Landing a remote job is getting competitive — here’s how to stand out as an applicant

If you’re a typical office worker, you’ve gotten a taste of working from home over the last two years of the pandemic. But as some businesses return to offices, you might want to move on to a company that’s offering remote work permanently.

It’s true that remote and hybrid jobs are becoming more common, but the competition is stiff as record shares of workers continue to quit and look for new jobs. Hiring managers, meanwhile, are looking for specific qualities that let them know a new employee will do well remotely.

Luckily, there are a few straightforward ways to update your resume to stand out to recruiters hiring remote workers. Here’s what to keep in mind.

The most important thing a hiring manager wants to see is that you’ve worked remotely before, says Brie Reynolds, the career services manager at FlexJobs, a membership site that connects workers with remote jobs.

If you’ve held a job that was fully remote or hybrid, make that designation easy to see for a recruiter scanning your resume, Reynolds says, like by including it as a parenthetical in the same line as your job title.

Within each section of your work history, prioritize bullet points that show how you’ve successfully worked with teammates or managers while remote. Mirror your experiences to what the job description is asking for, and give top billing to skills or tasks that are stated as required or preferred.

Since so many workers have worked remotely during the pandemic, you’ll want to stand out by showing how you’ve gone above and beyond while making the transition. For example, did you hire new team members and onboard them virtually? Or maybe you overhauled the workflow of your team to be more remote-friendly and save the company money.

Even if you haven’t worked remotely in an official capacity, you can find ways to show how you’ve worked with others who aren’t physically in the same location as you — like if you frequently work with colleagues in a different regional office, or if you interact with external clients in any way.

Hiring managers want to know that you have the technical and soft skills to be an effective remote worker, Reynolds says. Note if you have experience working with any of the tech platforms mentioned in the job description, like videoconferencing systems or collaboration tools.

Supervisors also want to make sure you have solid communication skills that are compatible with how they run operations, Reynolds adds, so be clear about how you successfully communicate and manage while remote.

If the job you’re applying for calls for it, highlight previous tasks or projects where you worked well independently and collaborated seamlessly online. Or if you’re applying for a management position, you’ll want to distinguish how you set expectations and monitor progress with employees you oversee from afar.