Interns
How to Get an Internship in a Remote Company
Discover 6 strategies to secure a remote internship. Find out how to enhance your profile, professional connections, and skills for a successful...
As remote work becomes evermore the norm, you may find yourself at the beginning of your career journey contemplating a remote role. But if you’re yet to gain any experience in your industry, you may be wondering if it’s even possible to get a remote job with no experience.
The short answer is yes. But here are 10 ways to help you get a remote job, even if you don’t have any experience yet.
Tip 1: Try Career Counseling/ Mentorship
When searching for your first job, it’s easy to rely on advice from your family and friend without considering professional support. But you don’t have to go down that lane, especially in today’s virtual world, where you can easily get in touch with the best career guidance and mentors online.
Career guidance helps you explore your skills and wants and make an informed decision about your career. Plus, with professional support and knowledge, you can develop confidence and required skills and increase your employability.
Internships can also serve as excellent career guidance and mentorship opportunity. For example, at Virtual Internships, we invite all of our interns to join the alumni network to gain career guidance, networking opportunity, open roles, and more upon completion of internships.
Therefore, go to career counseling and mentorship and learn more about the market and yourself as an employee!
Tip 2: Get Familiar with Remote Communication and Collaboration Tools
The ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with the team is a top priority and a requirement of any remote position.
That’s why, to land the best possible job, you need to be proficient at using digital tools and resources, including video meeting software, project management programs, industry-specific digital platforms, etc.
Moreover, familiarity with these remote job essentials will simplify your work process later and give you an upper hand with better productivity.
Tip 3: Expand Your Professional Network
We get it – being a newbie, networking isn’t at the top of your to-do list. But it should be!
Your professional network with seniors and industry experts can be the perfect pathway to finding the best job opportunities and landing one-on-one interviews with employers.
Therefore, spend some time developing meaningful relationships with people in your professional network. This way, when the time comes, you can draw on those invaluable contacts for referrals, recommendations, insider knowledge, job openings, and other helpful information.
The best way to connect and widen your network include:
- Reaching out to individuals or companies in your interested industry directly
- Attending industry-focused networking events
- Joining focused groups on the industry
- Leveraging social media
Tip 4: Create a Linkedin Profile
LinkedIn is an excellent platform for professional networking and arguably the best place to find a remote job. Thanks to their Easy Apply function, you can apply for any job with just a few clicks, even without writing a cover letter (but we do advise you to write a strong cover letter).
Leveraging LinkedIn in your job search will save you hours. Plus, you don’t need a sizeable LinkedIn following or thousands of connections to land a quality remote job.
However, when applied via the platform, the recruiter will examine your LinkedIn profile. Therefore, create a captivating profile that showcases your skills, education, qualification, experience, interest, and more.
You can also buy LinkedIn Premium Subscription for the best result to get additional insights.
Read More: 5 Ways to Boost Your Linkedin Profile
Tip 5: Take Online Courses & Get Certifications
Employers love candidates who are committed to self-improvement, intellectual maturity, curiosity, and a strong desire to learn, and an online course certification on your resume puts these qualities under the spotlight. Thus, making you a much more desirable candidate.
What’s the best part?
You can take online upskilling courses, enhance your employability, and land your dream job, all on your schedule alongside your studies. Moreover, taking classes with your college will also strengthen your soft skills (more on that later).
Some colleges and programs even encourage their students to take online courses. For example, at Virtual Internships’ CareerBridge initiative, we provide our interns with over 12+ online courses along with remote internships. This helps them strengthen their skills while acquiring work experience from the best host companies.
Tip 6: Tailor Your Resume for Each Job
A recruiter spends about 7 seconds scanning a resume. But, here’s the catch. Even when advertising for the same position, employers search for unique skills, expertise, or qualification in every candidate.
That’s why tailoring your resume for each job posting is essential to grab the employer’s attention and improve your chances of getting a job offer.
Here is how to do it:
- Create a base resume that highlights your qualification, experiences, and skills for the kind of position you are interested in.
- After you have narrowed down the perfect job opportunities, keenly read through the job description and mark the needed experience, skills, and credentials that match your base resume.
- Now tailor your base resume for each job by emphasizing the particular skills and experiences in the respective job posting. (try using the same terminologies to pass the automated resume screening tools)
- Apply and repeat the process for other job posts.
Tip 7: Apply for Remote Jobs Online
Now that your base resume is ready, it’s time to search and apply for your first remote job. As per our research, these are the best online job website for remote work opportunities:
You can also leverage social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook groups to stay updated on the available positions. Try using popular hashtags, like #remotejob, #Jobopening, #Recruting, etc., for more targeted results.
Tip 8: Follow Up & Stay Organized
Unfortunately, most recruiters don’t keep the applicants informed about their application status. That’s why if you have applied for any job and haven’t heard anything back, it’s time you consider a follow-up.
However, following up with every job application can eat up a lot of your time if not organized well. The best way to cut the clutter is by keeping a simple excel spreadsheet with sections including:
- Company
- Position Title
- Applied Date
- How you applied (online form, email, job board, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Followed up yet? (No/Yes)
- Response? (interview schedules, interested in an interview, declined, no response)
Tip 9: Strengthen Your Soft Skills
It goes without saying, to be a better remote employee, you need to master soft skills.
When applying for an entry-level position, you want to look coachable, enthusiastic, honest, and a hard worker. In some cases, excellent soft skills can even cover up some lack of work experience.
Therefore be sure to exhibit the right soft skills in your resume to land your first remote job with no experience.
We have covered an entire article with the top 7 skills employers look for in fresh graduates. So make sure you don’t miss it!
Read More: Top 7 Job-Ready Skills Employers Look for in Graduates
Tip 10: Apply for Virtual Internships
We saved the best tip for the last: Virtual Internships!
A virtual internship equips you with work experience, soft skills, a huge professional network, and, if all goes well, a full-time job offer at the end of the program (1 out of 4 VI interns get offered a role with their host company upon completion of the internship).
Secondly, candidates with internship experience are familiar with the industry and thus are already desirable to many employers.
What’s more? There’s much more benefit to virtual internships than you might realize. With an upper hand over remote communication and collaboration technology, mentorship, and career guidance (only for VI interns), nobody can stop you from getting your dream remote job!
Read More: Why Choose a Virtual Internship Over a Traditional Internship (12 Reasons)
Thousands of young people across the world have already gained invaluable benefits from interning remotely. Fast-track your way to a remote job through a Virtual Internship!
