10 fast-growing remote work jobs, and how to land them

The COVID-19 pandemic has furloughed countless workers, but these remote-capable career fields have grown by 25% since March 2020, Flexjobs found.

young woman working on laptop at home,cute small dog besides. work from home, stay safe during coronavirus covid-2019 concpt — Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Flexjobs, which specializes in finding remote and freelance work for professionals, has released data that highlights the 10 career fields in its database that have grown the most since COVID-19 lockdowns began in March 2020.

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Flexjobs sorts the job postings it hosts into 50 categories. To arrive at the 10 fields it saw as having the most growth, Flexjobs tracked the number of job postings for remote workers between March and December 2020. Flexjobs predicts that the 10 career fields featured in its blog post will continue to grow in 2021 based on the trends in its data from 2020.

SEE: COVID-19 workplace policy (TechRepublic Premium)

In descending order, these are the 10 most rapidly growing career fields for remote workers during 2020, along with some of the recent remote work job postings from those particular fields.

Marketing: Jobs include content marketer, marketing operations specialist, and market research specialist.
Administrative: This field encompasses a variety of positions, including executive assistants, title specialists and policy typists, and administrative assistants.
HR and Recruiting: Available positions for recruiters, onboarding coordinators, and human resources data analysts have all been recently posted to Flexjobs.
Accounting and finance: Staff accountants, bookkeepers, and senior tax accountants have all been sought recently.
Graphic design: Visual artists can easily work remotely, and potential positions include senior store designers, associate experience designers, and senior brand designers of user experience.
Customer service: Patient navigators, support agents, and customer support representatives are all being sought for remote work.
Writing: If you’re qualified to be a mortgage reporter, phase 1 oncology principal medical writer, or social medial relationships manager, and can do it from home, the jobs are available.
Mortgage and real estate: Postings include escrow trust accounting representatives, transfer coordinators, and mortgage loan processors.
Internet and e-commerce: SEO managers, styling assistants, and email marketing specialists are all being sought by companies.
Project management: Like the producers of a film project, project managers, contracting specialists, and senior program managers are all necessary to actualize complicated projects with lots of moving parts.

How to land a remote job

If you’re used to seeking work in a face-to-face world, the post-COVID hiring landscape can seem pretty alien. Entire application, interview, and onboarding processes are being done remotely to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and that means there are some different strategies that need to be taken to ensure you land the remote job you want, Flexjobs said.

SEE: Big data’s role in COVID-19 (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

The career coaching team at Flexjobs said that customized cover letters and resumes tailored to the specific position being applied to are essential, as are these three tips:

State your experience clearly, especially if you did any kind of remote work. List a percentage of your time spent remotely, even if it’s only a small portion.
Describe what kind of remote work you did. If any remote collaboration with offices in different locations was part of a position at a regular company be sure to include that as well.
Make sure to talk up highly desired remote work skills, which Flexjobs said include time and task management, communication, self-management, good independent working skills, and comfort with technology.