Remote working has been popular among freelancers for years. Yet far from all digital nomads are self-employed. It is becoming increasingly popular to travel the world from employment as well. I am an example of that myself. Perhaps you’ve been following Working Remotely for a while and you only know me as an entrepreneur, but I also worked remotely a lot when I still worked for a boss. You can read how that works in this blog.
How I got my remote job
To start at the beginning, let’s go back 7 years. Back then I worked as a campaign manager at DPG (then known as De Persgroep). Although I had a great time there and was allowed to organize cool events, something tingled. Travel itch. I considered taking a sabbatical for a few months to travel. Completely unexpectedly, that was no longer necessary, when just before Christmas I was kicked out overnight for no valid reason. I will spare you that unpleasant story. It was the push to start traveling. You have to work your whole life, I wanted to see more of the world first. So I went to travel solo for 2 months through Southeast Asia in 2018. Long story short: that spontaneously turned into 8 months haha. I so enjoyed traveling, the cultures, no commitments, the beautiful weather, the nice people and so on.
I gave myself the deadline to start looking for a new job online in November, when I suddenly saw a great job at Frankwatching on LinkedIn at the end of October. So I responded, and yes, I got an interview. No problem at all that it was online and from Asia, because working remotely was already quite normal there. I got the job and immediately thought: this progressive thinking and freedom is awesome!
My first workation
I had only been working at Frankwatching for 4 weeks when my very nice colleagues from my event team asked if I would join them on a workation to Croatia in April. Hell yes! Well we all know how much fun I had because nowadays remote working is my full time job. I have already opened my laptop in the most insane destinations, from Spain to Bonaire and from Berlin to Cape Verde. I am now 42 workations down the road and it has become my lifestyle.
This is how to find a remote job
Finding a job where you have the freedom to work remotely is still a challenge. It is usually not mentioned on a company’s website, not in the job description and there are no major platforms for it yet.
While nearly 20% of job seekers today consider remote working a requirement.
You do see some things happening in the market. Some companies do mention it clearly in their terms and conditions or use it to attract people. Also, some job boards have added the “remote work” search function. But it’s still not easy.
Vacancies of (partially) remote jobs
Are you looking for a job where you will have the freedom and flexibility to work location-dependently? Then check out our jobs page on the Working Remotely website. There you will find vacancies from Dutch companies that embrace remote working. These involve working remotely on a temporary basis, or occasionally going on workation. These are not jobs that are completely remote.
Popular remote occupations
Perhaps you do not currently have a profession that you can do online, which means that remote working is not yet possible for you. We regularly get messages from people who want this lifestyle with remote working so badly that they are thinking of retraining. Which I can well imagine. To give you some inspiration for online occupations, here are some popular ones:
- Online marketer
- Administrative assistant
- Social media manager
- ICT / Developer
- Graphic designer
- Virtual Assistant
Also score the ideal remote job
If this is something you want, you need to take action on it. I know from my own experience how wonderful this freedom is. It makes me immensely happy to be able to work from all kinds of places around the world. This allows me to travel a lot. Especially to get you started, we have developed an online course: Remote Ready. In this course I take you step by step towards your remote working adventure.
