We have now reached the Virtual Age and working 100% from home has been the increased hot topic of discussion ever since March 2020 when the entire world shut down due to the Corona Virus Pandemic. I became a Digital Nomad over night and would like to explain to you how in case you're interested in the lifestyle as well and desire to replicate my success from the couch.
At the time of the start of the lockdowns, I was living my life completely online with my friends, playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but I wanted to start making real money as easily as I was collecting bells all over my island. I wanted to work from home so I could stay safe inside my apartment, but this left me in a constant state of wonder about what I could do remotely that would sustain the bills. I was dreaming of making my virtual island a reality.
Luckily, I had already been a Professional Resume Writer in the past before the pandemic hit and I was very good at that job. I got many clients hired and designed customized resume templates with matching cover letters along with optimizing LinkedIn Profiles that gained attraction constantly, but I was fired from that job for being late. This was the birth of me starting to take on freelance writing assignments and getting paid under the moniker @andreaisawriter. I would even get paid to write college essays for students as well and this is a big underground industry that supplemented my bills for months as I was transitioning into a full-time entrepreneur.
I didn't even realize that I had already developed all the skills that I needed to be able to generate the funds I was wanting. The only problem was that I just wasn't working in my craft. The drastic and massive shift to go inwards helped thrust me into being forced to finally answer my calling.
I had always been a strong writer all throughout school and college so this was destiny and fate. When I got my first job as a Lead Resume Writer, I was writing resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn Profiles, and other professional career documents for various clients all over the country.
For whatever reason, it never occurred to me that I should write myself a "Resume Writer" resume to get myself job opportunities. I quickly figured out that not only could I do that, but I SHOULD have done that the moment I got fired from the first job. There is one thing that I can do better than everyone else in the entire world and that is write and design professional resumes.
Late one Sunday night, I started applying to every single remote job that had an opening. I had been living off my savings for months and it was dwindling so I was thirsting for any opportunity, it just had to be remote this time around the job hunt. I created a boatload of specifically curated professional resumes for myself and each one of them targeted the specific company's job posts, keywords, values, mission statement, and views of the Hiring Authorities that worked there.
I was typing away at my tablet with the detachable keyword doing what I do best in the hopes of landing some kind of stable full-time work-from-home job. I was using this secret trick that I was share: do your homework on the company and by homework, I really mean stalk them. Find all their social media profiles, go through their Facebook photos, Twitter likes, IG stories, and connect with them on LinkedIn.
I was doing this for each company so I could learn about who I was applying to work with. By doing this, you will create stronger resumes with the Decision-Makers interests in mind. If you see them saying how much they love the ocean on their TikTok, you can relate to them on a personal level in the interview and make your resume sea-friendly. Getting hired is about strategy.
The next morning I woke up with an email full of job offers. This was the turning point for me in my Remote Work Career Journey. I realized that I could get a LOT of different contract jobs and make money completing those assignments since my resumes were so successful at getting callbacks. I basically was going to try to become a professional contract worker (a Digital Nomad).
It didn't quite click to me yet that I was about to turn my talents into a full-time career though. With my applying efforts, I was ONLY procuring remote positions and getting callbacks for each and every one of them. When I first started this digital side hustle, I had a bunch of different contract positions with companies all over the country and still have many that I do currently.
It was and is a virtual adventure. I work at multiple career firms as a writer, did some transcription work, and as you can read, I am currently blogging. A lot of my opportunities started from word-of-mouth and repeat clients and I was honestly doing very well for the circumstance I was in.
All of these digital opportunities were opening my eyes to how lucrative the new Virtual Age and work from home market is. It is quite literally booming. My initial aspiration for myself was just to land any remote job so I could transition completely out of the physical working space and remain safe inside the home. I was even playing around with the idea that I could even become a Career Services Director for a college and teach the students there all about my resume expertise, but after I saw how many callbacks I was getting from my resume strengths alone, I started thinking about whether or not I could be successful if I started my own Virtual Career Services business.
I wanted to help other people who were currently still out in the struggle of the virus begin doing what I was doing to make ends meet. I am very passionate about my community getting paid to do what they love from home because I have seen my own growth and success skyrocket. Being able to stay inside your home and make money opens up the door to freedom and more streams of income so I wanted to get this information out to the masses.
I had no idea that what I was already doing had been named and done by a large community of followers who participated in independent location work. Being a full-time contract worker is essentially what a digital nomad truly is. You do not "have" to travel to be one, but it makes the lifestyle more luxurious if you are living in a different city or country every other month or so.
It didn't occur to me that I was living the digital nomad life (just inside my own apartment) until I stumbled upon the Digital Nomad Subreddit. With the Pandemic at an all-time high, I am simply living as a virtual nomad right now. I acquire multiple contract jobs alongside running my career services business so that I have multiple streams of income coming my way across the digital waves. We sail the virtual seas daily!
It is the ideal lifestyle to break into if you want supreme independence, especially for millennials because it breaks the chains of the 9-5 workweek. At least for me and my sea of jobs, I currently do 7 different remote duties and none of them require me to punch a time-clock. I create my own schedule while going with the digital flow of my curated dream life of doing whatever I want to do.
People are constantly arguing online now about raising the minimum wage and about dismantling the 40-hour workweek, but the key to breaking the chains of capitalistic work is breaking free of trading your time for money. There is no need to continue that cycle of counting out how much you made that week based on the hours you put in when the majority of remote jobs pay their workers based on the project, assignment, or amount of work they completed.
You work as little or as much as you want and there are no ties to the company you're doing freelance or consulting work for, so you are able to release yourself from the relationship with ease if there is that desire. There is no need to bicker with people who are also in your same situation, you just need a professional resume and applying strategies. I provide that.
With remote work on the steady rise and many businesses doing away with the brick and mortar model, there are countless opportunities to find open positions since you no longer have to be in the same location as your Employer. There are millions of companies switching to the 100% work-from-home lifestyle and employing people from all over the world to provide them with services. My business has been able to assist many of the workforce with their virtual career transitions and journeys with professional resumes.
You can procure and land as many remote jobs as you can physically handle because you just need a solid resume with the right skills in the right places and the callbacks will be endless. The only downside that I relate to about the act of job searching that is annoying is the tedious nature of consistently checking the market since it is ever-changing, but that also means there are ALWAYS jobs up for grabs. LinkedIn is my top favorite job search site since they have over 14 million open positions at any given time and the higher paying ones tend to be actively recruiting talent on the platform.
The way of the now and continual way of the future is teleworking and I am honored to be one of the first Virtual Career Services businesses that caters directly to the needs of the digital nomad community. You can work anywhere and be anything your resume says you are.
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Welcome to the virtual future, come ride the remote work wave with us.
Send in your most up to date resume here with links to open jobs: resume@thecareerisland.com