposite approach!

4. Writing a cover letter

Remember that now you are a product in the labor market that needs to be well advertised and sold more expensively. And the cover letter is just such an advertisement that catches the eye of the recruiter. This is the first thing a recruiter sees. It may not reach your resume at all, especially if many people apply for a bid.

After the greeting and a brief description of who you are and what you do at all, write that you stumbled upon their vacancy on such and such a site. Then describe how you can be useful in this particular position. The article I referenced above has some great tips on how to write this.

5. Writing recommendations

The theme in our country is quite new and unusual. But if you want to get several bonus points at once, then try to get a little feedback from your past employer. And warn him that they might want to talk to him.

If the leader is very busy, and we respect his work too, then you can write a letter of recommendation and indicate the contacts of the boss and give him a signature.

6. Newsletter summary

It is necessary to send a lot and often, there is such a term - fan mailing. In general, it is advisable to write in a column to whom he sent and what they answered. Then again, on hh.ru you can see who read the resume, and who immediately refused. But one site is not completely limited by the flow of vacancies, these sites are simply a shaft, both in Russian and in English. To the flesh to the point that you can simply recruit your position in a search engine and write a job. If you search on LinkedIn, then it’s better to look for not only vacancies, but also the recruiters themselves.

There is also a number of telegram channels with remote operation. I will show a few of my subscriptions. On these channels, advertising of related channels in various industries skips.


When responding to a vacancy, we write a cover letter in the message. If you send by mail, then immediately attach to the letter a resume and all the recommendations.

The beauty is that companies that are looking for candidates are only increasing every day and most often they need about the same thing. Do not be afraid that they will | ignore | reject the application | will refuse | because .... substitute your reason. If you don’t try, you don’t know! There is no common black sheet for all companies where they place candidates that they did not like. Do not come alone, then look for others!

You have the opportunity to choose a company in which you will be comfortable working and developing as a specialist. Most often, companies overestimate the requirements for applicants in order to ideally find someone who matches them or is slightly weaker. But, in any case, you will be considered and there is a high probability that they will conduct an interview, and this is not only an opportunity to get to the desired job, but also a tremendous experience.

7. Passage of the first interviews

IMPORTANT: we record all interviews on video. I use the program “ iSpring Free Cam 8 "

This will help to do the work on the bugs. We write out all the questions that you did not answer, or are not sure that you answered correctly.

Prepare answers to common questions in the style of: “Why did you leave your previous workplace?” Or “Who do you see yourself in five years from now?” An article from hh.ru itself will help you .

Try not to talk negatively about past work experience or past bosses. This will put you in a bad light, and the recruiter may decide that you do not get along well with your colleagues.

Feel free to ask yourself too. Ask about the team, about what tasks they face, what is required of you as an employee. What are the prospects for the development of the company. It is better to leave the financial issue in the end, so that the employer understands that you are interested in contributing to the development of his business, than just taking money and sitting on a bet.

In general, I perceive the interview process as an opportunity to learn something new! For example, now programs / technologies / patterns use different teams or what is generally demanded in the market (not by reviews with gray statistics, but directly by employers). Plus, when solving test tasks, you get a lot of experience.

But there are inadequate questions and approaches to selection during interviews. After a few interviews, you will feel much more confident.

8. Preparation for follow-up interviews

Google all your questions. We are looking for all the required technologies and trying to deploy them on our machine or watch video tutorials on how it works. This will help not only in the interview, but also in further work. We carry out test tasks. Refresh all long-forgotten knowledge.

In general, getting feedback from the company is worth the gold. I had only one case of all, when they told me directly at the interview why they did not fit my solution to the test task and how exactly it had to be solved in order to suit them. And then, it was not a Russian company.

9. Preparation for an interview in English

There should be a huge separate article. But I will tell you briefly how my several interviews in English went. Unfortunately, I started to really prepare for an interview in English only after the first interview in English. But it’s good that you have my article!

I will say right away that between the first and second interviews I had three weeks of preparing English with a Skype teacher.

In order not to be silent at all, I made a short retelling of my resume in English, trying to remove all difficult-to-pronounce phrases. He learned it as much as possible and asked a familiar English teacher to listen to me and try to understand what I had in mind.

I also found a list of standard questions in English for an interview on Dot.Net, and tried to remember some of them. It served as a cheat sheet, I could peek at it, because I was still not visible on camera.

10. Passing an interview in English

The most difficult thing is to catch what they want from you. Since the emphasis of everyone is completely different, and the speed of speech, too. I had two interviews in English, one with a guy from Germany, the second with a man from the USA.

For the first time, the recruiter was supposed to speak with me in Russian, but something went wrong and he was not in the interview. The employee who spoke to me was with a strong German accent. I understood part of the words correctly and even answered something, recalling the resume, though I hadn’t translated it yet at that time and had to be improvised. And to the part I obviously gave a completely inappropriate answer. Unfortunately, they needed good conversational English, and I did not fit them.

In the second case, I was immediately warned that bad English is not a problem at all (it was then that I translated the recording of the conversation and realized that I was told). It was already a little easier, because the first time I was completely unprepared, and for the second time I already had cheat sheets, including my translated resume. But, unfortunately, I did not fit them either, since I needed excellent knowledge of Java Script, and I had it at an average level.

I can’t help but mention that at several Russian interviews, where after a technical interview, they simply spoke English to me on abstract topics. To do this, you should also make a small dictionary for phrases about the weather, hobbies, hobbies and how you spent your day off.

Again, always record all interviews on video or audio - to work on the bugs, and to understand what they wanted from you.

11. Passing the final interview and further work

You walked for a long time to this moment. Now you can answer any question without hesitation, and if you do not know the answer, you can improvise with the knowledge you have. You can speak English and catch what they want from you.

You successfully pass the interview and get the desired job.

Go out to your new job and begin to delve into the processes and work environment. Meet the team. In a month you get your first money.

But at some point, something may go wrong. The work seems to be not bad, and they pay a lot of money, but everything is annoying. You left the inadequate boss and the hated work to change your life and earn money on what you like, but you are in a completely similar situation. When you are being treated badly or disrespectfully, and demanding that you don’t stop working even on weekends “you still sit at home anyway!” Etc.

It is important to understand that you need to work where you will be comfortable. Modern realities are such that the labor market is huge and now companies do not select candidates, and candidates choose companies in which they want to work.

And if you are not respected for your work, which you approach with a soul, for your contribution to the development of the company, then the price of such a company is worthless.

Work must be loved, and then you will not regret a day that you go to it. There will be motivation for self-improvement and a desire to contribute to the common work!

Good luck in finding!