Seasoned Remote Worker Finds Virtual Job in Education

Our FlexJobs success story this week is about Jeannette B., who’d already worked from home for more than two decades when career circumstances led her to look for a new job. As a seasoned remote worker, Jeannette had enjoyed a virtual job in education for years, and was looking to parlay her background into another at-home position.

Jeannette’s experience included a series of work-from-home jobs that began in the early 1990s. Fast forward to 2017: Jeannette found herself unemployed, and discovered FlexJobs in her search for professional, at-home work.

Using her FlexJobs membership, Jeannette was hired for a full-time, virtual job in education as director of product management for Reasoning Mind (now part of Imagine Learning).

Building on Classroom Teaching Experience

Before she moved to Tequesta, Florida, where she currently lives, Jeannette worked as a classroom teacher years ago. “I taught (middle school) up north for seven years after graduating from college, and then moved to Florida,” Jeannette told us, responding to a brief questionnaire FlexJobs forwards to job seekers who’ve successfully used our service.

“While in Florida,” Jeannette continued, “I found an opportunity to do some teacher training in the education technology field in a remote, or work-from-home, position back in the early 90s. Throughout the next 20-plus years, I held various positions in the same field, and all were remote.”

Unexpected Changes, New Opportunities

Jeannette’s remote career was going great until 2014. “I was let go from a large educational publisher who was undergoing large-scale reorganization.” Jeannette wrote. “As a result, I found myself out of work for the first time in a long time!”

Jeannette’s job search at the time didn’t take long to yield good results. “Fortunately for me, I found a new job right away in a small education technology startup, right in my current location.” However, that opportunity was not a good fit, she said. “[I] left voluntarily after a year because the job description wasn’t exactly what I had expected it would be,” Jeannette said.

Brutal Commute Reinforces Desire to Work Remotely

After years of working from home, Jeannette was in for something of a shock with the location of her next job, which wasn’t a work-from-home position. “I found another education technology position in another corporate office in another town in my state,” she wrote, “but this one was 100 miles (one-way) from my home, and the drive was exhausting.”

Despite finding herself subject to high commuting costs (both time-wise and money-wise), Jeannette hung in for a while. “After nine months at that job, I knew I needed to work from home again, as this is the way I had been working happily and productively for 20+ years!” she wrote. “I made the tough decision to leave that position with no prospects and spent the next five months unemployed, looking for the ‘right’ job for me.”

She continued: “Knowing I needed to find a work-from-home position, in addition to searching on the typical career sites, I did an Internet search for other job sites that specialize in what I was looking for, and this is how I found FlexJobs.”

Making Good Use of a FlexJobs Membership

The FlexJobs membership fee actually inspired confidence in the quality of our services, Jeannette said. “I figured that since there was a subscription (cost) associated with it, it might be of a higher quality than the free sites that are full of ads and paid-for promotional spots. I signed up for one month and gave it a whirl!”

She wasn’t disappointed. “FlexJobs has many features that go beyond what the free sites offer.… I also liked the overall functionality and ease of use.”

Three Inspiring Tips for Other Job Seekers

Here are tips from Jeannette about how she found a virtual job in education:

1. Check in with FlexJobs as part of your daily job search ritual. “During the five months I was unemployed, I accessed some feature of FlexJobs every day! I signed up for email alerts and enjoyed seeing that on a daily basis, there were lots of jobs being posted that I found appealing.”

2. Explore FlexJobs’ many job categories. “Since I have a lot of experience in a few different related fields, I decided to apply for anything that even remotely interested me, just to see what would happen, and FlexJobs gave me a lot from which to choose.”

3. Take advantage of FlexJobs’ advanced job search features. “I liked being able to build a profile, upload a resume, and save a search/profile for the specific type of career I was interested in. Also, I liked being able to save the basic search filters I frequently searched for.”