Although working remotely has been a thing for years now, it’s never seemed more important and key to the average person’s workday until now. Thanks to multiple stay-at-home orders in countries worldwide and the fear of returning to office duties around potentially sick coworkers, remote work has grown in importance and necessities exponentially. However, while many view remote work as staying at home while accomplishing workplace tasks, it also serves as a new branch. More than ever, remote work is its category of working, with hundreds of jobs and thousands of opportunities awaiting every search to come. Freelancing, remote assistance, tutoring, management, and more are now available at your fingertips, alongside the wages provided. Nonetheless, that also means that specialties and required skills have blown up in necessity, turning a quick job into a lengthy process to determine between a growing selection of stay-at-home remote workers. With this ever-increasing competition and research behind hiring a worker, what can you do to stand out to an employer or buyer? Well, here are our top picks for the best remote work skills to boost your resume:

Time Management

The top skill for a remote worker is time management – while this may already be an essential skill to any average worker, it’s even more important for one on their schedule. After all, it may be your schedule, but it’s someone else’s task on that. Although you may be working remote jobs and may be distanced from your peers, that doesn’t mean that you can relax and cramp everything together at the end. Remote work is just as tiring as real work, just separated by a screen and location. Many people forget this, leading them to mess up time management, especially when considering that most of us “work better at home.” That doesn’t mean you’ll work remotely, effectively, however, as there’s less external motivation and the like to back you up. And as such, you’ll have to keep track of your own time, expecting to take a bit longer to complete a task as you’re comfortable and relaxed at home. Once that’s down pat, time management is an easy resume-filling remote work skill for the best.

Self-Motivation

Atop needing to control your timing, you’ll have to motivate yourself. Although that seems unrelated, both are heavily influenced by external factors. For example, you’ll have a boss or at least coworkers at a physical location reminding you to get your job done, while neither will appear at your home. In these situations, they prove that you can manage and motivate yourself to get tasks done, as there’s even less reason to complete complex jobs at home than at work. Prioritize what you need to get done while at home and remember that just because there isn’t anyone telling you to get things done, you still need to, and usually quickly.

Virtual Communication

Additionally, communication is vital. You won’t be able to pop out of your office or working space and ask a colleague a question or present a task, but instead, you’ll be required to use CRM tools with customers and inter-workplace software to communicate quickly. It’s essential to be accustomed to the newest software tools and communication strategies when working from home, especially when considering that you’re alone, working by yourself. When communicating online, there’s a certain disconnect that only the best can overcome and grow from. There’s not the same connection or respect as working with somebody (specifically a workmate) in person, representing the additional need to do your best to connect online. When looking for workers to get a job done, employers look heavily into a pooled connection, meaning that virtual communication skills and efforts are some of the most important for a virtual workplace with more than one person working at a time.

Building Further

Of course, these aren’t the only skills you’ll want to apply for a job when working remotely. There are countless technical skills, interpersonal ones, and many more that play a significant role in ensuring that you do well online. Additionally, that means that remote workers must put together everything they know about the typical workforce towards online ones. Take everything you know about usually working, and translate it virtually. Learning what to do and how to connect a workplace to remote work is one of the essential skills, and it’s one of the best ways to build new ones. Above all, however, it’s important to remember that remote work is still work, and you’ll need the skills and qualifications to get jobs in the end. Just because it’s online doesn’t mean that it’s not real money on the line and that there aren’t real people being affected by most choices you make. That’s likely the essential skill to develop as you’re working remotely.