Looking for a work at home job is frustrating. You get past all the scams, find great looking jobs to apply for, and still no one will hire you. You might not even be getting to the first interview. What’s going on? Why is it so hard to get hired for a work at home job?

Hah. Wouldn’t you like to know?

No, seriously, wouldn’t you like to know?

I can’t really say why a particular person doesn’t get a particular work at home job, or any job for that matter. I’m not involved in processing resumes or making interview or hiring decisions. There are, however, some common reasons that make getting the job harder. Consider them, and see if they apply to you and your job search habits.

1. Applying for every job under the sun.

Otherwise known as throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. It’s not really effective, really messy, and turns potential employers off.

They can’t tell that you’re applying for every job everywhere, but what they can tell is that you aren’t paying enough attention to the specific requirements their job has. Work at home employers receive all too many applications from people who have no relevant experience and give no indication of having read the job listing beyond the phrase “work at home.”

Be picky about which jobs you apply for, and make it show on your resume. List the skills you have that they ask for in the ad. Use the same keywords if you can. You don’t want to copy their ad into your resume, but when you have a matching skill, use the same or similar phrasing. This will help you get through any automated sorting of applications.

Do not claim skills or experience you don’t have. It does you no good to claim a skill that way and then be unable to do that job or even talk up the skill correctly in the interview.

2. Poorly written resume.

Does your resume look professional? Does it reflect the skills and experience requested in the job posting? What about typos? Other mistakes?

If you aren’t getting anywhere in your job search, you may want to consider having a professional resume writer take a look at it. Yes, this costs money. Yes, you will still have to adapt it for each job you apply for. And yes, you may have to break it up into segments to cut and paste into online job applications with companies that don’t want the full resume. Make sure you answer every section on an online job application.

A well-written resume will make all of that easier. If you don’t want to pay someone else to do it, at least get a current book on resume writing and review your resume carefully. Styles have changed somewhat through the years, as most resumes are no longer submitted on paper. Make sure your resume works with current expectations. Remember, the company wants you to benefit them. Focus on their needs in your resume. If you were an excellent employee for someone else, share the specific achievements that might benefit a new employer.

Make certain that your resume is accurate as well. If a potential employer checks with your previous employers and finds out you gave them inaccurate information, you probably won’t get the job. This may include dates of employment and salary history.

3. You aren’t checking your spam folder.

The trouble with email is that it doesn’t always go where it should. If you have any sort of spam filtering on your email service, you might be missing emails from potential employers. If you don’t catch these, you could be missing out on opportunities.

I absolutely do not mean unsolicited emails from people claiming to offer work at home jobs. This is a common form of work at home scam. What you want to be on the lookout for is email from companies you have applied to. Sometimes these hit the spam box too, and if you aren’t checking, you’ll never know they wanted to hear from you.

4. You only apply to the big companies.

It’s very comfortable applying to the big companies that offer work at home jobs. They have solid reputations as employers. The problem is that everyone else does the same thing. They may get hundreds or even thousands of applications for a single opening. The odds that they’ll notice you aren’t that good.

So long as you’re careful, you can and should apply to smaller companies too. There are lots of smaller companies that use home based workers. They’re harder to find, but that means less competition when you do find them. You can find a lot of companies on social media sites such as LinkedIn.

Prepare yourself for your job hunt, network, and look for more places to find companies willing to hire people to work at home. All these things will improve the odds that you will get hired for a work at home job.

5. You aren’t changing things that aren’t working for you.

Sure, it’s easy to say that it’s hard to land a work at home job. It’s even true.

But if your job hunt is getting you any results, change the one thing you have control over: what you’re doing. Change your resume. Rethink the jobs you’re applying for. Take some time and just figure out why things aren’t working out.

Check your social media accounts too. Are they messing you up? Many employers review potential employees’ social media accounts. They can learn a lot about you this way, and if you aren’t prepared, your social media presence can damage your chances toward a job.

6. You aren’t prepared for interviews.

If you’re getting as far as the interview but not getting the job, something’s right with your resume but wrong with your interviewing skills. You need to prepare better for interviews.

Read up on how to interview for a job successfully. Have questions ready, not just about things like salary and benefits, but about the company and the job. Remember, employers want to know how you can benefit them. They don’t want you to focus on how they can benefit you when they haven’t even offered you the job yet.

Be prepared to state why you’re a match for the job. Wanting to get hired for a work at home job is not enough. That’s about you, not about the job.

If the interview is over the phone, you don’t have to look professional, but you certainly have to sound professional. It may help to practice phone interviews with a friend or family member. Just as with an in-person interview, make sure you’re on time for a phone interview. If you miss that call you can’t bet on them calling you back.

7. You don’t follow up when it’s appropriate.

This one isn’t relevant to all employers. Some very specifically request that you not follow up on applications or interviews. If that’s the case, follow their instructions.

Other companies, however, welcome inquiries as to how your job application is going. They’re fine with you calling up and asking about your application. It may even show them that you’re strongly interested in the position.

A thank you note may also be appropriate after an interview. It’s not always necessary, especially if the company prefers that you do not contact them until they say you have the job, but it can be useful at other times.

What Does It Take To Get Hired For A Work At Home Job?

It doesn’t take anything all that unusual to get hired for a work at home job. Just as with any other job, you have to be qualified for the job you’re applying for. You have to impress the interviewer.

The main difference you may expect between a work at home job and an outside the home job is questioning about your home office setup. Interviewers shouldn’t ask about your family – that’s generally off limits for legal reasons. Your ability to work at home, on the other hand, is a legitimate concern.

Some jobs will want to know how quiet your workspace is. If you’re talking to people on the phone, they may want to know that there won’t be any background noise.

If the company is not providing your equipment, they may want to know what kind of computer you have, your internet speed and so forth. They may want to know if you have wired connections for your phone and internet, rather than wireless. These questions may have been on the application, but don’t be surprised if they come up again in an interview.

You will probably also be asked about how comfortable you are with remote work. If this is your first work at home job, you won’t have direct experience to refer to. Instead, think of times you have been independent as you work, and how well you work without direct supervisions. Have examples ready if at all possible.

Overall, the process may not be all that different from landing any other job. You have to convince the employer that you are the best person for the job. Keep your focus on that, and maybe it won’t be too hard to get hired for a work at home job.

When was the last time you played with your kids?

Playtime with your kids can be hard to fit into your schedule. Life gets so busy between work, school, and activities. The days go by, and you realize it has been a long time since you did anything fun as a family. It’s helpful to think of free and cheap ways to play with your kids in advance, so you can be spontaneous about it later.

Play is one of the big ways kids and parents build memories together. Fun kinds of work builds memories too – think of something you made with one of your own parents. But that kind of work is often close to play as well.

Play is important at all ages. The kind of play your kids consider fun will change as they get older – you do not want to play with your kids in elementary school the same as you would a high school student. You’ll get major eye rolls if you try most of the time. There are only a few things that will keep being fun no matter your child’s age, and that will in part depend on his or her personality.

50 Free Or Cheap Ways To Play With Your Kids

1. Build a couch fort.
2. Play dress up.
3. Make homemade ice cream.
4. Bake cookies.
5. Bake a cake from scratch.
6. Make homemade pizza.
7. Have a tea party.
8. Have a water balloon fight.
9. Have a squirt gun fight (try it in the rain!).
10. Run through the sprinklers.
11. Go swimming.
12. Have a picnic.
13. Make an obstacle course.
14. Teach your child to do flips, cartwheels, etc.
15. Have a scavenger hunt.
16. Ride bikes.
17. Go on a hike.
18. Fly kites.
19. Play their favorite sport together.
20. Stargaze, especially if there’s a meteor shower.
21. Camp in the backyard.
22. Climb trees.
23. Go geocaching.
24. Plant a butterfly garden in the spring, and observe the results for months after.
25. Catch bugs. A bug vacuum is helpful for getting a good look.
26. Teach your kids to sew. A stuffed toy snake is easy (just a tube).
27. Play a board game.
28. Have an indoor “snowball fight” with cotton balls.
29. The floor is lava.
30. Blow bubbles (try touchable bubbles and build with them).
31. Draw with your kids (consider a speed drawing challenge).
32. Go to a playground and both of you play.
33. Play Mad Libs.
34. Pretend to be animals.
35. Home spa day. You paint their nails, they paint yours.
36. Play with Legos.
37. Make origami.
38. Solve a jigsaw puzzle.
39. Play video games together.
40. Pillow fight!
41. Play tag, hide and go seek, etc.
42. Play Simon Says.
43. Act out a play.
44. Paint.
45. Make a cosplay outfit.
46. Fly quadcopters.
47. Build something together.
48. Launch rockets.
49. Bad movie night – pick a movie you know is awful and have fun picking it apart.
50. Movie marathon – pick a favorite series and watch them together. Try to stay up all night if necessary.

One of the wonderful and terrible things about working at home is the lack of supervision. It doesn’t matter if you work for yourself or someone else, the lack of supervision is a challenge at times. At the same time, it’s nice having the flexibility to do things without a supervisor wandering by to check on you. It’s not always easy to keep working when no one else is directly holding you accountable. You need to get comfortable with holding yourself accountable.

Just because your boss isn’t in the same building as you doesn’t mean you aren’t supervised at all. If you work for someone else, they certainly have expectations of you. It might be when you work, how you work or how soon things will get done. If you have a business of your own, you may have clients who expect you to get things done in a timely manner or customers who expect their products promptly. You might also have family members who need you to keep up a certain income level for the good of your family.

But that isn’t always enough to keep some of us going. It’s too easy for things to slide just a little bit over time until productivity gets to be a problem. If you aren’t being held sufficiently accountable, this can continue until you lose your job, your clients or a significant chunk of your income. What can you do?

Get an Accountability Partner

One simple thing to do is make yourself accountable to someone. It can be a friend who works at home, your spouse, or anyone who you’re willing to talk to about what you’ve gotten done each day or week. Pick a time to check in with each other. Make check ins frequent enough to motivate you, but not so frequent that they interfere with getting work done.

Decide on what counts. This will depend on what exactly you do. It may be working a certain number of hours on your job, getting a certain amount of billable work done, earning a particular amount of money, etc. You decide.

I think it’s ideal if in some ways you’re accountable to each other. Challenge one another to reach your goals. It gives you both motivation, rather than having one person always listening to what the other has accomplished. That’s not a requirement, but I would consider it a help.

Set Daily Goals

You can also be accountable to yourself. Set goals for every day as well as times you expect to work. I have particular times I expect to be working. This varies day by day. I don’t have the same expectations of getting work done if I know there will be a lot of interruptions as I do on days I know should be quiet.

Your daily goals should be things you can reasonably accomplish in a day. Don’t make your goals so difficult you rarely reach them or so easy they don’t challenge you. For myself, I might set a goal of writing one article a day (not quick, two paragraph posts, but serious articles which may require research or careful thought), or a particular amount of marketing done.

Review Your Progress, Good and Bad

Most jobs have regular performance reviews. There’s no reason why you can’t do that for yourself.

Take a look every few months at how you’re doing. What are you doing well? What should you do better? What do you need to make it easier to do even better? This is a good time to consider any tools you might need for your work or business, and decide if it’s time to spend money on something.

For example, you might realize that you need to do more keyword research so that your blog posts can rank more easily. Market Samurai is a tool to make this easier. It generates keywords for you and provides information about how competitive the keyword is and more. Market Samurai has a free trial, so you can find out if you like it before you buy.

You might also decide that it’s time to subscribe to a tool to make your social media marketing easier. I like Hootsuite for scheduling my basic social media posts. I can schedule out a large number of posts in an hour. It’s a huge help to not need to focus on my basic posts. Social media needs more than scheduled posts, but it’s a part of the job out of the way.

Come up with a plan to improve your problem areas. This isn’t always easy, but it’s necessary. It might be how you deal with the many distractions inherent to working at home. You might realize that you’re charging too little for your work. Find ways to take action and fix the problems you’ve noticed. Keep holding yourself accountable.

Take Pride in Your Accomplishments

Celebrating the things you’ve accomplished is important too. It’s very motivating. You don’t have to do big things to celebrate, and you don’t only have to celebrate huge accomplishments. Have little goals as well as big ones. Make your rewards appropriate to the accomplishments.

I’ve taken my family to dinner to celebrate certain income goals being reached. It’s fun for all of us but doesn’t happen so often as to become meaningless. We don’t eat out very often, so this is a special thing, but the cost is far less than the increase being celebrated.

Working at home is hard in many ways. You gain freedom, but you also gain responsibility. If you don’t motivate you, it doesn’t happen. Try some of these ideas to make it easier to stay motivated by being accountable.

Have you ever wished you could learn to use social media more easily? It doesn’t come easy for a lot of people. I put a question out there for online business owners to share what they’ve learned and give their best social media advice.

I didn’t ask about particular platforms, as it’s interesting to see which ones different people prioritize. Some advice is good for multiple platforms, but others are better for specific sites.  I hope you will find some useful advice for your social media marketing for your online business.

Get Active

Tip 1: Getting active in Twitter chats. These chats are great for further establishing yourself as an expert within your given field and also for networking with other like-minded Twitter users.

Tip 2: Maintaining an active blogging presence. We are extremely active now (blogging up to 4-5 days a week), but in the early days our blog was spotty at best. We didn’t have many posts up and didn’t include visual aids like images or video either.

Tip 3: Keeping social media accounts neat and tidy. This is found in the little details, like shortening longer links with bit.ly or owl.ly, keeping hashtags separate from their caption, and including engaging, aesthetically pleasing pictures. Again, much of our improvements over the years have come by trial and error… as I suspect is true of most everyone with a social media presence!

Deborah Sweeney is the CEO of MyCorporation.com. MyCorporation is a leader in online legal filing services for entrepreneurs and businesses, providing start-up bundles that include corporation and LLC formation, registered agent, DBA, and trademark & copyright filing services. Follow her on Twitter @mycorporation.

It’s so important to be active in whatever social media you use. What active means can vary from platform to platform, but you’ll never succeed with any of them if you rarely post.

I also like the advice about keeping hashtags separate from the caption. Hashtags have their uses, but most of the time people don’t need to see them right with the rest of the post. Appropriate use of hashtags varies quite a bit from platform to platform. They aren’t as effective on Pinterest, for example, as they are on Twitter or Instagram. On any platform, be careful about how much you use hashtags. Misuse of them can limit your results.

Be Ready For Changes

Tip 1: Social Media changes daily. There are perpetual little tweaks to Facebook’s algorithm or the way Pinterest ranks pins. Even if you’ve found a really solid strategy for your social media, you have to be willing to toss all of it out the window and make the tough choices.

I’ve always had pretty good traffic from Facebook and Pinterest, but I’ll wake up one morning and my traffic has dropped off a cliff on one of those platforms. Don’t panic! It happens, but that is the time to start reevaluating your strategy, making minor changes, looking for what may have changed on blogs and forums, and then adapting to the current requirements of that social media platform.

Tip 2: Get the resources you need. I rely mainly on schedulers and automated processes to promote my artwork and blog posts on social media. I use RecurPost for Facebook and Twitter, Hootsuite for easy Instagram uploads, and I use a plugin that automatically shares to social media when I publish a post on my blog. I also use industry blogs to find out when I will need to adjust my strategy. I follow the MeetEdgar blog, SocialMediaReport.com, and a few others to find the best information.

Tip 3: Personal brands should be just that — personal. If you are a personal brand or blogger, you should have a very different tone of voice than a company or business. Share a bit of behind-the-scenes content, talk as you normally would, or share other people’s content that has inspired you.

It is those little things that will make you different from corporate entities on social media and will make you trustworthy and personable. You may be trying to sell something, but always remember that it is a person-to-person relationship, not a normal customer-business model of selling.

Sarah Donawerth
www.sarahdonawerth.com
facebook.com/sarahdonawerthauthor

Being ready for change in general comes with running an online business. Social media changes, as Sarah Donawerth mentions. So do search engines and every other method you have for generating traffic. Anyone who has run an online business for any length of time has had to face sudden changes that impact their traffic.

I also love the advice about being personal on social media. It’s a huge help even for big companies. Just look at the delight over the accidental post over on NPR about Ramona and the cats. It happened at the perfect time, right when people really needed something to smile about.

Be Willing To Experiment

Tip 1: When in doubt, post more often. When I first started on Instagram i posted once a day, like everyone said to. After a while, I got eager to get all of the great content I had stockpiled out, so I increased my posting frequency to 2, then 3, then 4 posts per day. At every step, our engagement and follower count soared. Now do you want to be posting 27 times every day? No. But it’s worth kicking your frequency up a notch to see what it can do for you.

Tip #2: Experiment constantly. Don’t decide what your social media should look like in a vacuum, try different approaches, mix it up constantly and learn from what worked and what didn’t. The only way to find the perfect content, voice, and frequency that resonates with your audience is to try new things, take what works, and leave what doesn’t.

Scott Marquart is the founder of Stringjoy Guitar Strings and a zealous advocate for personal, relatable marketing and branding in the online economy. MailChimp says, he keeps his tone personal, both with his guitar strings and his online brand. He’s helped companies in the music, electronics, and health products industries grow their revenues and develop closer connections with their customers.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stringjoy

I love the tip to experiment. That’s an extremely important piece of social media advice. You don’t know what works for you if you don’t experiment.

Test how often you post, regardless of what others say is the right amount to post. Test the times you post and see which ones work best for you. Your audience is not exactly the same as anyone else’s audience. Learn what they like by trying things out.

Have A Plan

Tip 1: Start With A Plan – There are dozens of ways to use social media. Make sure you select the right social media strategies that fit your plan to market and promote your site.

Tip 2: Always Invite – If people like you and the advice you are sharing then invite them to take the “next step” to get to know you better. It could be something as simple as an invitation to a complimentary gift to opt-in to your email list or to join a webinar to learn more about how you help people solve a specific problem.

Tip 3: Be Consistent – Create a plan of how many times you will post a day or week and stick to it. Don’t expect to see results immediately. It is kind of like starting a diet or a healthier lifestyle meal plan. You don’t expect to see a lot of results within the first week or two.

Crystal Olivarria is a Career Coach at Career Conversationalist. Parents hire Crystal to help their child select a relevant career. Crystal invites you to receive your complimentary gift 7 Ways To Help Your Child Select A Relevant Career, Regardless What Age Your Child Is at 7WaysToHelp.com.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/crystal-olivarria-32125712/

Having a plan is great advice. It’s a help to know how you’re going to attract people’s attention as well as what you’re going to do once you’ve got it. Every plan takes time to create and see results, but it’s usually more effective than just winging it.

Social media advice that takes into consideration why you’re using social media is particularly important. It isn’t all about getting a ton of followers. The results that build your business and improve your income are vital to the success of your online business.

Spending Some Money Can Help

Tip 1: I wish I knew how to effectively use Facebook ads sooner. When I first started practicing, I used Facebook ads to drive traffic to my blog as a content marketing strategy. It worked well and quite a few of my patients stated that they first came across my practice on Facebook. The problem was allowing Facebook to set my bid (e.g. how much I am willing to pay for a click), which is the automatic setting.

When I realized that I could actually say, I don’t want to spend more than X amount of money for a click, I was better able to control my ad spend in a way that made sense for my business.

Tip 2: I also wish I knew about running contests as a means of raising awareness for my business sooner. We have tried a variety of different methods in an attempt to raise awareness about what we do, but nothing seems to have worked as well as holding viral contests using a plugin like King Sumo or software like Gleam or UpViral.

Viral contests work by encouraging people who enter your contest to share it with their friends. Each person receives additional entries when people who they share the contest with sign up, so the incentive is there to share. As a result, more and more people learn about your contest or giveaway, you gain additional targeted leads, and awareness is raised for your business.

Tip 3: Regarding Instagram, I wish I knew that having a recognizable visual pattern to your feed helped to increase the likelihood that people would follow you (e.g. aesthetics really do matter) and I wish I knew that I could use a site like https://linktr.ee to include more than one clickable links attached to my profile.

Dr. Janelle Louis ND. My new mental health blog is located at The MHA Spot. My
Instagram account for it is here: https://www.instagram.com/themhaspot/

Making the decision to spend money on your social media isn’t always an easy one. It’s a risk. The benefits can be very well worth it. You will need to test ads to see what works for you so that you don’t waste your money on things that don’t work.

Has This Social Media Advice Been Helpful?

The final piece of advice I would like to give is “keep on trying.” When you’ve decided that a social media platform is a good match to your business needs, don’t give up on it too easily.

If you want to learn more about social media marketing, you may want to consider taking a course through Udemy. I’ve found their courses to be quite helpful, and you can get some good deals on them. I have also given some advice on making the most of Pinterest as a home business in an earlier post.

Remote medical coding is a popular choice for people who want to work at home. Once you’ve finished your online medical coding training, it’s time to start looking for a job. The hard part is finding companies that offer such jobs.

Most companies that have remote medical coding jobs require at least 2-3 years of experience. This means that no matter how well your training went, you probably won’t find a remote or online position right away.

This is actually a good thing, as experience teaches you things you won’t have learned in your training. Working in an office with more experienced people around you will help you gain the experience you need to do the job successfully at home. Some companies will even let you transition to a remote position once you’ve proven your accuracy.

Get the credentials needed for better medical coding positions as soon as you can. A CCS, CCP or other credential can open up opportunities to you.

Here are some companies that offer remote medical coding jobs. Most will require experience and are fairly strict about it.

Accentus

Accentus is a part of Nuance Health, a company that offers healthcare IT solutions such as speech recognition and tools for more accurate medical coding. Accentus offers jobs in both Canada and the United States. Coders must have a CCS or CCS-P and/or CPC or CPC-H, RHIT and RHIA as well as 3-5 years of coding experience.

Acusis

Acusis hires medical transcriptionists and medical coders. Each requires 3+ years of relevant experience. Medical coding positions require appropriate AHIMA or AAPC certifications. Most positions are home based, although some may be available in an office.

Altegra Health

Altegra Health hires for a variety of remote medical coding jobs. They typically require about three years of experience plus appropriate certification, but this may vary by position. Not all positions are home based.

Aviacode

Aviacode offers contract remote medical coding jobs. Applicants must have appropriate certification through either AAPC or AHIMA as well as at least two years of experience, depending on the positions.

Excela/Lexicode

Lexicode is now a part of Excela, a global provider of transaction processing solutions and enterprise information management. Some positions require only 1-2 years of coding experience. Appropriate certifications such as CPC, CCS and so forth are required.

HCA Healthcare

HCA Healthcare offers a range of work from home opportunities. It’s not just for medical coders. However, as that’s the focus here, note that they expect the usual credentials and at least two years experience for medical coding positions.

Himagine

Himagine Solutions hires medical coders for a variety of specialties, such as inpatient, outpatient, HCC, emergency, and others. Positions typically require a RHIA, RHIT and /or CCS as well as at least three years of experience.

Humana

Humana hires various work at home health care professionals, including medical coders. Some positions may require limited travel. Medical coding jobs require a CPC, CCS, RHIA, or RHIT.

Maxim Health Information Services

Maxim helps many well known organizations fill medical coding positions. These positions may be long term, short term or permanent. Full time positions include benefits.

nThrive

nThrive hires medical coders and clinical documentation improvement specialists for remote positions. These positions require certifications such as RHIA or RHIT or CCS, CCA or similar, and prefers certifications relevant to your specialty. Two years of recent, hands on medical coding experience is required.

United Health Group

United Health Group has a range of telecommuting positions available, not just medical coding. Optum is the part of the company that handles medical coding. Appropriate AHIMA or AAPC certifications are required, along with 3+ years of coding experience.

These are just some of the companies out there that hire people for remote medical coding jobs. You can find more listings on the Home With The Kids Online Job Board.