How To Find A Remote Job

Ep #66: 6 Places to Look For Remote Jobs

00:00 / 10:25

The #1 question on everyone’s mind is: “Where do I go to look for remote jobs?! That’s a funny question, because when you know where to look, they are everywhere!

There are 6 places I go to find remote jobs, all with different search criteria and strategies, but all effective. You need only choose one strategy, but knowing where else to look when your search leaves you underwhelmed can keep you motivated AND finding new opportunities.

So before you shrug off the whole remote job search with: “There’s just nothing out there, I’ll never find anything!” listen to episode #66 on the Thriving Empire Podcast so you can get cracking with your search, find a remote job, and build your career and the life you really want simultaneously. In this episode we cover:

The difference between job boards & job aggregators (and which I prefer!)
A search ‘trick’ for LinkedIn that yields more remote job results
A new type of newsletter that does all the ‘looking’ for you!

Get the Podcast Study Pack 3 and receive a worksheet, guide or checklist workbook for every episode, so you can make your remote career & transition a reality ASAP.

In the last 2 episodes we’ve covered how to create the perfect remote job CV, and your linkedin profile, and these are sequential steps so if you haven’t watched listened to those yet, head over to episode #64 and #65 and then come back here, because today we’re talking about exactly where to look for remote roles!

You’re in luck because there are quite a few places to look, and quite a few tools & individuals looking on your behalf. Well over 100, in fact!

The first 2 most obvious places to look are remote job boards, and remote job board aggregators. So what’s the difference between the two?

Remote Job Boards

A remote job board is where employers post jobs directly to a particular platform or ‘board’. Remote job boards work differently, some the job seeker has to pay a membership or access fee, some the company has to pay a fee, and some are free for both parties.

I recommend job boards that charge a fee to the company for posting a job spec. This means you get a higher quality employer dedicated to the remote job search, and it means the job board will have salaried employees looking after the job board and maintaining quality and integrity of all the postings on the site.

2. Remote Job Aggregators

Remote job aggregators on the other hand are like specialised search engines for remote jobs. They scour job postings on other remote job boards, and in fact all over the net, giving you wider reach beyond the job boards. Typically you can see where the job has been sources from, be it a job board, a company website, a professional association website, etc, so it really does cast a wider net. It’s a one-stop shop for searching for a particular role, industry or salary across a variety of sources, and makes it easy to search for specifics like part-time, full-time or start date etc. They are efficient, save you time looking at job boards individually, and give you a high-level view of the number of opportunities in your field.

3. Curated Newsletters

The curated newsletter is increasing in popularity. This is where individuals like career coaches actively scour remote job opportunities, vet them for legitimacy and email up to 10 specific opportunities to their subscribers weekly. Personally I prefer to do a wider job search myself, because I know exactly what I’m looking for and where to look. But if you’re new to the remote job search, this might be a nice start because they also come with interesting & inspiring tips, insights and information to inspire your search and your remote career. And some are specialised, such as remote jobs in the UK.

4. Linkedin

And of course LinkedIn! There are 3 ways to use linkedin to find remote jobs:

1. Your network.

If you’re happy for other people to know you’re looking, like me if you’ve just finished a creative project, or if you’ve closed your business and looking to get back into work, don’t be afraid to post on LinkedIn. Tell your network you’re exactly what you’re looking for, and ask them to put you in touch with people, or PM you with contacts or opportunities. Last November just before I secured my latest remote role I posted the following:

“I’m looking for my next strategic planning contract with a social enterprise, tech startup or innovative agency. Remote or Asia/ Australasia/ Europe. Who do you know who may be hiring?”

You’d be surprised how many people will get in touch with useful contacts, tips and advice. Especially via PM. LinkedIn is a really supportive community.

2. The ‘Boolean Search’ Function

This is another secret tip. This is a way of setting up and saving remote job search criteria on LinkedIn. It’s a way of combining keywords with words like AND, NOT and OR to yield more opportunities than you’d find usually.

For example, I have one saved job search criteria set up as:

(remote OR telecommute OR virtual) AND (strategist OR strategic OR community)

With the location set to ‘worldwide’.

Check out the full instructions. Read it and play around with it, some interesting remote opportunities pop up that are hard to surface otherwise.

3. #Remote Hashtags

I type #remote into the search box at the top of Linked in and it surfaces all the latest content relevant to remote. You’ll see conversations about the opportunities and challenges of everything remote, you’ll see posts about remote jobs posted by HR people at remote companies, but you’ll also see a lot of posts by remote companies about how they make the remote work style work for their team, and for their business. It’s a great idea to look at their careers page and see if there’s anything that might suit you.

5. Top 100 companies offering remote roles

Then there are the companies that we have known for a LONG time, big players like Microsoft, Cisco, amazon, Dell , Kaplan, and 100s of others who offer tons of remote roles across all their business functions. These range from flexible working to remote working locally & internationally. Head over to their careers pages and get cracking! I’ve linked to a list of the Top 100 in the show notes.

6. Google Search

And finally, good old Google. Looking for a job as a remote product manager?

Google ‘remote product manager jobs.

Looking for a job as a remote marketing specialist? Google ‘remote marketing specialist jobs’. Put more detail in it if you like, ‘part time remote marketing specialist jobs’ like

Again, it’s surprising what shows up. And even more surprising how few people actually use Google like this.

Ok, so that gives you enough ideas about where to find remote jobs. If you have the podcast pack, crack open worksheet 14. I share my favourite remote job boards, remote job aggregators and remote job newsletters with you, specifically for finding jobs in Marketing. With over 100 places to look, it’s better that you choose 5 of your favourites, sign up for their newsletters, alerts and do daily searches regularly, than feel overwhelmed by where to look.

If you don’t have the worksheet yet don’t worry, head over here to get your copy there.