If you’re currently searching for remote work or in the midst of a remote job search, you might be wondering how to list remote work on your resume or LinkedIn profile – and how much it really even matters.
We can assure you, it matters a lot!
With these 6 tips (and remote work resume examples to go with them!), you’ll learn more about how to show remote work on your resume in a way that catches recruiter attention and showcases your top skills!
How to Write Remote Work on Your Resume (and LinkedIn Profile)
Table of Contents
- Make it clear you’re targeting remote work
- Use effective resume formatting
- Include remote work skills
- Write compelling job descriptions
- Showcase your results
- Transfer it over to LinkedIn
1. Make it clear you’re targeting remote work
You can indicate remote work on your resume right away by including a line in your contact info, in your targeting headline, in the body of your summary / profile paragraph, and/or in your skills section at the top of your resume.
Resume Example:
Resume Example:
2. Use effective resume formatting
Your resume format is often your first impression. Before anyone reads your content, they see (and judge) your formatting. It needs to be clean, easy to read, and purposefully guide the reader’s eye to your most important content.
There is a very definite ‘look’ to a well-crafted resume, and while that ‘look’ may vary in style, the basic formula is pretty consistent.
A good remote work resume should include:
Contact info at the top
This includes your name, phone number, email address, and indication of remote work preference (remote only, remote first, hybrid, etc.)
Targeting Headline (and sometimes sub-heading)
Indicating the types of jobs you’re targeting
Summary / Profile paragraph
Showcasing your top skills, achievements, and experience
Skills section
Full of highly targeted keywords for your target remote jobs
Professional Experience
Listing your jobs in reverse chronological order
Other important sections may include:
Remote work section
Career transition section
Education
Technical skills
Remote work skills
Remote Work Section Example:
Career Transition Example:
3. Include remote work skills
To create an effective remote work resume, it’s all about demonstrating how you fit the needs of your target audience and can provide a solution to their pain points. You can do this through remote work keywords and skills.
If you’re not sure how to find the right remote work resume keywords for your purposes research the job descriptions for the jobs you want to target. To do this:
- Collect at least 10 job descriptions that represent your target remote job type
- Highlight words or phrases that stick out to you or seem important in each one
- Copy/paste each description into a word counter (I like WordCounter.com)
- Analyze the data to understand which words/phrases are used more often
- Create a database of the keywords that are most used and most relevant
Check out our Top 50 Remote Work Resume Keywords for great remote work skills!
4. Write compelling job descriptions
Using your database of keywords from #3 above, write each of the job descriptions in your Experience section with those skills in mind and try to include those skills wherever possible. If the job was remote, you can indicate remote work in the job title or location, as well as in the description itself.
Even if you’ve never worked remotely before, you can include some remote work keywords by describing work that may have required you to work with people in other locations (cross-locational is a great remote work keyword), to work from home, or to travel for work.
Check out our 25 Remote Work Job Description Examples to help revamp your resume!
Resume Example:
5. Showcase Your Results
Results and achievements are the major factors that prove your value. Anybody can claim they have skills in something. So don’t just fill your resume with empty claims.
Fill it with proof.
That’s how you elevate yourself above other candidates competing for the same roles.
Resume Example:
Resume Example:
6. Transfer it over to LinkedIn
For anyone targeting fully remote work or even hybrid roles, LinkedIn is a great place to find those jobs and to be found by recruiters.
The content in your remote work resume can be easily transferred to your LinkedIn profile, and the following bit of info should help:
- Your resume summary/profile content should be added to your profile Headline and About sections.
- At the time of this publication, the Headline section has a maximum character count of 220 on desktop and 240 on mobile, and the About section has a max of 2600. The LinkedIn algorithm (supposedly) ranks your profile higher in search results the closer you are to reaching that limit in each section.
- Your job descriptions should be pretty easy to copy/paste directly from your resume to your LinkedIn profile. When adding each employer, be sure to select the correct employer profile, which will hopefully pop up with the employer’s logo and make your profile look better.
- Your skills section can have a maximum of 50 skills, and the more you have the better. Make sure to use the keyword research you did for your resume to know which skills are most important to include.
- Pro Tip: Another way to help your profile rank higher in search results is by actually being active on LinkedIn: connecting with others, following companies and industry influencers, posting your own posts, sharing posts from others, and/or commenting on others’ posts. The more active you are, the more visibility you will get and the higher the algorithm will rank you in search results.
Attend our (free!) Rethinking Remote Work virtual conference to learn even more about breaking into (or moving up in) the remote work revolution!
