HN Explorer

How do I find a new job with a narrow set of skills/qualifications?

5 points by ryanmercer ↗ HN
After 15 months of work from home I am hearing that we are being ordered back to a shared office, with shared desks, and shared keyboards, starting at 40% capacity in the very near future.

I just can't do it. I can't go back to a loud open office, where I'm packed into a small footprint with a workstation crammed into a corner as leadership sits behind me watching everyone. I can't go back to commuting an hour plus, fighting 130ish people for 1 of 3 microwaves, and using bathrooms that frequently have excrement on the floor/seats/walls.

I've been in the same job for 15 years clearing international freight through customs - basically classifying goods in the harmonized tariff schedule and entering info into an AS400 terminal. I have a GED, I have zero computer science experience.

How do I, living a half hour west of Indianapolis, find remote work that at least replaces my current income and benefits, while living in a town of 200 something people? ASAP.

I welcome any and all advice!

12 comments

[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 44.8 ms ] thread
ngngngng
Depends what sort of pay you are looking for. What have you tried? Have you browsed remote job boards?
ryanmercer
In my experience they're largely CS type stuff, those that aren't often require 5-10 years of experience and some sort of 4 year or master's degree which I have zero qualifications/experience for any of that for or are minimum wage and/or part time customer service.
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AnimalMuppet
Look at Flexport, maybe? They're in the international freight space. I don't know if they'll do full remote, though...
ryanmercer
I've interviewed at Flexport previously actually!

They don't operate in central Indiana though and wanted I would have had to have moved to Chicago had they made an offer.

Now I've got a wife and a house so, yeah, that wasn't an option at the time and it still looks like it's all in-person in Chicago for the closest place they do business. They do have a remote listing right now but it wants "sales/account management" experience and a "proven track record of (cross)selling a product" and I've never worked in sales in my life.

mikewarot
I suspect many of your co-workers feel the same way, and 40% capacity will be the upper limit for a much longer time than management has in mind.
ryanmercer
Yeah, we've actually had quite a few people already quit over the past month or two, I assume they were trying to lock-in WFH. Friends in other industries are experiencing similar with employers that aren't overly planning to offer WFH indefinitely.
JSeymourATL
> I've been in the same job for 15 years clearing international freight through customs...

Look for the person you can best help.

WHO else might need this kind of service?

What kind of organizations?

Where do they sit/titles?

(LinkedIn is a great resource for this)

Your mission: Reach out to them, initiate a discovery conversation. See if your circles overlap.

cevink
I was a freight forwarder/customs broker for a few years after highschool. They all hire remote though probably for terrible salary but it's still a salary, look at Flexjobs website I know Livingston hires remote brokers and forwarders, usually called 'specialist' or 'analyst' like this: https://jobs.livingstonintl.com/job/Client-Import-Analyst-FL... it says "Home Office Florida" but does that mean once a month going there for some meeting or just being US citizen, who knows apply and find out. You could also quit and just go around to established brokers and offer your services as a home contractor.

Here's another 'import specialist' type remote job https://workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/default/mdf/recruitment/... notice the preference for bachelor degree, you should go back to school. However also notice 'equivalent business experience' so apply anyway. If you're wondering how I find these, a simple bot that scrapes "careers" pages into a sqlite dbms I query for select remote and various freight forwarding keywords. I made it when I needed a new developer job and turned out to be useless as some recruiter found me anyway.

However since this pandemic is ending surely there is some kind of student loans or business startup funds being floated around, if there are take them and go to school so you have a skill. If you can create a business think about your own job what the pain points are and how you can be a contractor. There was a woman running her own business when I worked there in highschool driving around the intl airport just collecting documents and standing in line at customs offices because some clearences required it. Brokers didn't want to do it so paid her, she in turned hired a bunch of other people to do the work, just managed everything with a cellphone and got paid.

ryanmercer
>However since this pandemic is ending surely there is some kind of student loans

I'm currently working on a degree but literally in the first semester, so that's going to be a while yet.

whb07
Why did you wait till now? Didn’t the first talks of “wait 2 weeks” trigger this fear?