After a lay off in December of 2018 and the cancellation of another remote work opportunity, Laura P., an insurance industry professional, was able to find her new telecommuting job within a few months following her decision to become a Virtual Vocations member.
Laura’s VV Victory:
Sometimes unexpected change can bring on great opportunities. For Laura, this change resulted in a new remote job as a business analyst with Cisco Systems, Inc., an international technology leader in IT, networking, and cybersecurity solutions.
Wanted: More Flexibility for Personal Time
With the lifetime of her career focused to the insurance industry, and nearly five years of experience working remotely, Laura was motivated to find another telecommute role that would allow for more flexibility and increased control over her personal time. That’s when she signed up for a Virtual Vocations membership.
This [Virutal Vocations] was the only place that consistently had valid remote opportunities posted.
In addition to using the job database, she also set up email alerts to help with her job search.
“I found the email alerts to be the most helpful feature,” said Laura. She found that the email alerts were a great reminder to visit the Virtual Vocations website and “perform my daily or twice daily searches for new opportunities.”
Encountering Common Jobseeker Challenges and Frustrations
But all was not smooth sailing for Laura. She experienced a phenomenon that most jobseekers frequently encounter. Her biggest frustration to her job search journey was the lack of response from potential employers. Unfortunately, this employer behavior is not new or unique. It is so common that 75 percent of workers who applied to jobs using various resources said they never heard back from the employer, according to a Career Builder survey.
There are many reasons as to why employers do not respond to most job applications. Some reasons can simply be that the resumes or applications being submitted were not being keyword-optimized, candidates lacked the necessary qualifications and skills, the hiring managers were flooded with applications, or certain candidates resulted in not being a good cultural fit with the company.
Sometimes, it’s simply a matter of timing in that the position has already been filled internally by the time the candidate sends in their job application and resume. In fact, the most common reason job candidates get ghosted is also the one they have the least control over: a company simply changes focus.
Learning Preparation Is Everything When Job Searching
However, ready to land her new remote job, this insurance professional came prepared. With a master’s degree under her belt, solid Salesforce experience gained in her previous role, and a 29-year history in various business areas within the insurance industry, she was able to present herself as a qualified candidate for the role she acquired.
I have been in all business areas of insurance and have worked as a systems analyst, a business analyst, in quality assurance and in project management.
In her previous role, she was also able to broaden her skills which, according to Laura was “key to landing my new opportunity.”
Nevertheless, according to Laura, the job search process was slowed down by small by significant details that are commonly overlooked.
Sometimes my keywords didn’t always match with the keywords put in place by the employer.
Laura frequently visited the Virtual Vocations job board to grab new job leads relevant to her skills and experience. She wanted to apply to new remote job openings as soon as possible.
How a Virtual Vocations Subscription Helped Laura Achieve Her Goal
Fortunately, Virtual Vocations helped simplify Laura’s journey to telecommuting employment. Let’s face it, finding a new job isn’t easy. It’s hard work and it is time-consuming. Thankfully, the following Virtual Vocations tools and services Laura used were designed specifically to help her and other jobseekers find success with their job searches:
Virtual Vocations Remote Job Search Database
Virtual Vocations’ job board contains more than 20,000 jobs across more than 40 job categories. Researchers hunt down and hand-screen brand new jobs from a wide variety of sources including public job boards, blogs, social media accounts, and company websites. The jobs are then vetted by multiple researchers and job quality specialists to eliminate commission-only jobs, fake or low-paying jobs, and MLM-style “opportunities.”
Users can filter and narrow down their job search results based on individual requirements such as telecommute level, education level, weekly hours, location, job category, travel requirements, and employment status. Virtual Vocations offers both free and paid memberships and job leads are posted daily, Monday through Saturday.
Job Email Alerts
Because timing is everything when searching for remote jobs, the job email alert service helps users save precious time by letting them know when new jobs are posted to the job board and by helping them find the newest job leads. The email alerts are meant to help make the job search process faster and more productive.
The alerts are sent to the subscriber’s designated email account and can be customized by frequency, location, categories, and keywords. Since the alerts are also based on the user’s search history and by selections used with the available filters on the advanced job search feature, this eliminates the need to spend time sorting through the job database, hoping to find the latest, most relevant jobs.
Finding Wisdom in Classic Advice
Because the commonly used proverb “The early bird catches the worm” can be successfully applied to those undergoing the job search process, jobseekers who are driven to achieve success find that these two Virtual Vocations features are essential for them in order to be the first ones to find and apply to new jobs and possibly be considered for specific roles before the rest of the competition.
Did you find a remote job using Virtual Vocations? Would you like to? Connect with Virtual Vocations on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to tell us about your job search success or about the telecommute job you want. We’d love to know your story!
iStock Photo Credit 1: Kristina Ratobilska
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