Working from home, Freelancing, or working Remote Jobs lately has become the new ‘normal in today’s time. Due to the Pandemic that struck us at the start of the year 2020, there has been a huge change in the approach towards businesses and communication. The wave of virtual communication and virtual employment all across the world hit us sooner than expected because of the pandemic. The need of working remotely, from the comfort of your home, increased, and soon after, it became a desire for most people to work remotely, especially those who couldn’t leave their homes due to responsibilities.
Europe, a continent with countries that are bustling with business and amazing opportunities, had to improvise too when the pandemic put us in a difficult position. Most businesses and organizations there have switched to online working since then. This means that there are abundant prospects for work from home job openings, and other remote job opportunities in every line of work.
Platforms for finding remote jobs in Europe
There are numerous platforms and job portals available if you want to hunt for remote jobs in Europe for yourself. Remote job hunting is a simple process that starts from looking for suitable job options on job portals to singling out the choices. Some of the Remote job-hunting portals are:
FLEXJOBS
Flexjobs is a job searching site for flexible and remote jobs. It is based in Colorado, United States, but its services are available all around the world including Europe. Flexjobs has in store for you the most in-demand and up-to-date job opportunities and openings in Europe, that vary from full-time, part-time, contract work and freelancing, etc.
This website has jobs available for people who are interested in working remotely, looking for a career-oriented part-time job, retirees looking for jobs to stay in the workforce, living in rural areas with fewer job opportunities related to their field, and more.
LinkedIn is an online service provider company that operates through websites and mobile apps. This website allows users to network professionally and search for jobs both remote and commuting, by posting their CVs to find the perfect job. LinkedIn has around more than 774 million registered members from across 200 countries as stated in LinkedIn Wikipedia.
It works by allowing its users to create their profiles be it an employer or an employee and helps them connect and interact with each other to build business relations. LinkedIn is extremely popular in Europe in terms of remote job-hunting. It also has features that enable the users to organize offline events, publish job postings, write articles, join groups, and much more.
FREELANCER.COM
Freelancer.com, like all other remote job portals, is a freelance marketplace website that allows users to post jobs that are then bid to compete. Bids are placed over work posted by the host in a competitive tender process.
It also allows members to enter and host contests in which prize money is offered as a reward. This website has a consumer rating of 4.6 stars on Sitejabber, from around 10,000 reviews indicating customer satisfaction. Freelancer.com is very popular in the UK and many other European countries, where working remote jobs is becoming quite normal and conventional.
UPWORK
Upwork, based in San Francisco, California, was established in 2015 and has since then done an incredible job in becoming one of the leading job-hunting sites and service provider companies. By just 2017, this site had over 12 million registered freelancers and 5 million registered clients from all around the world with reference to Upwork Wikipedia.
It works by allowing the users and clients to interview, interact, hire, and work with freelancers through the company’s platform. You can easily find your dream remote job in Europe with the help of this job portal as Upwork has incredible reviews from European countries especially from the UK. Freelancers working from European countries too have been rated 4.9 stars from 86,767 reviews approximately on the Upwork website.
Other remote job-hunting portals that are merely based in Europe are:
- EuropeRemotely
- Remote4me
- EU Remote Jobs
- Angelist
- Nodesk
- Remote.co
- Dynamite Jobs
The right way to reach out to recruiters
Before applying for your desired job online, you need to make sure that the job opening or the recruiter that you are looking forward to contacting is reliable and authentic. For this reason, it is always better to cross-check from other reliable sources before applying. One of the most helpful tricks can be to check the recruiter’s activity on LinkedIn or any other job portal to verify the legitimacy of the job opening.
The next thing you need to look for is the job requirements. What the recruiter is looking for in an employee, and what are the company’s needs and values. When applying for a job you need to keep in mind that employment is a two-way process. You need to emphasize what skills and services you will be offering to the recruiter and not just what the recruiter will be offering to you. This is why you need to list down all the details of your acquired education as well as past working experiences in your E-mail to let them regard you as the best candidate for the job. It is important, when approaching a recruiter, to highlight the services required by them that you are willing to offer to ensure yourself the best fit for the position.
Streamlining your expectations
This is a very crucial step in remote job-hunting. The means of interaction being online, very often result in a lot of misinterpretations and miscommunication. If you are from Asia and are looking forward to landing a job in Europe it is extremely important to read and understand all of the rules and guidelines regarding the employment process as well as the job description.
When it comes to applying for a job in foreign countries, attention to detail is quite important. The application process consists of many requirements that you need to fill, which is why you must read all the requirements and conditions very carefully. Some people expect visa sponsorships, accommodation and resident permits, insurance, etc. when traveling to the place of work, from their employer. When in fact, most of the time there is no agreement or written contract regarding these concerns, which can create misunderstandings and lead to the employee giving up the job at the last minute.
Conclusion
Remote jobs have always been a possibility ever since the invention of computers and then the further advancement in technology. Though the pandemic made it a necessity and a very common way of working and earning. With the increase in working remotely from the comfort of your home, from anywhere in the world, it has become extremely easy and manageable for people who had trouble going to their workplace previously, due to particular responsibilities or any other reason.
Europe has growing numbers of remote job portals as well as remote job opportunities and openings as the businesses there, are adapting and shifting quickly towards this way of working as an everyday means. As remote working has proven to be a more efficient and beneficial way of working, more and more people have started to look for their dream jobs to work remotely both nationally and internationally.
