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Telecommuting Challenges...

And how to fight them!

Here are some of the most common problems encountered by new telecommuting professionals and how to fight them!

1. How to avoid getting scammed while you look for your telecommuting job.

2. How to find your own telecommuting job.

3. How to avoid “I’ll do it later” syndrome and losing your telecommuting job!

4. How to avoid losing all of your social skills (and becoming down right lonely) while being a telecommuting professional and working on an island.

5. How to avoid becoming a telecommuting workaholic.

How to avoid getting scammed while you look for your telecommuting job.

Unfortunately, equal to your desire to work at home as a telecommuting professional is someone else's desire to part you from your money by charging you for various telecommuting services, including providing telecommuting job information or inviting you to pay a “registration fee” to obtain a telecommuting job or other alleged telecommuting benefit.

There are some good telecommuting job websites out there and we’ve featured those sites here for you at Telecommuting 101. If you’re considering giving money to a website that’s not on our recommended list, be sure to use the following guidelines to avoid getting scammed by one of these so-called telecommuting companies:

1. Be wary of any telecommuting company that is making promises they can’t keep. NO ONE, for example, can promise you a telecommuting job unless they’re doing the actual hiring themselves, and if they’re hiring you as a telecommuting professional, they probably won’t charge you a nickel! Companies who promise you a job, especially an easy job, may be lying.
2. If you’re considering using a telecommuting website that publishes lists of telecommuting jobs, be sure you use a reputable service. Here’s how:
- a. Check them out with the Better Business Bureau. If they have no report or a bad report, watch out.
- b. Don’t even consider the company for one moment if they don’t publish their company name and address at their website so it's easy to find.
- c. Once you have the company’s address, call directory assistance (yes, it’s worth the charge) and get the name of their company exactly as they list it at their website. Remember that the name of the website and the name of the company may be different. (Microsoft Corporation, for example, is different than msn.com). If the company doesn’t have a business phone in that city by that exact name don’t give them any money!
- d. Make sure you know exactly what you’re getting. If the company’s advertising is ambiguous, ask for more information in writing.
3. Watch out for companies that give you the hard sell. ORDER NOW… LIMITED TIME ONLY… GUARANTEED RESULTS… GET PAID FOR DOING NOTHING… yadda, yadda, yadda. Those types of games sometimes tip off the scammers.
4. Use your common sense. Use your good sense to find the reputable services or use the ones we recommend here at Telecommuting 101.

How to find your own telecommuting job

Telecommuting jobs are Whether you’re looking for your first telecommuting job or your tenth, here are five steps you can take to find the telecommuting job you’re looking for:

1. If you know of someone who has been employed by a company as a telecommuting professional ask that person for the name of their employer. Sometimes this individual will be someone you spoke to on the phone.
2. If you or someone else has been employed by an employer who is no longer hiring, check with similar companies and their competitors that may also hire for similar telecommuting jobs.
3. Search the large national employment websites using various keywords to locate telecommuting jobs. Although such searches are often very frustrating, time-consuming and non-productive it is free and (hopefully) worth your time.
4. Ask friends and relatives if they know anyone who works at home as a telecommuting professional. Maybe you can work for that company as well.
5. If all the free options fail, use a service. There are some good websites out there that charge a very small fee and provide you lots of great leads for hundreds of telecommuting jobs. The website we recommend is www.moneyfromhome.com. Moneyfromhome.com has been featured numerous times in the media, has a good reputation and offers the best variety of pre-screened work at home/telecommuting jobs. If you’re going to consider using any other service, please be sure you also read “How to avoid getting scammed while you look for your telecommuting job”.

How to avoid “I’ll do it later” syndrome and losing your job!

As a telecommuting professional, unless you’re scheduled to work at a particular time and are subject to being monitored or logged in, in many instances you will work unsupervised. You will be the one who decides to start working in the morning. You will be the one to set your own goals. You will be the one who chooses to work or sun bathe.

If you’re one of those people who may be challenged by this, you should do some serious soul-searching to determine whether or not you’re a good candidate for the unsupervised types of telecommuting jobs. Alternatively, the following suggestions may help you:

1. Select a telecommuting job in which your employer schedules you at a certain time. Those types of telecommuting jobs may include jobs like customer service, chat room monitor, or on-call coordinator.
2. Set your own goals in advance of the time you’re required to start working for either the amount of time you will diligently spend working, or the actual time frame you promise to work within. For example, say: “I will work everyday from 9 am after the kids go to school until 12:00 when I’ll break for lunch.” Then, buckle down and keep your promise to yourself, rewarding yourself when you’re successful. A specific and measurable goal like this is much easier to achieve than a vague goal such as “I’m going to work at least fifteen hours every week.”
3. Create boundaries between your regular life and your work life. In addition to designating a time to work, designate a particular area and certain rules that may govern your time, such as what interruptions you will, or will not, allow while you’re working.
4. Remember that having a telecommuting job is real work, even though you might enjoy the heck out of it. If you don’t view it that way, you’ll lose your job.

How to avoid losing all of your social skills (and becoming down right lonely) while being a telecommuting professional and
working on an island.

Task-oriented workaholics love to work at home because they can don’t waste any extra time on that boring commute or having to stand around involved in office politics instead of getting their work done. If you’re one of those you probably will adore being a telecommuting professional and doing your telecommuting job at home.

But if you're the people-oriented type who actually preferred those meetings around the water cooler over work and used to welcome those interruptions at your old office job, you may find yourself feeling isolated, lonely, even depressed because your telecommuting job keeps you at home away from human contact.

Options?

1. Find a telecommuting job that involves human contact. Phone sales, appointment setting, recruiting, or customer service. You'll have plenty of human contact.
2. Find a telecommuting job in which you work on a team (with fellow humans you can email all the time!) web design, programming, project coordination to name a few.
3. If you’re still isolated on your telecommuting job, beef up your social life outside of work to replace the social activity you used to enjoy in that stuffy old office. Be proactive about getting the social activities that make you feel good.

How to avoid becoming a telecommuting workaholic.

The opposite of the work shrugger is the workaholic who loves his telecommuting job most because he can work more. It’s good to work, but not if it interferes with your marriage, your relationship with your kids and/or having an otherwise balanced life.

Don’t neglect the people you love for your work. When you’re old and lying on your death bed, which will be more important: The work you’ll get done this week or the relationship you’ve enjoyed with your loved ones?

Workaholics need to:

1. Place value on their time off work and realize there are other things just as important, or more important, than work.
2. Set structured times in which to work and stick to them. If necessary, set a time frame for working and an additional smaller period of time that you’re allowed to work if everything goes wrong and you need the extra time. Be sure that the buffer period doesn’t encroach too far into your family and personal time.
3. Set a good work environment, free of interruptions and unnecessary delays, so that the workaholic can use his work time very effectively and feel comfortable with the amount of work he was able to accomplish in less time.
4. Designate a specific work area and be able to seal the area off when you’re done working so those stacks of work don’t call you back when you’re ‘off’.