IamA owner of a website (SkipTheDrive.com) that help people find Remote Jobs. AMA!

Most remote jobs ads are scams, intended to harvest contact details of job-seekers. Would you assure your website visitors about the security of their info? Do you verify the job ads and how?

You do have to be careful with many of the so-called work-from-home jobs out there for sure. Some companies have been brought to my attention as being questionable, so I end up filtering them from my results. I do not verify the jobs, as it's impossible for me to do so since many are not posted directly to my site and are imported from a third-party provider. As far as security/privacy is concerned, I cannot guarantee anything once users leave my site. Remember, SkipTheDrive acts as an aggregator. Results for remote jobs show up on my site, and when users click on they, will most likely get redirected to another site.

As for my site (SkipTheDrive), I do take privacy seriously and abide by the GDPR that was rolled out last year.

EDIT: To clarify, SkipTheDrive resembles an aggregator in that jobs are displayed from across the web, but doesn't crawl/scrape the web for jobs. I get the jobs from a third-party and am a publishing partner. I wasn't clear enough earlier with this.

Do remote jobs have comparable pay to office jobs or do they tend to pay less?

I'd say somewhat comparable, but some people might argue that in order to move up the ladder it's better to be onsite.

Obviously if you live on the other side of the world and work for a U.S. company, there's a great chance that you'll make more than if you were to work onsite.

Obviously if you live on the other side of the world and work for a U.S. company, there's a great chance that you'll make more than if you were to work onsite.

Why?

Let me clarify a bit - if you live in a location where the average salary is very low (say, $10K/year) and are a software developer, there's a good chance that you can make much more for a U.S. company where salaries are higher.

I agree with you on the moving up the ladder point. I am full remote for my employer, and they give preference to onsite workers in hiring for better positions. Of course, they don’t openly say that, but it’s clear when applying and seeing onsite people get to move on to something else.

At my employer, onsite and remote for my position are paid the same, but onsite receive more perks, like free desk massages and food all the time and giveaways.

I hear you. And TBH, working remotely isn't for everybody. Some people really need more human interaction and go stir-crazy if working from home.

Do you use a bot or a human to find these remote jobs? I looked through the jobs relevant to me and many are not remote, but since you go to the client’s home, and the word “home” is listed it got pulled and added to your site.

Good question – I pulled these in through a third-party using an API. Every now and then a job like you mentioned might slip to the cracks, but I try to filter them out. Would you mind sending me the link of the job in question?

Check out your medical and insurance positions.

will do, thanks

How long do you think it takes for the average job seeker to find a remote job?

Wow, good question. I'm not involved in the hiring process, so that is a hard metric for me to gauge. In fact, I don't usually communicate with people using my site unless they email me directly. My site acts like an aggregator, in that people jobs from all over the web are posted to my site. When people are interested in a particular job, they contact the hiring manager (or apply) directly there. So yeah, I'm pretty much hands-off when it comes to that.

EDIT: To clarify, SkipTheDrive resembles an aggregator in that jobs are displayed from across the web, but doesn't crawl/scrape the web for jobs. I get the jobs from a third-party and am a publishing partner. I wasn't clear enough earlier with this.

So how do you make money then?

Revenue share and paid job postings.

Would you describe yourself as the indeed for remote jobs?

hehe, I would love to be the one-stop-shop for people seeking remote jobs!

In a sense, yes, in that Indeed is an aggregator and my site behaves like an aggregator. Indeed, as well as SkipTheDrive, allow for employer job postings.

Who would you recommend a remote job for?

• People who are environmentally conscious and don't want to drive a lot
• People who don't have transportation
• People who are introverted
• People with physical disabilities
• People who just plain prefer working alone
• People who need a bit more flexibility in their schedule for whatever reasons (assuming they can agree with the employer to have a bit more flexibility)
• People living in rural areas with not much local opportunity

Keep in mind that working remotely is not always an all-or-nothing setup. Sometimes people are able to work remotely part of the time.

I work mostly remote. I'm a solution architect that's in the virutalization world.

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Remote is great for people who work in place where there are no desks. My current contract has east/west coast US based datacenters, a europe and asia datacenters as well. I log into all of them during different parts of the day. It makes no sense be anything but remote. I'm always remote no matter what datacenter I'm using.

True, sometimes working remotely makes the most sense (especially from an employer's perspective).

Do you work from home?

Yes, running my site and periodic freelance web-dev/SEO

Why does your site have a field to narrow a search by location?

Good question - believe it or not, some people actually want this. Another reason is that some jobs are partially remote and want you to be within a certain proximity of their location for periodic meetups.

Q: I would like to ask you the most important question of all, can you save my burning soul from my dead end job? I want to leave Florida but I'm scared of not being financially stable after I up and leave my prior life behind.. it's scary

What type of job are you looking to do? I don't personally assist in the recruiting process, but I can take a quick look to see if there are listings you might be interested in.

Hey man, I currently have a few positions I’d be looking to pay $500 a month for basically reading a few newspaper articles a day on casino news in various countries and letting me know if something happens (looking specifically for bilingual speakers). Would that fit your site?

Do you have a link to the job description?

My dad has a list of medical issues, which causes his body to react to pain massively and a big portion of his days are spent laying in bed/in the bathroom. He wants to have a job, but due to his issues if he were to have a job outside of home he'd probably spend a good majority of it in the nearest bathroom/sitting down somewhere because he bent his arm the wrong way. He does a lot of graphic design and music when he can though. Is there any remote jobs that my dad would qualify for?

Sorry to hear about your Dad's situation. There are remote graphic design jobs listed on my site, but I didn't notice any music positions.

https://www.skipthedrive.com/jobs/?search=graphic+design&findjobs=Search

Is it just for the US?

Currently the jobs listed are all in the U.S., but I hope to expand in the future.

Are these permanent or contract type roles?

Mostly permanent.

Do you have any graphic design, illustration, or elearning jobs?

I do see graphic design job listings.

Do you plan expanding the recruitment opportunities beyond the US?

Not now, but possibly down the road.

How did you go about marketing your website to employers? Do you offer free job postings to get them to use your platform vs. say, indeed, linkedin, etc.?

When I first rolled my site out I was heavily marketing to employers, whereas now I heavily market to job seekers and barely to employers :) I did offer free (and cheap) job postings for a while, but at a certain point realized I was heavily focused on employers when I really needed to build up my job seeker traffic.

Are the job offers limited to the US or someone from another country (i.e. México) could apply?

I get these types of questions a lot. Because companies have different requirements, it would really all depend on whether or not they have restrictions on non-U.S. residents.

Thank you.

You bet :)

I want to work remotely but don’t know where to start. I look into it so often and just end up getting overwhelmed. I’d like to work full time and build a life for myself. I’m at rock bottom. What’s the best place to start? I’m in the UK and I can’t find any remote jobs here.

Have you tried reaching out to U.S. companies to see if they'll allow you to work remotely, even though you might not be a U.S. citizen?

Are most of the jobs available on a full time basis or is it mostly contract work?

Most are full time

are these jobs something a full-time college student can do to get money in their pocket? If so, what should they apply for

My guess is that you're probably in search of part-time, remote work since you're a full-time student. You might be interested in customer service/support jobs.