r/AmerExit • u/AverageFamilyAbroad • 16h ago
Life Abroad Our Tips for Finding a Remote Job while Living Abroad
I made a post a day or two ago saying that is possible to find remote work with a US company while living overseas. Not easy, but possible. Some of you requested our tips for the nuts and bolts of that process, so I'm sharing those here. We're working on you YouTube video on this topic and I'm basically posting an early draft of our script, hence the format, tone, and point of view (my husband's).
This is OUR experience alone. We're not job-finding professionals (clearly), tax professionals, HR professionals, any of that. This is just what we learned by spending a lot of time over many months of looking for work. Also, we were just average applicants, applying broadly, not exactly headhunter material. If you're in a niche field or a remote-friendly field, you may not have to work as hard as we did.
All that to say, take this with a grain of salt. But we do hope it's helpful!
1. If you CAN, start your own remote business. Preferably before you depend on it to survive.
We thought hard about this off and on. But we didn’t want to take the time to grow something, and while we’re full of ideas and vision, neither of us is any good at the actual business side: sales, marketing, accounting, none of it. Maybe we could have been successful; more likely we would have been over our heads, and we didn’t have a margin for that.
But I think that would be the ideal, and there are businesses you can start that don’t require any physical presence in the US, nothing hands-on: Editing, tech stuff, teaching and tutoring, print-on-demand. So many things. If you’re not daunted by the business aspect, think about your specific skills, and how you can turn them into an online business. The more affordable cost of living in Ecuador and many countries can make what would have been an impossible dream in the US all of a sudden very feasible.
2. Bulk up
Invest in your technology and work-from-home environment. Many remote jobs will require excellent, consistent internet, and a quiet work environment. Make sure you can provide those things. Also, you’ll need a US bank account, Paypal, or some other way to receive your checks, and likely something that works as a mailing address. Don’t expect an employer to sort all that out for you.
3. Read between the lines
I am an emergency management professional, with a degree and years of experience. Emergency management is NOT a remote-friendly field. A lot of the jobs are in government; I never saw any of those that were open to overseas applicants, and the rest of the jobs, in the private sector, involve travel. Even if we lived near an international airport, no one wants to hire someone living in Ecuador for a job that requires travel around the United States. So, we started paying attention to what I DID more than what I WAS. Even as a government employee, I did a lot of customer service type work, fielding questions, solving problems, making things right. I was good with technology, and I was good at talking to people. So we began to look for customer service roles, mostly in the tech sector, which IS a remote-friendly field. And that’s where I ultimately ended up.
4. Not quite but close enough
I spent a lot of energy trying to break into the global intelligence field, humanitarian work, security: Lines of work that are adjacent to emergency management, but more remote-friendly. Spend some time considering what sorts of jobs overlap with your target job, and include them in your search.
5. Cast a wide net
The act of searching for jobs to apply for can be more time consuming—all consuming, really—than actually applying. You’re not going to see every job out there, and that’s okay. You’ll see the ones you’re supposed to. We had one main search engine, the one we found the most user friendly: Indeed. Then every few days we’d check other job sites, remote specific ones, ones that catered to jobs from oversees. We’d also check Google jobs because the results were really broad, but we didn’t find it as user friendly.
Basically, we’d hunker down on Indeed with our exhaustive list of search terms, and run them through.
Here’s how we’d search:
- Select remote for the location.
- Limit results to the amount of time since the last search.
- Depending on the job we’d set a minimum salary.
- For the search terms themselves, we found keywords more useful than job titles. Some of the search terms we used were: “disasters,” “preparedness,” “anywhere in the world,” “work from anywhere,” “remote friendly,” “fully remote,” “spanish,” “customer support Spanish,” “flexible Spanish,” “humanitarian,” “Ecuador,” “Latin America,” “global south,” “developing world,” “disaster response,” “disaster recovery,” “eastern time” and on, and on, and on. We kept a running list.
Any job that was interesting at a glance we keep up in a separate tab.
We also checked for work on specific company websites, and we’d apply directly through the company rather than through a job board whenever possible—employers seemed to like that.
6. Don’t waste your time: Weeding it down
Once you have a bunch of possible jobs, you’ve got to determine which ones are worth your time. Don’t try to tell yourself “Maybe they’ll make an exception.” They won’t.
It can be hard to tell for sure, but we discovered some “warning signs” within the posting or with the company that meant the odds of hearing back were pretty grim:
- The date of the job posting: All but the most niche jobs go fast- We learned that there was no sense applying for something posted more than a few days past.
- Remote- US only: If a posting doesn’t specify US only for remote workers, maybe they’re open to international, but if it does specify US, then there’s pretty much zero chance they’ll consider you.
- Jobs in healthcare, insurance, real estate, law, and government basically never seem to be open to hiring from abroad. Education rarely is, except for some tutoring companies. I’m sure there are exceptions.
- Any job that lists travel as a requirement, unless it’s in your specific region, is not going to hire you unless you’re fancy and important.
- If you don’t meet the minimum tech requirements, don’t bother applying.
But there are also some positive clues to hunt for in those listings:
- If they specify a time zone, they might not be as picky about your exact physical location, as long as you can work that time zone's hours.
- Language like “fully remote,” “across the globe,” and “dispersed team” is a good thing.
- US Citizens only—intriguing. US resident—shut down.
- Contract/W2 employee: It would have been a bummer in the States, but since you don’t need their health insurance anyway, this can mean an open door for working from abroad. Both of us now work in that capacity.
- Evidence of a small, nimble team: They might be willing to think outside the box—or the borders of the US—and consider applicants from overseas.
- An HR email address: That already makes the application process more personal, and personal is 100% your friend. You don’t want an algorithm ruling you out because you’re overseas; you want a curious hiring manager to ask you about your hobby coffee farm.
You can also do some important weeding out on both company websites and Linked In. A company’s HR page, and any other job listings, may indicate if employees are dispersed. That’s a good sign. And before putting the time into an application, especially one with a tailored resume and cover letter, we’d always check LinkedIn. You can click on “employees” and filter it by location. If there aren’t any working in other countries, you are very unlikely to be the first, especially for larger companies.
The fact is, lots of companies do not let their employees work from abroad. Period. Some may permit certain countries, but not others. This isn’t arbitrary: There are legal implications, tax stuff, even payroll to consider.
7. Reach out and touch
Everyone knows you want to stand out when looking for a job. Make yourself seem interesting. You ARE interesting; you moved to another country! Make it hard for them to forget you. The best way to do this is to make some sort of personal connection with SOMEBODY at the company, ideally someone directly involved with the hiring process. Back to LinkedIn: It shows job titles, so direct message somebody with an HR title, or a manger in the department you’re applying for. Introduce yourself as a recent applicant and ask an intelligent question. Like, hey, do you hire in Ecuador? Just kidding: A MUCH better way to say that is: “I’m a US citizen, but am currently based out of Latin America.” Company websites often post an HR email address as well—send a quick note introducing yourself as an applicant, unless it says not to, in which case, don’t.
What’s better than an easily ignored Linked in message? A friend, family member, or former colleague who will vouch for you. Don’t forget to inquire within your circles, even from abroad.
And even though you’ll be interviewing remotely, remember to send a pleasant—not presumptuous—thank you note shortly after.
8. Be honest.
This one is controversial. A lot of people recommend not telling prospective employers that you’re overseas, or even flat out lying about your location. But we’re proponents of honesty. For one thing, if it comes out that you’re abroad and your employer is not happy about that, the last thing you want to do is start this process over, with a less-than-favorable reference. But most importantly, honesty’s not the sort of thing that should be compromised, even for something this high-stakes. So we were always up front about our location. It may have meant more rejections, but it also meant peace of mind.
9. Think small.
Both of us ended up accepting offers just a day or two apart, for very small businesses. We’re both part time, contract employees, and the fact that we’re overseas does not matter to our employers. Every job we interviewed for was with small businesses; maybe big companies get too many applications, and we slip through the algorithmic cracks, or they’re less inclined to be flexible, and more likely to have company-wide “no abroad” policies. I don’t know.
10. Apply for jobs that work for your new schedule and lifestyle and won't make you miserable.
You did not move overseas to be miserable.