CAVO Ep. 83: The No Application Remote Job Search Strategy

Are you looking for a remote job and spend hours tweaking your resume? Feeling lost every time you open your computer, not knowing what will ACTUALLY move the needle in your job search? In this episode, CAVO Visiting Virtual Expert, Jordan Carroll, explains a simple 3-step system to get noticed by recruiters and HR managers. Learn more about Jordan at https://theremotejobcoach.com/ 

Transcript

Melody Rawlings
0:00 
And welcome to the Center for the Advancement of virtual organizations podcast, the no application remote Job Search Strategy. I'm Melody Rawlings, Director of Cabo. And today I'm chatting with Jordan Carroll, the remote job coach and current visiting Virtual expert. Using his proven method, Jordan has helped people learn effective strategy for landing legitimate remote job opportunities. So today, we're going to learn more about Jordans method and find out just what makes it so effective. Welcome, Jordan, and thanks so much for taking the time to come and chat with me.

Jordan Carroll
0:35 
All right, Melody, let's do this thing.

Melody Rawlings
0:37 
Ready? Sounds good. All right. Well, before we dive into our discussion, would you just get us started by telling us about yourself and how you became not a remote job coach, but thee remote job coach.

Jordan Carroll
0:50 
Ahhhh, very astute observation that domain selection was was prime right. And you have to get the not a so... my journey has been nonlinear. Like I'm sure. Pretty much your entire audience like there's no linear careers anymore. Yeah, so I mean, from a very high level, and you you it's almost as if I wrote that intro, you did. So such a good job of of interviewing me that just adding some additional context, I've worked remote since 2013. I've worked remote for big companies, small companies, my companies have developed a lot of different, unique experiences through that. And the lenses in which I've been able to view and actually experience remote work has changed and evolved, just as the concept itself has changed and evolved.

And as I was working for different companies fully remotely, I realized that the way that I was actually getting the jobs, which is mostly through personal branding and networking, not applying, that was something that not a lot of people were doing, like I would look around, and I I get a lot of questions from people who beg, how are you working fully remote, you know, in these different countries, blah, blah. And I was like, Well, I got a job with this company. Because I talked to this person. And I did this strategy. And I just realized, like, the things that I was doing was just like really foreign to a lot of people, but it seems so natural to me. So over time, as I was starting to just get all the same questions. I was like, okay, like, there's probably a business here, which, for anyone listening, like if people ask you the same questions over and over and over again, you probably have a shot to start a business. With what, whatever niche that is.

Melody Rawlings
2:31 
That's great. I love that. And a great point. I never thought about that before. But yeah, getting asked the same questions, Tom to examine that really closely. For sure, you know, I'm seeing and hearing a lot these days about the push by many organizations, for employees to return to the office, either in hybrid format, or in some cases, just they want them all to come back fully in person without even the opportunity for remote or hybrid work. And this is causing quite a stir for so many who are found better work life balance as a fully remote employee. And yeah, and that's leading them, in some cases to look for new remote opportunities if they're unable to convince their employer to continue allowing them to work fully remotely. So as we begin this conversation, let's just clarify what a fully remote job means. Does it mean working from home? Or is there more to it than that?

Jordan Carroll
3:26 
Yeah. I mean, that's a great question, Melody, I think there's such a spectrum of what remote means. And there is absolutely no standardization. So you might ask what fully remote means to one person, and it may mean something completely different to another. So I think just, I just want to contextualize everything for a second, because what happened in our world was really frickin crazy. Knowledge. And if you take out the few years, starting in 2020, with the big P word, the big C word, whatever one you want to use. What we've noticed before COVID-19, what we noticed after the pandemic, if we just compare those two timeframes, and look at the differences of remote work, we see an extremely large difference and a new stabilization of where we're at. So I think to contextualize everything, before the pandemic happened, there were a lot of people, a lot of companies who did not understand that they could go remote, right? They they would, from a belief perspective, not think that it was possible, then overnight, they were forced to.

Now when you're forced to do remote work, during a pandemic, where everybody has to work from home where you're not even allowed to socialize, where you know, all these constraints are put around what remote work means. You are not going to have the true s have remote work within your policy within your infrastructure within your culture within your intention, right. So there are companies that this is how I look at it is all within intention of when the company started, and how they talk about remote work. So you look at a lot of companies like a GitLab, or a duelist, or a buffer. These are companies that are 100% remote distributed throughout the world, they use remote as a competitive differentiation. You look at companies who went remote during the pandemic, and did not have any intention to be remote at any point. And that level of remote is forced.

And those are the types of companies who you're seeing now come back to the office and make these mandates. These are the apples of the world, the Amazons of the world, some of these really large companies that especially with that big of a workforce, and no intentional policy around remote work, no legality around remote work, no structure to support remote work, of course, it would be crazy for us to think that they would have had a good experience during that time. So I think it's really important to contextualize everything. And to just look at where we're at before the pandemic with remote work. Where are we at now.

And we've actually made a really, really big leap, it feels like we're going backwards, because now everybody's going back to the office. But the reality is, is if you take that pandemic out, again, it just shows like still a really, really large leap forward for remote work as a general statement. And so I think that's what's really good to focus on is like the stabilization. And if you've ever heard of the innovation curve, have you ever heard of the Gartner hype cycle, we basically went through this really, really big boom, of something like an f of a technology basically have a methodology of a new way of working.

And now we're kind of in the downward trough of disillusionment, which is within this Gartner Hype Cycle. And so we've got to make our way out of that, and restabilized renormalize, what remote work actually means. And I think over the next 510 years, we're just going to continue going up. We've just stabilized that a new level. Wow,

Melody Rawlings
7:11 
I really appreciate contextualizing that, because we do here at all just kind of lumped together remote work without really thinking about, like you said, you made it, you differentiated between the companies who have used it to a competitive advantage, who were doing it pre COVID. And those who were just forced into it without having that policy in place.

And it's it was unfamiliar territory. So really appreciate that, because it really does add help help us to understand better, why we're seeing some companies who want to get back to what was normal to them before the pandemic. So they want everybody back, or at least back in a hybrid format, versus companies who some of them you had already mentioned, but but the ones who are allowing remote work to continue because it really didn't change anything for them.

And that's kind of where I was, with where I work is I was always remote as remote before the COVID happened. And so nothing changed for me when that happened, and nothing has changed for me since then, you know, we've kind of gotten back to I don't know, I guess more stabilized now. So that's a good segue into my next question. And that is, when a company posts a remote job that says, work from anywhere. Is that often the case? Or do they really mean work from anywhere within a certain state or country?


Jordan Carroll
8:34 
Yeah, great point. Because I think, again, this goes back to the differences in standardization, which there is no, there's no standardization among companies and how they talk about remote work. And very, very often you'll see a company, even within the way that they talk about remote work internally, is confusing. So of course, the way that they present externally is confusing. And they're not using the words the same way that other companies are using it. So the truth of the matter is, is if you're looking at a let's say LinkedIn, for instance, and you just search and filter by remote, you're going to come across a lot of jobs that have varying levels of remote work, and you're going to have to read every single one of those job listings very closely to understand and usually towards the bottom at some point, they'll say what remote actually means to them. There are a bunch of companies out there that are very clear about what their remote strategy is.

And that was similar to what you were saying these are companies that were doing this stuff beforehand. So if you're a job seeker, you need to have that awareness of one. Remote doesn't always mean remote. It doesn't mean the same level of remote. There's 95% of remote jobs have some sort of geographical restriction. So that's going to that's going to play a part in the way that you search and the way that you look at things, but to my recommendation is not really to go on job boards. To search for opportunities, if you're gonna go on job boards, you're going on remote specific job boards, and you're searching based on remote level.

And you're researching companies, rather than just the jobs is doing doing the job search based on a job board is very reactive, you're always reacting to like what is posted on the job board. Whereas if you build a list of like 2025 companies in which you know, they hire people all over the world, then you go into your job search with, Hey, here's my list of 2025. And the question that you ask yourself is, how do I become the easiest choice, culturally, from a skill perspective, and from how deep I can research this company? How do I become the easiest choice for them to hire. And sometimes that looks like you being able to create your own role, because they don't even have one open yet. Or it just means you need to get within their ecosystem, or you become a customer of theirs, or you do these unique things. And these are all things that I teach within my programs and within my coaching, but you become the easier choice for the company by how well you research and go in depth. And you focus on that quality interactions rather than quantity of number of companies that you're applying to haphazardly.

Speaker 1  11:17 
So interesting. And that's the fact that when we do go out and just do a job search icon, indeed or Glassdoor, or whatever it may be that it is reactive, never thought about it that way. But it's it's exactly what it is. And so we have to find a better, we have to find another backdoor into it. So

Speaker 3  11:37 
and it works for freelancing, it works for finding clients like even recently, I mean, sometimes I do this, just to prove it to myself. But I mean, it's also just how I do things. But everything I'm saying, I do myself, so I really wanted to work for this company. It's a SASS company, who has a virtual co working product. And it's one of my favorite companies ever. I just I use their product every single day. And I reached out actually two years ago to the founder over LinkedIn, and I just thanked him. This is, you know, your product has really changed my life, oh, well, we end up getting into a further conversation over the course of those two years, we I built a personal connection and friendship with this with this man.

And now two years later, I'm doing a marketing project for them. You know, we're I'm on kind of the back end of their business. And I've learned so much about it by being a customer. And by using it and by being passionate about it, that my ability to be able to help them market in certain ways and get access to my network of job seekers because it's completely complimentary to everything I'm doing, made that such an easy conversation I never had to apply. I was I already knew the CEO. So like, for me, that was a really obvious choice.

And there's also a guy that I've met here through a community that I'm part of who has a coaching business, and he is parlaying that into an mergers and acquisitions business, and basically trying to build up this, this whole side of his business where he runs by day, he's a CEO of a $50 million business. And then his side project is his coaching business. And now I'm doing like, all the creative direction for his videos. And like, I want to become a director someday. So for me, it's like, oh, this is like a cool project. So just by knowing people and putting yourself in, in places where you can be valuable people will see those skills in you.

And you can get hired without having to go through this crazy application process where you just submit a resume to this, you know, blind plays, and you just don't know what's going to happen. So I like to use my own personal anecdotes, because I use all the stuff that I talk about.

Speaker 1  13:44 
That's awesome. And I think we underestimate, reaching out just just making that connection on LinkedIn, or whatever social media. And I have found that works so well, for me, too, in my role in getting people to do come on guest to come on and do podcasts with me and just or, you know, participating in our annual conference by just reaching out to people.

And I mean, like you said, there you can be high level people. And I don't know why that just in general, we kind of think they they won't respond or whatever. So what if they don't respond, respond to the next one? So that you mean, that's always kind of been my approach to and it's and it has, it's been very successful. So yeah, I totally agree with you. That's, that's a really good, I think, the best approach,

Speaker 3  14:31 
and that's, I think that's how we met. Right? Exactly. You'd sent me a message and let me let me just dissect what you did is that you created a platform where you would have something valuable to offer people which is this conference, this podcast and ways to work together and you know, exposure for people, people love that. So you know, even you don't need to be working for acabo to be able to do that, you know the the ability to start A platform, whether that's blogging or whether it's podcasting, whether that's doing videos, whether it's doing little webinars like the ability to do that, and reach out to people to include them on your platform. If you create something relevant enough, there will be people that will be willing to go on it.

And you just basically invite people that have a potential stakeholder position and you're getting a job. And you don't expect anything out of it. Like, there's not like, I need to get this from this interaction. It's more of like, I'm going to put you on because I like what you've done in your career. And when people can let go of needing something from all their interactions, and truly just get better at making friends online. Everything changes.

Melody Rawlings
15:45 
Yeah, exactly. I love that. Yeah. So it's just like you said, it's just making friends online. That's, that's a really nice way, way to put that and so accurate. So what do you see as some of the most common I mean, you've already kind of alluded to this, but what are some of the most common challenges that you've see in finding a remote job?


Jordan Carroll
16:06 
There's so many, I think, you know, one of the things I mentioned before was the reactive nature of job seeking that most people do, which is let's go on a job board, and let's search for jobs, and then whatever's there. That's what I'm going to apply to. And I think that that's, again, something that can become a really big waste of time. I'm not saying that you shouldn't use job boards at all. But it should be a much smaller piece of your job search strategy than it typically is. Another one that I think people overlook is just their mindset. They go into these situations where they feel really discouraged, because they see things in the news, they have had past failures within their attempts.

They look at the number of applications, quote, unquote, on each of these jobs, and they just think subconsciously, like this is not available to me, I'm not going to be able to do this. That's subconscious programming, which is typically from some sort of childhood trauma of not being good enough, or not being able to be loved. Like, that's typically where it stems from, carries over into your actual belief of yourself. And you could be the most competent and qualified person for a potential position. But if you go into that, subconsciously believing that you're actually not and you can't do it, then that is that will be what happens is you won't be able to do it. And somehow you will sabotage yourself. So I think one of the things most people overlook is like, what's your actual belief system around this?

And where can you bring awareness to like, what you're actually thinking in your subconscious, about how successful you can be at this. And some people just need a little bit of proof. And that's why I like to start really small and like, just start tracking success in your job search through interactions, not through, you know, like offers and interviews, right? Just consider that a big win for you is I had an interaction on LinkedIn, right? Like I got out of my comfort zone, I sent a message. So something like that can be a really big win for people. And so instead of like, looking at the end outcome as the only way to measure success, it's like we start smaller, and we build momentum for your mindset. And we challenge those limiting beliefs by making the measurables of success smaller.

Melody Rawlings
18:26 
Yeah, I love that. So stop being our own biggest limiters, right around limiters to our own selves. And one step at a time, right? So I liked that so much, just just do one thing and consider that as success if you did that, and then just take the next one. So it just makes it much more, I think, doable for some people. So let's talk strategy. Most of us would think it's not possible to find a job anywhere, any kind of job without completing an application. So share with us then your no application process, which you've kind of already done. But could you just kind of summarize that for us?


Jordan Carroll
19:06 
Yeah, I look at it in three different parts. It's strategy, personal branding, networking. So strategy means basically, starting from the beginning and saying, I'm going to stop applying, like I'm going to put the brakes on blasting out these applications, because that's typically what needs to happen. And I'm gonna get clear on what's my ideal lifestyle, and what kind of companies am I going to go after? What size are they? What industry are they in? What kind of things are they doing? Getting really clear on that as well as how you're going to fit from a skills perspective into a remote role? That's really necessary at the beginning is that clarity. The strategy also includes how you're organizing yourself. So a really great tool called teal HQTALHQ. It is a job search CRM. Basically, so you use it to track all your applications, you use it to No, no, we say no application process.

But the no application process, what that means is we're not going to rely only on just applying to jobs, we're going to take a look at, like, how I can dismantle what I think is the way to do this. And look at things completely differently. But having a tracker like to which you can look at your keywords that are most prevalent in job descriptions, you can track networking interactions, and create reminders, you can have opportunities, quote, unquote, for each of the jobs that you're interested in, you can save companies as your target companies like it has all that in one place. So I find that to be extremely valuable within the strategy, and it gives you like a framework for okay, like foundationally, I am able to track everything that I'm doing. And then from the branding perspective, it's like, how am I going to articulate myself so that I sound like, what the companies are looking for? It means taking the mindset of I'm selling myself to these companies.

And so what is it that I need to say, how is it that I need to format myself not lying, but just being more aware of how I matching what their language is, and what my metrics and experiences are? So that I'm just in one comprehensive way, articulating my value to them? And the third part of that is networking. How do I make it easy? How do I how do I find the easy way in through a referral and through relationship rather than just applying online? And that doesn't mean again, doesn't mean that you don't apply at some point, but you want applying to be a formality. You want someone to be telling you, hey, like, I'd love to refer you for this role. Can you just apply online so that we have you in the system, like that's what applying should be at that point? Rather than okay, I haven't talked to anybody at this company, I don't know a ton about it. I just saw that on a job board.

So I'm going to put my resume through and pray. It's like no, like, if you actually want to invest time, in trying to work somewhere, go deep. Like figure out who you're connected to figure out who you're connected to, that's connected to somebody at their organization, figure out how you can interact with someone's content that works at that organization, figure out who went went to college, the same college as you that works there, like you find these little ways to like, create an end. And everything changes for you, like after that.

Melody Rawlings
22:28 
So those presets are vital, then. Absolutely. And like most people do not do those. They just don't they don't they just don't even think either think about it or just know to do that. Those are valuable for sure. Can you give some examples of remote jobs that people find?


Jordan Carroll
22:49 
Oh, yeah, it's been all over the map, you know, I had someone I'm trying to bring up this message that I got a couple of days ago. So I post a lot of free content, obviously. And there are times in which I get messages like this one, which is Jordan, I can't praise you enough. After almost 10 months of job search dead ends, just listening to and taking your plan step by step I was made an offer, among several others that I start this Monday remote making the money I need, and then some and amazing benefits. What can I do for you, I'd love to promote you in any way. This was a customer success manager that sent me this over LinkedIn on what was it Sunday, so this was two days ago.

And this was from my free content. She you know, she wasn't even a client. She was just going through of what I assume or, you know, my videos and the different things that I have online. And to me, it's like, so So that's a customer success manager as an example. And I've had many people come through and either account management perspectives or customer success perspectives, or I've had people come in as developers, I've had people come in as project managers, I've had people from literally every corner of every industry that you can think of, who can do what they do remotely, come to me and asked me questions and whether or not they got the job or not. Again, I think the metric for success a lot of times for people is going from what I call zero to one, meaning I'm not getting anything right now. I'm just in a void, where I'm sending applications and nothing is happening to Oh, wow, I had a conversation this week for an informational interview or I got a message, a message back on LinkedIn or a recruiter reached out.

Those are like, to me, it's like those are just as big wins at times, then hearing that someone got a job, because those smaller wins are an indication of hope. And before you can even get to the actual job offer, you need a bunch of indications of hope that it can actually work for you

Melody Rawlings
25:00 
I so agree that going from zero to one those first wins, or you know, just going from zero to one and having that is, it does fill you with hope. And it just, it just changes everything, it changes your attitude, it changes your motivation. Because I think when you when you get that first offer or that first interview, or are just that first response, it makes you realize, hey, you know, I am marketable, I do have the skills I am getting, I did get noticed, I am getting noticed. So I totally agree with that. Just to back up just a little bit on recap on when you find a job. And they say it's remote. I don't think we talked to you and I talked a little bit about this before we started recording the podcast, but some of the things that prevent jobs from or prevent someone from working remotely, for example, outside the country has to do with the EU and ours discussing having to do with more of of taxes, benefits, different restrictions from country to country. Can you just share a little bit about that? Just I mean, just from a macro perspective?

Jordan Carroll
26:11 
Yeah. So I think the basic premise of this is that there are actual legit reasons why companies don't hire people remotely, like fully remotely to work from anywhere in the world. There are legal restrictions, there are reasons that upper management doesn't want people, you know, galavanting around the world, and if you know, there are legitimate reasons why a company wouldn't want that. And then there are also tax implications that they have to take care of.

And the reality is, in order to hire somebody in different countries, there is a different standard and different definition of what an employee is, what a contractor is, what types of rights and legal things are in place in each country, if you imagine every single country's laws and how different they are, that carries over to employment law, right. So when a company's thinking about how it is that they're going to hire, a lot of times, it's just much easier to say, hey, screw all that we're not going to left, we're not going to learn how to do all that. Because the amount of time it's going to take or legal team, you know, amount of infrastructure changes, we're gonna have to do to our policies, you know, whatever that might be, that's holding them back. It's understandable. Now, I think this is going to change a lot, because it's just going to be so much more of a competitive advantage to start hiring everywhere, that more companies are going to start doing it.

And the method in which they can do that is by going through a third party call it called an EO our employer of record, software. So like, if you think about companies like remote, which is like remote.com, we think about companies like DL D, D, E, L, or oyster. These are companies that have a platform, a software platform, that they connect to these companies and their payroll. And what they'll do is these companies, as a third party will go and establish the headquarters in every single one of these countries that other people want to hire. Therefore, you go through the platform to do the hiring. And the platform makes it a lot easier. This is the hottest, my opinion. It's like the hottest area of remote software at the moment, because it was kind of like a wide open area for a while.

And over time, it's like he has become more saturated. And eventually, companies are not really going to have an excuse to not hire everywhere, because there's going to be competitive differentiation to be able to hire everywhere. And there's also the software tools that now allow you to do it. So I think there's some adoption curve here that we're gonna go through. It's you know, we're early in the adoption still with with all this, like remote work is just still so early. That overtime, we're going to see more and more companies jump on this.

Melody Rawlings
28:59 
That's great. I appreciate you sharing that so much as a remote work, advocate. I am all for it. So I'm really that's that's just gives me a lot of hope. And I'm really glad to hear that. So thank you. Are there any closing thoughts you would like to move? How can our listeners connect with you?


Jordan Carroll
29:18 
Yeah, I think, take a deep breath. I'm also going through actually tomorrow, I'm starting a breathwork certification, which is something that I really, really love to do is to breathe every day, very intentionally, very deep. So take a big deep breath. I think that that's one of my one of my things. And there's a few reasons for that. One is because it's just always accessible to you to take a deep breath, this oxygen is around you and available at any point can help you calm down.

And I think one of the easiest things to do when we're having these conversations is to get overwhelmed, to get overwhelmed with the amount of information to get overwhelmed with the amount of things we've feel like we have to do to get overwhelmed with iOS cars and you know, his car companies go back to the office and this and this and just take a deep breath, like give yourself some compassion, give yourself, you know, some time to ingest all this and process this. And I'm really looking forward to the future, I think there's going to be a lot more development in these fields.

And if you keep yourself in that space of like being open, being open to learn, being open to evolve, then there's going to be a lot of opportunities out there. So that would be my closing thought.

Melody Rawlings
30:35 
Deep breath. Great advice. Very healthy. of great benefit for sure. And would you share with us and how listeners can connect with you and your website?

Jordan Carroll
30:47 
Yeah, the remote job coach.com. Just easiest way. I'm also on LinkedIn at Jordan Carroll. Those are probably the two places I would recommend.

Melody Rawlings
30:55 
Awesome. Well, Jordan, I've learned so much from our conversation, and it's always a pleasure chatting with you, and learning about your no application remote Job Search Strategy. Thank you for joining us in support of the Center for the Advancement of virtual organizations. We greatly appreciate your insights and know that our listeners will also benefit from your expertise.


Jordan Carroll
31:17  
Amazing Melody, thank you so much for having me, it's been a lot of fun.