A nine-to-five job is typically associated with financial security, career progression, and a stable retirement. However, the 2020 pandemic transformed workplaces, encouraging people to rethink their life paths and choices. As an HR professional with substantial experience, you might feel tempted to leverage your skills and follow the ambition of starting your own business or working online.
Even though the novel coronavirus caused unprecedented disruptions, it also motivated many professionals to counter the uncertainty by looking for remote work. This trend was already beginning, and then accelerated. For instance, online searches for freelance HR services increased by nearly 46 percent in the last three years.
Independent entrepreneurship and remote work have various benefits, including controlling your career, flexibility, and monetary rewards. If you decide to use your HR experience and start a business or look for remote work, here is everything you need to know.
HR AND REMOTE WORK
As an HR professional, you can opt for remote work, or freelance. If you decide to pursue this path, here are your options:
- Look for a job, or consulting position with a company that provides consulting or other HR-related services online.
- If you have a lot of experience, then you can try contacting some companies on LinkedIn to contract your work, or you can provide service packages you offer.
- Ask your current employer to work from home at least some of the week.
- Offer your HR services on freelance platforms, such as Upwork, Fiverr, or PeoplePerHour.
- Start an HR blog where you write about current problems and solutions that will help small and medium-sized businesses. Create a service that you can sell on your website, or a subscription for a number of hours you can offer them.
You can also reach out to your past jobs to see if they are willing to give you contract work.
Get creative about what you can do. You should know your strengths and focus on how they make you different. Get really good at the things most people don’t like to do, and you will find there will usually be jobs available for you. You can differentiate yourself by continually developing your skills with the most popular technology applications and software people use in the industry. The more you can learn, the better, but you also need to make sure you’re being strategic.
First, take some time to let your mind relax and find creativity. Your creativity will come through more clearly when you can spend some time not working or solving problems. Take some time to just be in the moment. Possibly play, or just rest, or get out in nature. Take a week if you can to make no plans, make no movements, just rest your mind.
After that week of relaxing your mind, spend another week thinking of what you’re really good at and what you enjoy. Your inner voice will begin to come through. Write it all down, and then create a list of the things that you can do that differentiate you from your competition. Look online for keywords that match your skills to find out what people and companies are saying about those skills. Set your mind to work on the problem in a creative and positive way, and I’ve found that around this time you will begin to see the right position start to fall into place. Next, take some time to think, strategize, and formulate a plan, and in a few weeks, you should have a good idea of what you want to do.
Make sure what you’re going to do isn’t easily replicable by artificial intelligence. You will need to familiarize yourself with industry trends in regards to what software is available and what it does. If you enjoy technology, then being in a position of understanding the software better than others can also get you work as a consultant for that software, a position as a technology product manager, or a job helping companies implement it.
If you prefer a people-focused approach, you might find work consulting or working for a company as a trainer. If you enjoy writing, then you can write about all the areas of HR that you enjoy. You will find your answers and the right path, so be at peace with yourself and patient with the process; it will all fall into place. Have fun on your next journey!
This blog post was written with help from Fiverr. I use Fiverr to find amazing professionals who are experts in areas I’m not. Tinants is a HR professional who helped me with this post and an HR post about starting an HR business that can be found here.
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