My journey to find a remote job: Part I
I started applying for jobs back in mid-March when I was still in Bogota (month 10), thinking that if I land something, it would not be completely outrageous to start my new job when Remote Year ended in late May and if I didn’t land something, I would at least be three months into my search and another three months post Remote Year wouldn’t kill me (and by me, I meant my bank account).
It’s now end of May. I’m back in New York and I have not landed any job offers and it’s looking like I probably won’t for another 6 months. My bank account is scared for my sanity.
What can I say? Things changed along the way. And so here I am putting feelings into words because I wanted to remember this journey and maybe even share it with others who may be going through the same thing or thinking about joining me on a similar path one day.
I remember spending a whole week just getting set up. I spent an entire day in pages creating my own resume format because 1. I wanted something in-between the old school resume with tons of words and no style whatsoever and the latest UX/UI designer resumes with only visuals and barely any words and 2. I really didn’t want to pay for a resume template. I updated and activated my LinkedIn profile and, because I was considering working for smaller companies and start-ups, I also created a profile with AngelList as well. I reached out to all my old coworkers and even those recruiters who had so zealously messaged me back in my pre-Remote Year life, trying to get me to jump ship, letting them all know: I’M BACK ON THE MARKET. Corporate Finance, here I come!
And I got tons of responses. My weeks in Bogota and first half of Medellin were jam packed with interviews. I would hop on a call and they would tell me about the role and then ask me to run through my resume and I’d give them my spiel. 100% of the time, I passed the initial, crazy screen as I like to refer to it, and found myself talking to the hiring manager a few days or a week after.
But… I wasn’t happy. I just wasn’t excited for these roles.
They just felt more or less like the same mundane life I left New York to join Remote Year for. I could already imagine my day to day life, down to my tasks. Every bullet point seemed like a project I had already tackled and it felt too predictable and too safe.
I started to think about that blog post I wrote back in Kyoto, about what life after Remote Year looked like and those feelings of wanting to have enough courage to build a life I wanted with the things I valued still rang true. I knew that if I went back to what I knew, I would never grow. Worse, I would not be true to myself.
What did excite me were a few bites on AngelList for remote finance opportunities. I didn’t know what to expect, especially because I was unfamiliar with the space and what many of these companies actually did. And to top it all of, since these companies are so small, most of my first conversations were with senior leadership and even directly with the CEO, all of which completely scared the crap out of me. But I sound found out that no matter who I spoke to, our conversations were mostly centered around my passions, my hobbies, things that inspire me, experiences that have shaped who I am and what my goals in life were. [Insert heart melt] Sure, they wanted to know I could do the job, but they actually cared about the people they hired and they were so so passionate about their work. It was contagious and I wanted to be a part of that.
And so, a month and a half after the start of my job hunt, I realized I had to switch gears. I wanted to be a part of something more and it seemed like remote opportunities tended to have more forward thinking ideas about work values and company missions that aimed to solve something missing in this world. But boy, I had no idea what I was getting myself into…
Originally published at https://allthingslil.net on May 30, 2019.
