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I have had fulltime (not contract) telecommuting jobs with 4 different
companies over the past 10 years. In all cases I was providing a service
(mainly content creation, training materials, multilingual DTP and
consulting) that did not require frequent face-to-face collaboration with
co-workers. During this period, I had a brief, 4 month hiatus working with a
daily commute to a downtown office, and found my time to be much less
productive (more lengthy, unnecessary meetings, frequent interruptions,
etc.)
You find such jobs mainly through networking and through people who know the
quality of your work. If your work is good enough and you always deliver "no
matter what", some companies will bend the rules and let you telecommute,
even if it is not the general practice.
PREDICTION: in light of the economic meltdown, there are now millions of
highly qualified people who cannot afford to sell their homes for the next
couple of years and relocate to another state for a job. If anything, this
will increase the impetus for companies to start hiring more "remote talent"
to find the best person for the job. There may be a 10% increase in the
number of telecommuters over the next 12 months.
PREDICTION: as more corporations work more heavily with offshore resources
(especially in Asia) the light bulb will gradually go on that people (east
coast) can't hang around the office until 9 PM for a conference call; they
may as well be working from home. I work daily with co-workers in Dubai,
Egypt, Argentina and the east coast. Nearly all of my collaborators are in
other time zones. We get far more done than when I worked with the same
people every day under the same roof in downtown Portland!
The proliferation of affordable, high speed (e.g. Verizon FIOS) connectivity
from home offices is another factor. In addition to scalable conference
tools like WebEx, you can obtain a free personal www.acrobat.com account
which will let you use Acrobat ConnectNow ... a great, free collaborative
tool that will let you share your desktop with up to two other people. Add
in free long distance from Vonage or free Skype-to-Skype, and long distance
collaboration is more affordable than ever.
Carefully planned airfare has actually become cheaper than in recent years.
Remote LiveMeeting or WebEx meetings can cover most pre-sales calls, and an
expensive face-to-face with team members or potential customers can be saved
for near the end of the sales cycle. So the business case for selecting a
highly qualified person to work remotely from a home office is easier to
make than it was a few years ago!
Keep networking, and if necessary, collaborate with some remote buddies to
produce a website, white paper, or whatever, for a charitable cause. This
will give you a portfolio showing what you can do with trekking to the
office. Just a thought.
Just as domestic automotive manufacturers are being forced to think "outside
of the box", many business will discover that their best available talent
may be found "outside of the cubicle."
_________________________
Maxwell Hoffmann
Director, Document Globalization Practice
Globalization Partners International (GPI)
www.globalizationpartners.com
tel: 866.272.5874 direct: 503.336-5952 mobile:
503.805.3719 fax: 202.478.0956
skype: maxwell.hoffmann email:
mhoffmann -at- globalizationpartners -dot- com
Follow me on TWITTER: http://twitter.com/maxwellhoffmann
Globalization Partners International, LLC provides document, software and
website translation services into over 100 languages including Arabic,
Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Click here to see our latest service: http://tinyurl.com/gpi-doc-analyze
-----Original Message-----
From:
techwr-l-bounces+mhoffmann=globalizationpartners -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+mhoffmann=globalizationpartners -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot-
com] On Behalf Of magk -at- mindspring -dot- com
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 6:42 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: telecommute
How do you get these telecommuting jobs? I have been trying for years and
have only seen on site positions.
Are there sites or job boards that cater to off site work?
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HTML and publish to the Web, Help systems or printed manuals. http://www.doctohelp.com
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authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/
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