6 Common and Uncommon Work at Home Jobs

When you’re considering a work-at-home job, it’s sometimes hard to know where to start. As telecommuting has progressed, the options have increased, and there are now at-home jobs in almost every career you can imagine. How do you choose?

Of course, you want to go through some basic self-assessment to see where your skills, experiences, education, and interests lead you. And you also want to know the prospects for different careers and industries so you can focus your job search attention wisely.

The career categories that typically have the most available work-at-home jobs include Medical/Health, Customer Service, Sales, and Administrative, but there are lots of interesting and unusual jobs to consider both in and out of these careers.

To get you started, let’s take a look at some of the most common and not-so-common work-at-home jobs.

3 Uncommon (But in High-Demand!) Work At Home Jobs

Search Engine Evaluator

These part-time jobs are perfect for people who already like to surf the web, and they offer flexible schedules with the ability to set your own hours. Essentially, search engine evaluators do just that — they work for Internet search evaluation companies to determine how to improve search engine results for clients. The skills required of a search engine evaluator are the ability to work independently, cultural awareness of your home country, familiarity with news and media sources on the web, and solid analysis and research abilities. The pay for this type of job typically starts at $13 per hour, with a set number of hours each week.

Personal Historian

Individuals hire personal historians to create a detailed picture of their family’s history. To capture the personal experiences and memories of the client, historians spend time speaking with individuals, compiling notes, and creating a detailed picture of the information. These jobs require people with excellent interpersonal and customer service skills, attention to detail, and the ability to communicate well one-on-one with individuals. The typical pay for this work is $50 per hour, and the work is occasional, whenever new clients sign up for historical services.

Online Teacher

Virtual tutoring positions are very common and well-known, but did you know that you can take your expertise one step further and become a virtual teacher? These part-time positions are available for anyone with a teaching certification, and are found throughout the U.S. Teachers typically work in virtual classrooms with middle school or high school students to teach subjects like English, music, math, sociology, history, languages, chemistry, biology, and even physical education. The activities for these part-time jobs are very similar to in-classroom teaching positions, and previous teaching experience is usually required. These jobs start around $12 per hour.

3 Common (and Always in High-Demand) Work At Home Jobs

Customer Service Representative

Customer service consistently ranks as one of the most common work-at-home jobs, and with good reason. Companies large and small are hiring virtual customer service associates in a variety of industries, from technology to manufacturing to banking to hospitality and everything in between. These jobs are often full-time, so if you’re looking for more of a commitment, the jobs are out there for you! The most common skills sought by these employers are personal accountability, performance management, and conflict resolution. The average full-time salary for at-home customer service jobs is $32,000.

Administrative Assistant

More and more departments and whole companies are turning to virtual administrative assistants help individuals, departments, and offices with phone and email, scheduling, travel arrangements, filing and documentation, event planning, and a variety of other administrative tasks. Much like customer service jobs, virtual admins need to have excellent customer service skills, communication skills, and be extremely organized. With both part-time and full-time schedules available, this type of at-home job is a good fit for many. Pay for at-home administrative assistants usually starts around $12.50 per hour.

Development Coordinator

As long as there are nonprofit organizations in need of financial support, there will be development and fundraising jobs to be had! If you have previous nonprofit development experience, you may be qualified for Development Director positions which, though they are part-time, offer professionals the chance to stay in leadership roles. Other job titles in this area include Grant Writer, Development Manager, Sales Manager, Fund Development Assistant, and Development Assistant. Depending on your interests and values, there is a wide variety of nonprofit organizations who hire for at-home development roles.

As you can see, there are a wide variety of work-at-home jobs to consider. The great news is that each of these jobs offers different options as far as hours and scheduling, so you can most definitely find a job that meets your needs while allowing you the flexibility to balance your work and personal lives.

Brie Weiler Reynolds is the Director of Content and Community at FlexJobs, the award-winning site for home-based jobs and flexible job listings. FlexJobs lists thousands of pre-screened, legitimate, and professional-level home-based jobs and positions with other types of flexibility like part-time positions, freelancing, and flexible schedules. Brie provides career and job search advice through the FlexJobs Blog and social media. Learn more at www.FlexJobs.com.