Image Credit: SeventyFour, https://www.istockphoto.com/portfolio/SeventyFour?mediatype=photography
With growing fears that the economy could soon be in a recession, the Federal Reserve has warned that it is committed to fighting inflation aggressively, even if that means weakening the job market and causing financial pain for families.
The labor market has shown resilience. U.S. employers hired more workers than expected in September and the overall unemployment rate dropped from 3.7 percent to 3.5 percent — a sign that the Fed could stick with its aggressive monetary policy tightening for a while.
However, the September jobless rate for Black people (5.8 percent) was almost double that of whites (3.1 percent), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Many recent headlines have claimed that an upcoming recession will mean the end of remote work. Not necessarily so, according to Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, whose consultancy, Disaster Avoidance Experts, helps tech and insurance executives achieve competitive advantage in work.
A recession is more likely to boost remote work, Tsipursky wrote in a column for Fortune. “It’s true that a recession will give employers more power. However, what the headline authors miss is that a recession requires getting the most return on investment from employees.”
Once a recession hits, executives, rather than trusting their gut, will need to rely on the hard data of what makes the most financial sense for companies and there’s extensive evidence that remote work is more productive than in-office work, Tsipursky wrote.
By the spring of 2022, two years after the onset of the pandemic, companies had learned how to do remote work better and invested in more remote-friendly technology. The result? Remote workers had become 9 percent more productive than in-office workers, according to research.
Eyisha Zyer, who identifies on Twitter as an entrepreneur and social media expert helping brands with growth and sales, shared a list of 10 website resources to find remote jobs in a recession. We looked into them.
We Work Remotely claims to be the largest remote work community in the world with more than 4.5 million visitors. The site is popular in the digital nomad community and it has 100+ remote jobs added each week in programming, and 50+ in other categories (marketing, sales, design, customer support, etc.), according to a review by eBizFacts. However, the reviewer said the site is not so user friendly, the styling of its featured jobs is confusing, and sometimes it’s hard to see the most recent job postings.
Hired_ helps job seekers create a free profile and lets companies apply to interview them, not the other way around. Its candidate-centric approach allowers users to hide their information from current and former employers and it’s free for job candidates. The site is good for hard-to-find technical talent, according to a profile on SoftwareAdvice.com. Because candidates on Hired_ are actively searching for jobs, recruiters see a 95-percent candidate response rate. One Hired_reviewer wrote that the overall experience was “very good and immediately you will get messages /emails from recruiters all over who are looking for candidates for your matching skillset … Salary/Role/location is clearly mentioned on all jobs mostly which is the best part …Timely alerts /popup notifications.” However, the same user wrote, “Only concern is about the interview schedule process which seems very fast.”
Just Remote claims to have built a tool to help you discover all the remote jobs that never get advertised. The company’s mission has been to help people find work they love that they can do while traveling around the world. The platform compiles remote work postings by scouring the internet and aggregating the jobs in a single website. It claims to cater to highly specialized categories, according to a VirtualAssistantReviewer. However, it does not provide any information about the size of its audience. Jobs appear to be recently posted for openings in writing, SEO consultancy, customer account management, and more.
Remoteleaf aggregates remote jobs in one organized place, parsing remote job boards, company career pages, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook groups and hacker news hiring. It claims to have 100 percent remote full-time jobs, saving job hunters hours each week. Jobs are tailored to your location and skills and there are members-only job lists. The site says the service costs $10 a month “forever.” There are not a lot of online reviews for this platform. “There are thousands of remote job boards coming up lately,” Remoteleaf posted on Hacker News. “What we do is just filter out the noises and deliver the relevant jobs to the interested people.”
Remote.co is a resource for companies that focuses on providing expert insight, best practices, and support for organizations exploring having a remote team or that already have one as a big portion of their workforce. Recent job listings include a proofreader/copy editor at Sodexo), Corporate Travel Advisor at JPMorgan Chase, Financial Planning And Analysis Analyst at FedEx, and Social Media Evaluator at Telus International. The platform has 130+ new flexible jobs each week in almost every category (accounting, healthcare, marketing, etc.). However, there are no advanced search filters, and some jobs tagged as “remote” are not 100-percent remote, according to an eBizFacts review.
Dailyremote.com helps people find remote job they’ll love doing anywhere in the world with new jobs posted daily in software development, support, sales, copywriting, marketing, legal, finance, healthcare, recruitment and more. The site says its service is “free and always will be.” The site also has a blog offering advice and insight to remote job hunters such as “If the job seems to offer an outrageous amount of money for very little work, you should probably mark it as a scam. If you think the remote job they are offering is too good to be true, it probably is.” There are not a lot of online reviews for this platform.
Producthunt.com describes itself as a place for product-loving enthusiasts to share and geek out about the latest mobile apps, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations, connect with makers and find jobs worldwide. The platform got a lot of attention in 2014 when it grew from a small email discussion list into a community for users to submit new apps, software services, and other tech products. People voted for their favorites, and entrepreneurs joined in on discussions, according to an article in The Verge. A 2022 review of ProductHunt on G2.com said the platform is easy to use and popular so lots of startups post their products there. “This helped me to find a few interesting platforms for my work and personal use that helping me to move forward to my future goals! However, the same reviewer wrote, “Would be great if products had competition in their categories separately because there are lots of products posted daily and some of them with high potential can be missed in that large queue.”
FlexJobs.com was founded in 2007 by CEO Sara Sutton when she was seven months pregnant and looking for something better after losing her full-time job. She needed something that was going to be flexible but would still help advance her career. She knew these jobs existed but was overwhelmed trying to find them. The site claims to be a place where job seekers can find professional-level, legitimate work-from-home jobs, all in one place, without ads, scams or junk. A reviewer on SiteJabber wrote, “I was hired by one of the top 3 companies I wanted to work for within 1.5 months, and it is fully remote! Grateful… I am in a unique situation as a foreigner in South Africa. I wanted to find a job that allowed me for freedom to travel, and I did!” Another reviewer wrote, “There are still a lot of job postings that are not actually remote when you click through to them … but maybe there is an additional screening process to help with this. Also, the job title search terms could be more accurate.” eBizFacts ranked FlexJobs as the Best Remote Job Board overall in a January 2022 review.
Remotive.io claims to deliver dream remote jobs without the hassle, a place where top talent can go to easily access active and fully remote job opportunities from vetted tech companies. “We don’t rely on robots to share jobs, each job we share is hand-picked by our team. We practice what we preach: The Remotive team operates remotely,” according to the Remotive manifesto. In a 2018 tweet, Remotive founder Rodolphe Dutel wrote, “Employees don’t need ping pong tables or beer fridges at work. Employees need flexibility to do their best work and enjoy life … offer trust, not toys.” EBizFacts reported that Remotive.io is free, adds 25+ flexible jobs every week in design, product management, customer service, marketing, sales, and 30+ flexible jobs in software development. One of its cons: “No advanced search filters, keyword search doesn’t always work smoothly,” but the site has plenty of good listings if you’re looking for remote IT jobs.
RemoteOK.com is a remote job board with a strong tech focus that connects employers with flexible job seekers. It provides access to a large global community of remote workers and job seekers can use its search engine’s customized job keyword filter for free. The platform has a reputation for being trusted and is used by Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, ESPN, and EasyJet. It has a strong presence in the local and global job market, making it a good choice for employers looking to attract an international remote workforce to U.S. jobs, according to a BetterTeam review. Tech sector jobs are featured more prominently than non-tech jobs. U.S. employers have access to more than 1 million global remote workers. Some of the cons of the site include: Candidate matching is not included in standard job posting plan prices, there is no access to a searchable resume database, and there is no candidate management dashboard.
Image Credit: SeventyFour, https://www.istockphoto.com/portfolio/SeventyFour?mediatype=photography
