5 Work from Home Resume Examples & Guide for 2024

Whether you've worked remotely before or you're just getting ready to join the work-from-home job force, the doors are wide open for you.

You’re a few steps away from working at the company of your dreams!

Major brands have been moving, for years now, towards a work from home environment. That shift helps businesses maintain flexible work schedules, cut costs, and reduce turnover.

COVID-19 made this even more possible by forcing us to practice social distancing. And technology companies such as Zoom and Trello had the timing just right to allow us to work remotely.

Businesses have wider hiring options as the employee pool is no longer geographically restricted.

Employees today won't have to stay away from their families, take long commutes to work, and spend their whole day on a single desk.

And the best part?

Working from home proved to be just as efficient as working from an office — if not more.

Many companies reported that their employees were able to maintain high levels of productivity thanks to their home environments.

This is the best time for you to land a work from home job!

But there's one problem:

It's essential to prove your worth and highlight your value to recruiters before they can hire you. And the best way to do that is through a well-crafted resume that hits all the right points.

That's why we wrote this guide for you.

We'll share pro resume tips and expert-driven advice to help you find remote jobs and end your job hunt successfully.

This guide will teach you:

• The most important sections to include in a work from home resume
• How to structure and format an attention-grabbing resume for remote jobs
• The best way to write an experience section that highlights your biggest career wins
• How to feature the best soft skills and abilities that allow you to excel at your job while working from home
• Why featuring certificates and education can make a difference in the hiring process

How to write a work from home resume that gets you hired

As we detailed above, the advantages of working from home are unlimited. You'll save a lot of time, money, and energy while maintaining high levels of work efficiency.

But…

With every great opportunity comes even greater competition. Indeed, you can now apply to jobs all over the globe and land positions you never dreamed of.

But the downside to working from home is how daunting the job hunt can be.

Since no one is restricted by location, you'll have hundreds of applicants competing against you for the same positions.

And because of that, there can be no room for error here.

You must do everything right when creating your resume to maximize your chances.

First things first:

Pick a modern resume layout and structure that reflect your professionalism. That makes it easy for recruiters to learn everything about you and remember your profile.

So…

Choose an attention-grabbing, slick resume layout to impress headhunters from first sight. Then, create a clear resume structure with separate sections, each featuring different information.

Next:

A reverse-chronological resume format works best for most job positions where experience is crucial.

Start by featuring your most recent job position. But be sure to include precise dates and locations to draw attention to your continuous career progression.

Most importantly:

Include the most-related resume keywords and phrases to make your resume stand out for both ATS and hiring managers.

Also, avoid industry jargon and buzzwords and stick instead to an easy language to increase readability.

Once you have picked the resume sections you will use, it is time to select a resume layout, as well.

The layout will mostly depend on your level of experience. If you have a lot of experience that you want to showcase in your resume, it will be best if you go with a reverse-chronological resume layout. On the other hand, if you want to focus on your skills and less on the experience a functional resume will work best for you. It is usually preffered by prospects with less experience.

The best of both words could be achieved with a hybrid resume. It shows your experience and you skills! But you have to prove them, so you can show them, right?

How to Write the Best Work from Home Resume Header

Writing a header for your work-from-home resume is easy. But that doesn't mean you should neglect it.

All you have to do is stick to the basics and avoid a few common mistakes that can cost you the job opportunity.

As a rule of thumb, you must list the following details:

• Full name
• Job title
• Location
• Contact Information
• Professional Profile / Website (a link to your LinkedIn account works just fine)

Such information is essential for recruiters to know before making their hiring decision. Your header will be incomplete if you forget a single one of them.

Now:

The way you layout those details on your header is up to you and the resume format you want to go for.

But whatever that is, the hierarchy of information you'll use is the same:

Put your full name in a larger font and place your job title somewhere near it.

Place the rest of the details together in the same font size and color. Then, depending on your layout, you can place everything on the right, below your name/title, or on the left.

Let's see some examples for resume headers:

There are a few mistakes in that example we often see many applicants make in their resumes.

In a perfect world, such small errors wouldn't hurt your chances of getting hired. After all, the header doesn't provide any details about your work experience or skills.

But in the real world, they do.

The hiring manager will start forming an opinion about you as they lay their eyes on your header. So, you don't want their first impression of you to be negative.

To avoid a bad start:

Use a professional email address that doesn't look like a randomly generated gaming alias. Instead of "rya201.ny", use a different username format such as "ryan.coplin@outlook.com."

If "first.last" is already taken, you may try out different variations until you find one that's available.

For example:

• first.l@domain.com
• last.first@domain.com
• l.first@domain.com
• firstlast@domain.com

Next:

Be sure to add a link to your Linkedin profile or a portfolio depending on your job and required skills.

For example:

• A graphic designer may feature a link to their portfolio on Behance, Dribble, Squarespace, etc.
• A web developer might include links to code hosting sites such as GitHub, Bitbucket, SourceForge, etc.
• Content creators and writers can build personal websites and use them as a portfolio

Finally:

Featuring your full home address isn't necessary as you'll only be working remotely. Hiring companies are only interested in knowing your city and state instead of your full address.

How to write a brilliant work from home experience for your resume

Things might get tricky in the experience section as you'll be trying to juggle two balls in one hand.

You want to show recruiters that you:

• Are an expert at doing your job based on the outstanding work experience you have
• Can excel in the position and stay on the same level of efficiency while working from home

Let's go over each ball individually:

1- Work expertise:

Showcasing your work history is the most crucial step in your resume. It's what the hiring process is all about and what recruiters look for before hiring you.

But how do you feature your work experience in the right way?

Well… It's simple.

Start by reading through the job offer to identify the hiring company's struggle. After all, there wouldn't be an open position if the business wasn't having a hard time moving forward.

Once you identify those challenges, look for commonalities between them and your work history. This step is key to highlighting your relevance to the job position.

2- Work from home skills:

If you've already held a remote position in the past, it can be of great advantage for you.

You'll include in your work duties that you were able to achieve great results while working remotely. You can even add some of the skills that helped you succeed and be outstanding.

But what if you've never worked from home before?

That shouldn't be a problem either.

Many people have only begun to transition from office jobs to distributed workplaces in the past few years. And there's a first time for everything.

All you need here is to be strategic in listing your duties. Show that you possess the skills required to work from home and that you've used them before in your work.

For example:

• Mention that you've had experience communicating with clients, executives, or stakeholders remotely
• Show how your self-discipline and time management skills helped you stay efficient while working from the office

And finally…

Take a results-oriented approach in listing your duties to awe recruiters.

You'll do that by quantifying your accomplishments through percentages, dollar amounts, timespans, and other job-related measures.

That's how you'll help headhunters see your worth in a clear light.

Now, let's look at some examples:

Some of the mistakes in the previous example are evident.

It lacks specificity to the job position. And it must feature more quantifiable achievements to be persuasive.

But here's what you could do on top of that:

Use active verbs and power words when listing your duties to establish clear causality.

For example:

Instead of writing "Responsible for," use an active verb that precisely describes your duty — such as "executed, achieved, completed, etc."

Also:

Try to include relevant soft skills in your listed duties to draw attention to the overlap between your work from home experience and your work history.

How to choose the best skills for your work from home resume

Experience isn’t enough for most hiring managers to make their final decision.

They’ve seen your excellent achievements and career results in the experience section. And you’ve featured some of the skills that helped you get there.

But:

They want to know your secret sauce. And for that, they’ll have two questions in mind:

• What is it about you that makes you great at doing your job?
• Will you be able to maintain your impressive performance working from home?

The answer to both questions is in your skills, and we’ll help you give it to them in this section.

You need to feature two types of skills here:

• Technical skills
• Soft skills

Technical skills are technology-based abilities that depend on your job duties. But there are also technical skills specific to work from home jobs, which companies hiring remotely will often ask for.

For example:

• Project management tools
• Team chat apps
• Cloud storage
• Screen sharing software

Soft skills, however, revolve around creating a highly-motivating work environment and delivering results.

Recruiters want to know that you can thrive while working remotely, which isn’t something all applicants can do.

So…

A mixture of these two types of skills is where all your magic is. That’s how you’ll end your job search successfully.

Check out our hand-picked list of skills to help you complete your resume skills section:

Key takeaways

• Choose a modern resume layout, structure, and sections to grab the recruiter’s attention and keep them reading
• Use your experience to address the hiring company’s needs and explain why your remote work is the best solution
• Be sure to highlight job-specific hard skills and work from home technical abilities to make your profile more appealing
• Showcase the most sought-after soft skills in your resume to stand out from the crowd and prove your fitness for remote jobs
• Feature additional sections such as your job-related certificates, educational background, languages, etc. to further demonstrate your suitability for the job