Working from home has long been regarded as a luxury enjoyed only by a privileged few, with the majority of white-collar jobs being done exclusively from the office. But since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, things have been begun to change. An increasing number of UK businesses have adopted flexible working options, such as work from home or hybrid roles.
Perhaps you have realised that this is the ideal lifestyle for you. If that’s the case, you are probably wondering where to begin your search for a work from home (WFH) role. Well, wonder no more. Here’s a look at the industries and jobs that offer the most WFH opportunities in the UK, according to new research by Officeology.
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How many work from home jobs are there in the UK?
Officeology looked at current job listings on the Reed job site to find out the sectors and roles that offer the most WFH opportunities.
Out of the 180,536 jobs they scraped, 13,534 were WFH jobs. This represents about 7.5% of all jobs that are currently available in the UK.
Which industries offer the most work from home jobs?
The research by Officeology revealed that the public sector industry has the most WFH opportunities, with a total of 13,521 listings.
This is followed by the IT and telecoms sector, with a total of 3,828 roles, and then the sales sector, with 1,019 roles. accountancy and actuarial sectors round out the top five, with 920 and 840 roles respectively.
Here’s how the rest of the top 10 looks:
6. Financial services – 833 listings
7. Marketing and PR – 781 listings
8. Recruitment and consultancy – 680 listings
9. Customer service – 662 listings
10. Admin, secretarial and PA – 556 listings
Which jobs offer the most work from home opportunities?
Officeology has also narrowed down the job titles that are more likely to come with a WFH option. Here is a list of the top ten, together with their respective number of listings.
- IT manager – 2,729
- Office manager – 2,696
- Business development manager-2,526
- Administrator – 2,515
- Teacher – 2,097
- Software engineer – 2,009
- Sales manager – 1,997
- Software developer – 1,779
- Market manager – 1,689
- Account manager – 1,653
You can find more sectors and job titles with WFH opportunities on the Officeology website.
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How can you secure a work from home job?
If you are looking to land a WFH job in 2022, here are two useful tips to help boost your chances.
1. Know where to look
Knowing where to start your search for a WFH job is critical.
You can, of course, use traditional job sites to look for WFH opportunities. You can refine your search using keywords such as ‘work from home’ and ‘remote’.
However, an even better strategy that may help you find WFH jobs more easily is to focus on job sites that exclusively target remote-only jobs. Here are a few such sites that are worth checking out:
2. Highlight your remote work experience or transferable skills that could help you excel in this role
If you’ve previously held a remote or work from home role, make sure to highlight it more than once on your CV. This can help you stand out and greatly improve your chances of landing an interview.
Remember that companies value and respect results, so also highlight some of the top outcomes you’ve achieved while in this position. This can demonstrate the value you’ve brought to previous employers and increase your chances of being selected for the current role.
But what if you’ve never technically held a remote job before? There’s no need to worry.
If you have office experience, you are likely to have skills that are transferrable to a hybrid or remote work model.
For example, in your previous job, you may have worked from an office, but been required to collaborate closely with teams in different locations. You can highlight some of the skills you gained from cross-location working that you believe will be useful for the role you are applying for.
These may include skills such as effective communication; the ability to work well independently; and familiarity with digital collaboration tools such as Slack, Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
Of course, if there are any important skills you don’t have or remote working tools that you don’t know how to use, there are many online tutorials and resources you can use to master them before you apply for a position.
The key here is to demonstrate that you have what it takes to do a remote job, even if you have no prior experience with this work model.