For the most part, becoming a remote worker requires little more than a willingness to work outside of a physical workspace — you need to have some basic in-office skills to translate them into the virtual world. This means that in order to qualify for remote opportunities, you must have certain technical skills and that must be displayed on your resume.
However, we’re not referring to the skills you’ll need to thrive in a specific industry or job. These are more general but essential technical skills that will help you be an effective remote worker in any capacity.
1. Virtual Communication and Collaboration
Most jobs require some form of communication with others, whether with customers or with team members. However, in-office communication differs somewhat from virtual communication in a remote workplace. You can easily contact someone in a traditional office for a quick chat or discussion.
However, when working remotely, especially with coworkers from different time zones, you have to be more mindful of how and when you communicate virtually. You will be relying heavily on chat apps and video conferencing tools to communicate and collaborate with others while working remotely.
As a result, it’s important that you get up to speed with some of the most popular communication tools, such as Slack and Zoom. Misusing these tools can lead to frustration on your part and also affect the productivity of the entire team. Therefore, you’d do well to learn these practical Slack etiquette tips for remote teams.
You will need to be proactive by learning some of the potential communication and collaboration challenges when working with a global team, such as coordinating schedules across time zones. That said, in addition to becoming familiar with the right tools, you can also improve your productivity by using asynchronous communication.
2. Digital Project Management
In a remote workspace, you won’t have Post-it notes or a whiteboard to help you keep track of deadlines, and no one will be breathing down your neck to make sure you complete your assigned tasks. . Instead, you’ll need to learn how to manage projects virtually using project management tools like Trello, Asana, and Jira.
Therefore, a good place to start would be to become familiar with the basics of virtual project management. Learning how to use these tools efficiently will help you keep track of deadlines, progress and assigned tasks.
This will also come in handy when collaborating with others on a project. Add to these a proactive mindset and self-discipline, and you’ll be on your way to becoming a successful remote worker.
3. Word Processing
While working remotely you will be doing a lot of writing and editing, whether it is drafting emails, creating presentations or writing reports. Thus, it is important that you know how to use a word processing program such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
At a minimum, you should know how to format documents, insert pictures and videos, create hyperlinks, and use other features to make your document more presentable. If you’re not too familiar with these programs, this would be an excellent time to learn the ropes. However, it certainly doesn’t hurt to go a step further by learning these advanced Microsoft Word features.
4. Spreadsheet
Spreadsheets are another basic tech skill that will come in handy when working remotely. Whether working on a budget, tracking your work progress, or managing a project, you’ll need to know how to create and use a spreadsheet. Excel is the most popular spreadsheet program, but other options are available, such as Google Sheets and Apple Numbers.
While the features and functions of these programs may differ slightly, the basics are more or less the same. Therefore, if you know how to use one spreadsheet program, you should be able to quickly understand other spreadsheet programs. That said, we recommend using these free Excel training sites and courses to become a spreadsheet master.
5. Touch Typing and Basic Keyboard Shortcuts
While most remote jobs won’t require you to be a touch-typing expert, knowing how to type quickly and accurately will come in handy. After all, the faster you can type, the more productive you’ll be, especially considering you’ll be doing it a lot. Fortunately, there are many sites that you can use to learn or practice fast touch typing on a computer.
Likewise, you can also take some time to learn the basic keyboard shortcuts for the programs you use most often or your favorite operating systems. These shortcuts will help you perform common tasks more quickly and efficiently. For example, if you’re a Windows OS user, you’ll save yourself a lot of time by learning some essential shortcuts, or even better, how to assign keyboard shortcuts to programs.