Best Remote Work Skills for Your Resume

If you’re planning to apply for a work-from-home position, then it’s important to know what skills to list for your resume. While certain competencies are valued by employers whether you work remotely on in the office, the following four skills are indispensable for remote roles, so you should be sure to emphasize these in your remote resume:

Self-Motivation

When you work in an office, you can get away with letting external motivation rule your day. With a boss and in-house colleagues nearby, it’s almost certain that someone else in your work world will ride herd on your tasks if you lose your focus.

Not so when working from home. Since your supervisor and colleagues aren’t with you, it’s completely on you to make sure you’re prioritizing work-related goals and deliverables. Without self-motivation, you might spend your whole workday distracted by social media and personal projects. So, when applying for remote gigs, be sure to emphasize your internal motivation skills.

Self-Discipline

Hand-in-hand with self-motivation is self-discipline. You may feel motivated to do your job, but if you aren’t disciplined enough to push yourself through your responsibilities while working from home every day, then you won’t excel in a remote role.

When describing your quality of self-discipline, it helps to share examples. Showcase instances from previous jobs or projects that highlight your ability to work independently, spurred forward by your own initiative. If you haven’t held a remote position before, then consider sharing an instance or two from areas outside of work that have required self-discipline, such as training for a marathon or serving in a leadership role in a community organization.

Conscientiousness

It’s helpful to be conscientious in any position, but remote managers will particularly appreciate hires who emphasize this skill on their resumes. Conscientious remote workers will care about making sure that others on the team know when they will be available online or by phone to connect with and won’t leave critical details hanging when their team is under pressure.

Think about ways that you’ve been conscientious when working with others in a traditional office setting—for example, by helping your work group stay on task with deadlines and schedules and keeping your workload organized. Then, apply examples of your conscientiousness to your potential remote position when noting this skill on your resume.

Strong Written and Verbal Communication

Clearly, workers in almost any role need impressive communication skills to succeed. But when you do your job in a company’s office, there are many more opportunities to connect with your work cohorts in person and share information.

In a remote job, much of your communication will likely be in writing, either via email, messaging, or various apps. If you’re a poor general communicator, this will quickly lead to problems when you’re working virtually. Your resume itself is one way to exemplify your written communication skills, along with your cover letter.

Being an excellent verbal communicator is also important as a remote employee because you may have fewer opportunities to talk in person or on calls, so you need to make the most of each one. Assuming your remote resume nets you an interview, keep this in mind when talking to the hiring team.

Emphasize These Skills and Increase Your Odds

If you naturally possess talents in the four skills above, then you’ll be off to a great start as a remote employee. Convincing a potential employer of that fact at the resume stage by emphasizing these abilities is the perfect first step to being offered a remote position.

For more helpful job search tips, check out our articles.