Recently, someone asked me if one of the jobs I had shared (something I do every week) was open to remote folks. While I work hard to ensure my weekly list of jobs only includes remote-friendly opportunities, this particular role was listed as being in-office.
However, I offered the following advice based on my personal experience and what I’ve seen from other folks over the years: Even when a job is listed as being “in office,” it’s still possible to get the company to consider a remote employee.
Like so many things in business, a lot of it has to do with when you ask and how you make your case.
Here’s the specific advice I offered to this person. I hope it helps you, too. If you have additional tricks, comments, questions, or kudos, feel free to leave them in the comments below.
Your best bet is to apply and see how far the conversation gets.
I know that sounds both random and setting yourself up for failure, but hear me out:
In the “before times” (pre-pandemic), I was a remote worker for over ten years. This was the strategy I’d developed over the years (given that almost nobody advertised for remote jobs). I would apply and be very, VERY vague about location. “Everything is negotiable, but I want to find out more about the job and have you find out more about me,” was my standard answer.
Once we got down to brass tacks, I would already have a sense of the company, how many remote folks there work, the job workflow, etc. I could mount an argument for remote work based on that information.
- “How many times do you text or call someone who sits literally one cubicle away.”
- “During an outage, how many people go to a meeting room versus take the call from their desk so they can keep working on the problem?”
- “How much of the team is not in this location, so they’re effectively “remote” anyway?”
- “How often do I need to physically go into the data center to physically touch a machine?”
…and so on. My point would be to highlight how much of the job is already remote, and so my being remote from an office location was functionally no different than being on-site.
It worked 50% of the time. The combination of my proving I was the right person for the job AND the case I made about the remote nature of the work gave the hiring manager the ammunition they needed to make the argument.
NOW… how many of those jobs admitted the job could be done remotely up-front? Zero. Absolutely NONE of them would have initially agreed to consider a remote person.
For companies that refuse to consider remote staff, the case I had to make five years ago is the same one we have to make today. And luckily (for those of us who believe strongly in the power of remote work), the process is largely the same.
CAVEAT (aka “death and taxes”): The one absolute deal-breaker for remote work status is tax status. If a company doesn’t have a tax presence in the location where you live, it’s very, VERY hard to get them to consider doing so for you and you alone.
However, even this isn’t 100% impossible. I have two different companies that do it for me.
Also published here.