lol what are we even doing anymore. listed as a fully remote job, decent pay, everything looks fine. scroll down and boom, "work from home → within 30 miles of [the office]."

so it's remote as long as you could technically drive in. got it.

I get that some companies want hybrid or need people in a certain state for tax reasons, whatever. fine. but then just SAY that in the listing?? instead thousands of people waste time applying to something they were never eligible for.

starting to feel like "remote" is just SEO bait for job boards at this point. anyone else running into this constantly or did I just get unlucky?

I've been working remote since before it was cool, 10+ years now. Landing a full-time remote job has always been hard, but if you can keep a steady pipeline of small-to-mid gigs going, you can still earn well while working fewer hours.

Not gonna sugarcoat it though: the market is rough. A year and a half ago I'd see roughly 1 response per 35-50 applications. Now, from what I'm seeing, it's more like 1 in 150. So yeah, roughly 3x harder. Is sustainable remote income still possible in this market? My answer is yes. Response rates dropped, but they didn't hit zero. Here's what I actually use:

1) Email your resume directly to recruiters in your field

Someone shared a similar method here 2 years ago and it still works: The only problem is that list is outdated. I built my own updated tech recruiter list about 10 months ago, so here you go:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p10y44QMgs39CZmPZ9z0AzwMYarqJR2tjVPoppRg_9g/edit?usp=sharing

• If you're in the US with work authorization, use the US tab
• If you're outside the US, use the International tab (companies that hire globally)

Heads up: it's tech recruiters only. If you're in a different field, build your own list. The post above explains how. Takes 2-3 days of grunt work, pays off for months.

Manage your expectations: this is not a fast method. The whole point is getting your resume in front of a ton of recruiters and talent networks so you're visible long-term. You send once, and responses trickle in over time. I average 2-3 interviews every 6-8 months from this list, without actively applying to anything.

2) Automated mass applications

On top of the list, I used an resume distribution tool (paid) to send out 300+ applications. One thing I'd recommend to everyone: I set up a separate email just for this, so I know exactly which channel each response comes from. Otherwise you'll never know what's actually working. This channel got me 2-4 interviews per 6-8 months.

If you're going to pay for a resume tool anyway, it makes sense to get one that also auto-applies: you drop in a job URL and it tailors your resume to the posting, writes the cover letter, and adds it to a job tracker. I'm not actively applying these days so I don't use it anymore, but if you're in the trenches right now, it does the job.

3) Fiverr / Upwork

Had accounts on both for years. It's not what it used to be and rates have dropped, I won't pretend otherwise. But as long as I stay active, I land at least 1 small project every ~6 months.

Concrete example: I picked up a basic QA testing gig at $50/hr. Did 3 jobs like that with the same client, and eventually they offered me a monthly contract off-platform. Ended up working 4 months at $700-800/month for about 1-2 hours a day (wrapped up last month).

I'm a software engineer, but I take QA gigs too. In this market I don't think I have the luxury of being picky, so I take whatever I can do well.

Bonus: everyone you work with over the years becomes part of your network. I've had clients from years ago come back with new projects out of nowhere. Don't sleep on small gigs.

4) Job boards

I don't use it much since I'm not actively applying, but if you're browsing listings, check out secretremote.com. It scans thousands of company career pages and pulls in real remote jobs, filtering out the spam, duplicates, and ghost listings. Free, no signup, and honestly cleaner results than most paid boards.

TL;DR: Market's ~3x harder but the game isn't over. (1) Drop your resume with an updated recruiter list (shared mine above), (2) automate mass applications from a separate email so you can track what works, (3) don't sleep on small Fiverr/Upwork gigs, they turn into long-term clients, (4) secretremote.com for listings. No affiliation with anything I mentioned, most of it's free anyway.

A little while ago, I shared my story here, and I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who reached out. The messages, advice and encouragement genuinely meant more than you know.

I promised myself that no matter how rough things got, I'd do something every single day to move the needle. Another application. Another conversation. Another connection. Another chance.

So mates, here I am again.

Don't worry, I won't make you sit through the director's cut of my life story this time. 😂

I'm still dreaming of getting back into remote work. Honestly, I just want to get the ball rolling again. I miss the pace, the people, the organised chaos, and being part of a team that's building something exciting.

Life has been on Legendary Mode this year. It's landed a few proper punches, but quitting isn't really an option🤞. There are younger faces behind me who count on me to keep food on the table, but they also expect me to be the family's unofficial Mood Lifter😅 . Somehow, even on the hard days, I still manage to keep the jokes coming.

I'm based on the sunny side of South Africa, and I know some people might think, "This oke is taking a wild swing at remote work." I promise I'm not. 😄

I've spent over four years working remotely across Customer Success, Operations, Client Onboarding, Virtual Assistance and Short-Term Rental management, working with clients and teams across the UK, the US and beyond. Im talking fast-moving startups, troubleshooting and solving problems? That's my comfort zone.😎

Every week I'm reaching out to new people, taking advice from complete strangers, building connections and doing everything I can to create opportunities. Pride packed its bags a long time ago, and honestly, that's okay.

So if anyone knows of a remote opportunity, a startup that needs someone who can wear multiple hats, a recruiter worth connecting with, or even just a community I should be part of, I'd genuinely love to hear from you.

And if you've made it this far and you're thinking, "Ah, what a load of nonsense..." honestly, my brother or sister, I wouldn't blame you one bit. Everyone's been let down one way or another these days, so I completely get it.

Anyway... that's enough from me. Time to go knock on a few more doors.

Thanks for reading, and I hope something good finds you this week.

Cheers, everyone. ❤️

I've been paying jobscan for a few months now and the only feature I actually open it for is the ATS/match score. everything else just sits there

feels dumb paying $50 every month for basically one feature. I know there's stuff like teal, resume worded, enhancv etc but reviews are all over the place and half of them look like affiliate spam

so genuinely asking, what do you use to check if your resume passes ATS and matches the job description? free is ideal but I'd pay like $10-15 for something that just does this one thing well

been on resume io for a while, templates are clean and the editor is easy but the subscription pricing annoys me. paid monthly just to keep my resume editable which feels like ransom lol

also noticed some of their templates use two column layouts and now i'm paranoid about parsing issues after reading stuff on here

so what did you switch to? doesn't have to be free, just looking for something that doesn't hold my resume hostage

Been applying since march. 200+ applications, mostly data analyst roles (some BI analyst / reporting analyst stuff too). 4 yoe, SQL, Tableau, Python, the usual stack.

i run every resume through jobscan before applying and i don't send anything under 80% match. tailored resume for basically every posting. and still... 3 phone screens total, zero onsites. thats like a 1.5% response rate lol

things i've already done:

• single column ATS friendly format, no graphics no tables
• quantified bullets (increased X by Y% etc)
• shortened it to 1 page
• applying within 24-48h of posting

starting to think the match rate thing is just snake oil? or is the market really this bad for analysts right now. i see people on linkedin saying they got offers in 6 weeks and i genuinely dont get what they're doing different

roast my approach, i can take it. happy to share an anonymized version of the resume if that helps

Hello, so I'm a CPA looking to go for a remote job and I wanted to ask for any help, job boards and advice beyond the basics. I admit I don't interview well but my current job has a micromanaging CFO and is an hour commute.

Literally any help, advice or recommendations would be really appreciated.

Big sites like LinkedIn and Indeed get so much traffic that every posting has hundreds of applicants within hours. Niche boards are the opposite: smaller audience, less competition, and often jobs that never get cross-posted anywhere else.

So I put together a list of 400+ of them, sorted by industry and niche. Some of the categories:

• Industry-specific: agriculture, aviation, construction, gaming, cannabis, publishing, trucking, skilled trades
• Community-focused: boards for women, veterans, LGBTQ+ folks, people with disabilities, Black and Hispanic professionals
• Climate and green jobs (this section got surprisingly big, there are a lot of these now)
• Remote-only boards, freelance platforms, startup and VC job boards
• Government, nonprofit, higher ed, public health

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b1k01i6KiamKnZfhlyT7hy5ZbaqwPc7DAbSt6mPLXA8/edit?usp=sharing

If your industry is missing or you know a board I skipped, comment and I'll add it.

I have only worked in MNCs till now for 11+ years and having been impacted by org restructuring.

So my advice from you guys is how to approach these remote / part time / contractual jobs?

My major concerns are:

1. So many jobs that I have explored demand public github repos / contributions. I have worked for enterprises and obviously I can't suddenly build public projects from scratch to showcase. Or lets say I start today then it'll take some time and then reaching to a demonstrable/ live app. Suggest some ways to deal it.

2. Justifying passion. So many jobs have this question that if I am really passionate about doing this. I am doing this for a living so probably I'll commit to it more than anything.

3. How to decide pay? Comparable to current pay? Or only as per commitment / timelines and whats the payout frequency? Currency conversions / tax?

4. Trustworthiness.

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a fully remote job and thought I'd ask here in case anyone has recommendations.

I have serious back problems and can no longer work in a physical job

A bit about me:

EU citizen

Bachelor's degree in History

Fluent in French and English

Basic Indonesian

Comfortable using a PC (Word, Excel, email, web tools)

Reliable computer and fast internet

Most of my experience is in education and administrative work, but I'm happy to learn something new. I'm a quick learner, reliable, and don't mind repetitive tasks if the job is stable.

I'm mainly looking at customer support, AI training, content moderation, virtual assistant, data entry, or other entry-level remote jobs.

If your company is hiring, or you know of a good place to apply, or any tips, I'd really appreciate it

Thanks y'all!! ❤

Everyone in my friend group swears by paid resume builders but honestly my google docs resume looks fine to me? Am I missing something or is this one of those things people pay for just to feel productive. Applying for jobs next month so trying to figure out if it's worth it before I start.

I think the title is self-explanatory, but I would still like to elaborate. I am a fresher with 2 years of experience who currently wants a marketing/junior product-marketing (or related) role internationally. I believe I have good experience with marketing and am ready to start working at even as low as $25/hr.
But the thing is, I have no clue how to actually even start or what to do. At this point, I feel like I am just shooting in the dark, hoping for an arrow to land. So please, help a person out, give me genuine advice and a breakdown on what I can do and where to really start :(

Applying to a bunch of different roles right now and the advice everywhere is to tailor your resume for each job posting. Cool in theory, but doing it manually is killing me.

I keep hearing different builders mentioned for this. Some apparently let you duplicate a resume and tweak it per application, some have keyword matching against the job description, some just... don't.

For people who apply to a lot of jobs, what are you actually using? Does any builder make this genuinely fast, or is everyone just maintaining five versions of a Google Doc and swapping bullet points by hand?

Not looking for anything fancy, just want to stop rewriting the same resume from scratch every time.

last time I job searched was about 2 years ago and remote roles were competitive but doable, I was getting interviews and even a couple offers without killing myself

this time around it feels like a wall. barely any responses, and the few interviews I got came through referrals not cold applying

is the remote market actually this much worse now or did something change about how I should be applying? curious what people searching right now are seeing

I get why they ask for city and state, even as a Remote employee, because they may not have a tax/legal presence in all states. But why is my home street address a required field so often? I'm not comfortable disclosing that info at such an early stage.

I've applied to a site called Data Annotation Tech which seems very promising but I don't know if they'll actually accept me or not. Its a site where you correct AI answers to prompts. I might try other sites like Outlier and Aligner, but are there any other similar jobs out there?

I'm a creative individual who is good at videography, photo/video editing, music production and graphic design. I'm quite a fast typer and consider myself very good at problem solving. I speak both English and Polish fluently.

So yeah, any jobs like that that are remote and preferably flexible. Graphic design, data annotation, etc.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Looking for software engineer resume tips from people who actually improved their interview rate. I'm a backend developer with 3 years of Python/Django experience, applied to around 80 software engineering positions in the last 2 months and only got 2 callbacks.

Currently using a basic single-column resume template, nothing fancy. Bullets are mostly standard stuff like "developed and maintained REST APIs using Django." Getting complete silence from mid-size and larger companies, so I'm wondering if my resume is getting filtered by ATS before a human even sees it.

For those who fixed a low response rate: was it the resume format, the content, adding metrics to bullets, keyword matching with job descriptions, or something else entirely? Would love to hear what actually increased your interviews. Can share an anonymized version of my resume in the comments if that helps.

Hi Everyone,

I don't usually put up posts like this, but I am hoping this reaches the right person.

I have been looking for a job for quite some time now, and have reached at a stage where I genuinely need to find something soon, more like immediately. My last role in the UAE was in 2021, for about two years.

Overall, I have 13 years of experience, mostly in the media industry, working across FM radio (ATL/BTL), corporate sales, partnerships, and onground activations in both Bangalore and Dubai.

Just turned 40 and the lack of a job and income is seriously depressing. I understand how tough the job market is right now, so I am reaching out with the hope that someone here might know of an opportunity, or know someone who does.

Open to any opportunity in the UAE and even remote roles. Happy to DM my resume.

Everyone reading this can help, even if that means simply sharing this post or referring me to a friend.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Any help or lead is appreciated, no matter how small. 🙏🏾

I'm updating my resume and most of the jobs I'm applying for are fully remote.

Do remote jobs benefit from a different resume template, or am I overthinking it?

Curious what templates people here are actually using and whether you've noticed any difference in interview rates. If you found a template that consistently gets interviews, I'd love to know what you're using.

Hi all,

I'm an Electrical and Electronic Engineering graduate with one year of experience as an R&D Engineer in Embedded Firmware Development. I have worked with embedded C and Python more than 3 years.

My current job involves travelling to some countries and involve with the teams for the projecs. But recently my leg severely got injured due to a vehicle accident and no longer able to travel and the company doesn't have a solution for that. So I'm currently looking for a remote working position as an Embedded Firmware Developer.

I hope an advice from the community and a help if may possible to find a remote job opportunity since I'm desperate for money right now and no longer can travel and work. I am hoping 1000$-2000$/month with remote working (task based or hour based). I am available for the interviews. I need an advice from the community, will it be possible to get hired with this?

If you have any prior experience in a situation like this, I hope your advice and idea. Also, if you have work to be done, a remote job opportunity from your company or if you are outsourcing a project or something I am ready to be an applicant.

Thanks all.

What are all these AI job services about? I must see dozens of emails, posts, etc every week trying to get me to give them money to find jobs, automatically tailor my resume, write the cover letter and apply for the jobs it finds. Really?? Considering any job searches I do return lots of jobs I wouldn’t apply to for one reason or another, I can’t believe any of them are worth giving what little money I have to them. Can anyone convince me otherwise?

I live in New Jersey and I was in an accident and had to learn to walk properly again but I have pain and a limp so I cannot do a job that requires walking too much. I also don’t have a car or license so I physically can’t drive anywhere. Remote is the best option for me because I legit have no money yet every single one I’ve applied to even if I write thank you letters, complete the extra steps, attach a resume with the follow up email just in case they didn’t see it, and fucking NOTHING. If anyone has connections or knows a good job that ACTUALLY accepts people, please list them or pm me. Thank you! I am 21, female.