Work at Home Now

The No-Nonsense Guide to Finding Your Perfect Home-Based Job, Avoiding Scams, and Making a Great Living

Christine Durst, Michael Haaren

• Publisher: Career Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781601630919
• eBook ISBN: 9781601637697
• Topic: Crescita personale
• Subtopic: Carriera

Many legitimate home-based jobs and projects can be found online, but trustworthy guidance is scarce. Worse, with a 56-to-1 "scam ratio" in work-at-home ads, the terrain is a minefield of fraud. Nevertheless, customer service agents, researchers, test scorers, tutors, writers, and concierges are just a few of the many people regularly hired to work from home. A growing number of Fortune 500 companies, including UnitedHealth Group, American Express, and Northrop Grumman, also hire home-based personnel.In Work at Home Now, you'll learn:•The top insider tips on "good" and "bad" Google search terms.•How to find the "needles in the haystack" on Craigslist, Indeed, Monster, CareerBuilder, and other big sites.•Where the real jobs for mystery shoppers, transcriptionists and similar part-time specialties can be found.•Scam-spotting tips that even law enforcement doesn't know.Including interviews with hiring managers and successful home-based workers, Work at Home Now is the ultimate guide to finding the work-at-home job or project you want most.

CHAPTER 1

Work-at-Home at a Glance

We said we wouldn’t weigh you down with heavy statistics and other data about home-based work (and we won’t), but we do want to share briefly some telework basics before we dig in to the good stuff. We promise to keep it short!

What is telework?

Telework has various definitions, but the simplest way to think of it might be “work that’s done in an unconventional location, often from home, using electronic communications tools to send and receive workflow.”

Though home-based telework will be our primary theme, telework takes many forms: a mom (or dad) handling customer-service calls in a spare room, a blogger writing in a café, a retiree answering questions on ChaCha.com from an RV park, a marketing exec videoconferencing back to company headquarters from a client’s office—all are teleworking.

As wonderful as telework can be for the individual, remember that, from the employer’s viewpoint, it’s a management option rather than a worker right or “benefit,” and is justified by the advantages it offers the company—not the worker. In the following pages, you’ll hear companies say or imply this, and we’ll repeat it, too, as it will help you optimize your resume and job applications, and start working ASAP.

While we’re speaking of companies, historically they were reluctant (especially the larger Fortune 500s) to hire workers directly from home. Fortunately, companies such as Aetna, UnitedHealth Group, American Express, and others are moving away from the old customs, and hiring qualified workers to work from their homes immediately.

Categories of telework arrangements

Telework arrangements come in several categories: full, partial, and episodic or situational.

Full Telework is the situation many people seek. It involves working from home (or anywhere) 100 percent of the time, with perhaps an occasional trip to the company office, or in-office training before staying home. Many freelance workers or independent contractors (in other words, the self-employed) enjoy this arrangement.

Partial Telework usually consists of a regular schedule of one to three days per week at home, but can also include as few as two to three days per month. These schedules are often seen in corporate or federal/state agency telecommuting programs.

Situational or Episodic Telework has been getting more attention in what’s called “business continuity,” as companies see businesses shut down and lose revenues when man-made or natural disasters make office-based work impossible (for example, the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, bird and swine flu, and so on).

Wildfires, earthquakes, and other disasters—as well as smaller events such as snowstorms and power outages—also make situational telework an attractive option for employers and workers alike.

Types of positions suited for telework

As you begin the search for home-based work, it’s important to consider the types of positions or work employers are authorizing for telework. Studies as well as the job market itself indicate that these positions often involve workers who:

Work alone or independently, with little or no supervision.

Perform “knowledge-based” work rather than “production” tasks.

Don’t require daily or frequent face-to-face interaction with colleagues or managers.

Don’t need frequent access to on-site equipment and resources.

Take the initiative, where appropriate, to make the arrangement work well for all concerned.

In the early days of telework, hirers often limited off-site arrangements to technical or other “analytic” work. As you’ll see in the following chapters, those narrow boundaries have expanded greatly and are continuing to grow—creating home-based opportunities across a wide spectrum of jobs, and creating entirely new job categories as well.

Even so, the success of a telework arrangement depends as much on the nature of the worker as it does on the work, and not everyone is suited to be home-based. The self-assessment that follows in Chapter 2 will help you determine whether you’re really ready to work at home.

CHAPTER 2

Are You Ready to
Work at Home?

In our years of delivering work-at-home training programs at the U.S. State Department, military bases, community colleges, and so on, we’ve found that successful teleworkers share certain traits which give them an advantage in a home-based position.

We’ve also met a fair number of people who, despite their genuine desire to work from home, wind up struggling when it becomes a reality.

The following self-assessment will help you determine whether you possess the traits that help home-based workers stay on track and succeed.

Read each of the numbered questions/statements and circle the answer that most accurately describes you or your situation. There are no right or wrong answers; the best approach is simply to be as honest as possible. Your candor will also help assure that the assessment results are accurate, which in turn will guide you toward changes you might make to improve your chances for telework success.

Work-at-home readiness assessment

1. When it comes to socializing at work:

a. I need to socialize at work, and in fact I wouldn’t have much of a social life at all if not for my interactions with coworkers.

b. I consider my workplace my primary social outlet.

c. I do what’s necessary to be “accepted” at work, but I have a satisfying social life outside of work.

d. I don’t need constant interaction with my coworkers, and they often interrupt my workflow.

e. I don’t think people should socialize with their coworkers.

f. I don’t really care for other people very much.

2. Do you organize projects or initiatives well, and get things done when they should be done?

a. No, never.

b. Once in a while.

c. Sometimes.

d. More than half the time.

e. Yes, most of the time.

f. Always.

3. How comfortable are you with the Internet?

a. I’m still using a typewriter and loving it!

b. I don’t know much about the Internet, and that’s okay with me.

c. I’m ready to spend more time on the Internet, but I’m not sure where to begin.

d. I’m comfortable online, but I plan to have someone else handle online activities as soon as I can.

e. I use the Internet regularly in my personal or work life.

f. I’ve embraced the Internet entirely.

4. Do you have trouble concentrating on tasks at hand because you’re thinking of all the other things you have to do?

a. All the time.

b. Frequently.

c. Quite a bit.

d. Sometimes.

e. Once in a while.

f. Not at all.

5. How difficult do you find it to organize your activities so you can focus on and execute what’s most important?

a. Things seem overwhelming most days.

b. I try to plan, but somehow I get off track.

c. I move ahead, but interruptions are a problem.

d. I’m not a perfect organizer, but I manage to get everything done by putting in extra time.

e. I’m a little disorganized, but by the end of my set hours I’ve accomplished everything necessary.

f. Not at all.

6. With regard to job-related goals:

a. I don’t give them much value.

b. I change my goals almost day to day.

c. I’ve put nothing in writing, but know what I want to achieve.

d. I set down my goals every January 1, but most are forgotten during the year.

e. I’ve written out my goals, but some are probably far-fetched.

f. I’ve listed goals that are specific, measurable, and realistic.

7. When it comes to Internet- and computer-based business tools:

a. I swear by paper-based systems and have no plans to change.

b. I love them for basic tasks such as word processing, but I’ve ventured no further.

c. I understand they’re a must and am making an effort to learn more.

d. I know how to use basic software programs and how to navigate the Internet fairly well.

e. I’m generally familiar with them but rely mainly on the expertise of others.

f. I’m comfortable with them and look forward to learning more.

8. How often do you answer e-mail tardily, neglect to return a call, miss a deadline, or otherwise fall short from juggling too many things at once?

a. All the time.

b. Very often.

c. Quite a bit.

d. Not frequently, but enough to bother me.

e. Once in a great while.

f. Never.

9. A friend calls during a workday to tell you about a great one-day sale at your favorite store. You:

a. Tell yourself “a sale is a sale!” and drop everything to go shopping.

b. Skim through your work so you can get to the store before the sale is over.

c. Tell her you’ll only be able to take a three-hour break, and go.

d. Compose and e-mail her a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Work-at-Home at a Glance
• Chapter 2: Are You Ready to Work at Home?
• Chapter 3: Convincing Your Boss to Let You Work From Home
• Chapter 4: Developing Your “BS” (Big Scam) Radar
• Chapter 5: Good and Bad Work-at-Home Job Search Terms
• Chapter 6: Jobs by Type and Where to Find Them
• Chapter 7: Finding Work-at-Home Jobs on the “Big” Job Boards
• Chapter 8: Finding Home-Based Jobs on Job Aggregator Sites
• Chapter 9: Networking for Jobs, Allies, and Friends
• Chapter 10: Virtual and Telework-Friendly Companies
• Chapter 11: Freelancing at Home Gig-to-Gig
• Chapter 12: Making a Little Money on the Side
• Chapter 13: Your Telework Resume and Interview
• Chapter 14: Tips From the Trenches
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Websites Mentioned in This Book
• Index
• About the Authors