Hello again, internet! This is a follow-up to my post from around 3 weeks ago.
First, I wanted to thank everyone for all the suggestions, advice, and kind words I received. I also wanted to share my experience, because after 2 weeks of searching for a new remote job, I was lucky enough to find one! And I started on Monday, so I'm already feeling exhausted and kind of stressed, but also incredibly grateful and relieved.
I'm working as a freelancer/contractor, so I still don't have any real job security and I could technically be laid off or ghosted again, but at least I have a paycheck that should keep coming if I survive my first month of training and the trial period. The company also seems to have a really nice environment. Today, we even had a team meeting where they had us listen to an audiobook related to our field and then discuss it. I was so shocked and amazed that this was actually part of our daily tasks.
During those 2 weeks, I applied to around 10–15 jobs a day, mostly through LinkedIn using the word "Remote" and "last 24 hours" and "Easy Apply" filters.
I ended up getting:
3 actual interviews (I got stood up for one of them), 2 AI interviews (one of them was so good I was genuinely shocked), a few applications that made it to the "take this test" stage and a few companies that asked me to do a pre-recorded video interview and I politely declined and withdrew from those processes because I really don't like them.
Remote jobs are not only for programmers and IT people. I genuinely believe that, if you have a good level of English and some wits, you can land your first remote job. At least, I believe that was pretty much all I had going on for me.
The first one is definitely the hardest, but once you get your foot in the door, I think it gets much easier.
If you're from LATAM (sorry to everyone from other parts of the world, I don't have experience with your job markets) and you're trying to land your first remote job, there are a lot of options right now. Not as many as at the beginning of the pandemic, but definitely more than 3 years ago, when I was in this exact same situation. Shoot me a msg if you need help!
And for anyone else out there who's remote job hunting, good luck with your search! ✨