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Join the Ranks of Telecommuters
Finding a Position Through Job Boards
Part Two
By Pamela La Gioia
Once you have learned the various types of working from home opportunities that exist – and you are able to avoid the scams and "joke" jobs – the next step is to locate an actual job. For most people, this is the hardest part: finding a company that will allow them to work from home in the first place!
There are several good sources to use when you look
for home-based employment. They include:
- Job boards
- Staffing firms’ Web sites
- Fee-based job sites
- Work-from-home sites
- Freelance Web sites
Not the Newspaper
The first place most job seekers look when they want to find employment is in
their local newspapers. However, if you find even one legitimate work-from-home
job ad there, you’ll be lucky. Companies rarely advertise at-home
positions in newspapers.
Most likely what you’ll find are ads such as, “Earn $1,000-$5,000 a week from home! No experience necessary!” This seems like an obvious red flag for a pending scam, but it is actually common. I’m sure you’ve seen this type of ad. I suggest that you steer clear of these and not even check them out in the hope that they are real jobs. Trust me, they ARE too good to be true.
The Internet, word-of-mouth and creating a job are the best ways to find a home-based job. For one reason, the Internet is the primary way a home-based worker and a company communicate. Whether it’s through e-mail or logging on to a company’s network to make reports, almost any job – even the least technical one – will probably require you to use the Internet. The Internet also offers the widest array of sources for job hunting. You can use job boards or visit actual staffing firms through their Web sites. So if you aren’t Internet savvy it’s time to get that way.
Job Boards
Within the Internet are several excellent types of sources. The first and most common online source that’s used to find jobs is the Mega Job Boards.
The Big Boys
There are many different sizes and categories of job boards. Monster.com and
Careerbuilder.com are a couple examples of what I call Mega Job Boards. They
are general job boards, and will post any job, in any occupational category.
(Such as accounting, psychic reading or nursing jobs). These boards will post
any job lead that a company pays them to post.
It is possible to find some good job leads here; however, because they post any job a company pays them to post, you’ll also have to do a lot of screening. Start out your search by entering specific keywords, such as “work from home.” You will probably be presented with at least a thousand job ads. However, of those thousand or so results, most of them will be scam or junk ads. You will need to scan through those all those ads in order to get to the real telecommuting job ads. (We'll talk about how to do a quick scan in a following paragraph.)
Niching Your Way to a Job
Fortunately, there are other job boards worth looking into, too. One type is
called "niche" job boards. These are boards that advertise jobs within a
particular industry or category. Retailjobs.com is an example of an industry
niche board. This site posts only job leads from companies seeking
retail-related workers, such as clerks, merchandisers, stock personnel and so
on. NetTemps.com is an example of a category niche board. Rather than posting
jobs within a particular industry, however, they will post for any industry as
long as the jobs are all for temporary or contractual positions.
Another type of job board is what I call "superniche" job boards. These boards go beyond job postings within one industry or category. They focus on a single profession within an industry. iHireNursing.com is an example. This site focuses strictly on nursing jobs and does not post jobs for the entire medical field. Accountants.com is another example. Ads on niche and super-niche boards carry a lot less junk and scams than the mega boards because moderators of these boards screen their ads more carefully before posting them. Therefore, these are good sources for finding work-from-home jobs.
Now, when viewing search results from these bigger boards, you can scan these ads without actually having to read all of them. Look for some common denominators, so to speak. For example, if you have 50 job results on one page and most of them start with “Work from home! Easy work!” you know not to even bother looking at those. Or if you see that one company is posting dozens of the same ad for areas all over your country, you will probably want to avoid those, too. (Such ads are probably ads posted by a Webmaster or affiliate in an effort to lure to you a site to purchase something.) Look for ads that advertise specific positions, posted by real-sounding companies or staffing firms. For example:
- "Case manager needed for adolescents."
- "Orange County Appraiser needed."
- "Account executive for Northern territory."
Legitimate jobs rarely put “work from home” in their job title. Why? Because working from home is a benefit or perhaps a requirement. It is not a job! So scan past all the amazing results and focus on the jobs.
Copyright 2004, Pamela La Gioia
Want to see more?
- Work From Home, Set Your Hours: How to Become a Mobile Notary
- The Stay-at-Home Mom's Guide to Making Money
- Want to Work From Home? How to Get Your Boss to Say Yes
- Talk about it!
About the Author: Pamela La Gioia is the founder and administrator of Telework Recruiting, a premier job-lead Web site that provides thousands of job leads and job resources for the U.S., Canada and the UK. She is currently writing a workbook on telecommuting, which offers step-by-step guidance on finding real home-based employment. Questions or comments are welcome and can be sent to La Gioia at pam@teleworkrecruiting.com.
