To search efficiently and effectively for a telecommuting job online choose the right keywords. There is no single, best place to look for a work-at-home job online. Often you end up searching in many places, i.e. company websites, job boards, etc.
And, unfortunately, many of these sites use different keywords to tag the home-based job online. One company’s database may tag them all with “telecommute” while another with “remote.” When you plug in keywords to a job board or search engine, they usually search the text of the postings. So it just depends on what each poster used to describe the job online.
How to Search for a Job Online
If searching for a job online on a company’s web page or on a specialized job board that only deals in your line of work, you may want to use the keywords listed below by themselves to bring up any job and sort through them yourself. If searching on a general jobs search engine, you’ll likely need to add a keyword related you your field of expertise to narrow your search.
If you uses a search engine frequently, experiment with which keyword work best, then, if possible, save your search. Some allow you to save if you register. You also may be able to save the search by bookmarking the page of results.
Possible keywords to use when searching for a job online:
Work at Home or Work from Home
Generally search engines ignore words like “at” and “from” so in theory these can be used interchangeably. However, in practice you may find that some databases give different results for these two terms.
These are two of the most popular keywords, but the problem is that both “work” and “home” are common words that can bring up extraneous results. You could try putting the words in quotes to bring up only exact matches, but keep in mind that this excludes “work-at-home” (with hyphens), which in many cases is the grammatically correct usage.
Sometimes just “home” by itself will work. This brings up the useful “home-based jobs” but also things like home health care or home repair.
Telecommute or Telecommuting
Again, like “work at/from home” these are very popular keywords that may or may not be read interchangeably by job databases. Experimenting with the sites where you are searching for a job online will tell you if one is better than the other.
Both “telecommute” and “work at home” are popular with legitimate employers, and will often bring up completely different sets of job listings. The keyword “telecommute” often brings up more employment situations rather than business opportunities like “work at home.” Work at/from home is also a little bit more likely to bring up work-at-home scams.
Unfortunately, telecommuting can also bring up jobs listed as “no telecommuting.”
Virtual or Remote
Virtual and remote are not as common at telecommute or work at home, but are still frequently used to describe jobs online. They are often paired with the words “office” or “position,” but it’s best just to search for them alone.
Freelance or Consultant
Not all freelance positions are home-based, but many are. If you’re an independent contractor looking for work in your field, these are good keywords to try when searching for a job online. Also give both freelance and freelancing a try, but “consult” is not likely to give good results.
Home-Based
Home-based is definitely not as popular as the others, but it may be we worth a try. Most job listings use the grammatically correct hyphenated version of this keyword but you might also give “home based” without the hyphen a try.
