Staying employed while married to someone on active duty is not easy. After all, it’s hard to keep a job in any one place when you PCS every few years. And lots of military bases across all branches are in remote or rural areas with limited employment opportunities to begin with. Moreover, with lengthy deployments and field exercises, there are long periods when house-tending duties are all on you. So full time jobs, or even part-time jobs, requiring any kind of commute can be a real strain. Which is why work from home jobs are great options for military spouses. Here are some suggestions for great gigs you can do from the comfort of your own home.
Customer Service
More and more companies large and small are filling the ranks of their customer service departments with remote workers. All it really takes is a computer with an internet connection and a phone. Having some experience in on-site customer service will, of course, make you look better in the hiring process. But if you can answer questions and respond to the needs of customers via phone and/internet, then you can do this job.
Technical Writer
While it takes some area-specific expertise, this is another work from home job available to enterprising military spouses. Typical duties of a technical writer are tasks like writing up user manuals, product specifications, and other documents that require an understanding of the product, system, etc you’re covering. There are a lot of niches in this broad category, and if you’re an expert in any with internet access, you can be a professional technical writer.
Tutor
Tutors have been vital assets to kids of all ages since the concept of formal education began. And, with the increasingly universal access to high-speed internet and computers with webcams, there are countless opportunities to tutor students of any age on any topic from anywhere. And there are plenty of wide-reaching companies, like tutor.com, where you can apply based on your knowledge and academic credentials. Then they set you up with potential clients who you can help.
Web Designer
Another option for the particularly tech savvy. Or those willing to learn and new skillset or two. Given that designing websites and webpages has only been around as long as there’s been an internet, it’s no surprise that this is the sort of job you can do from pretty much anywhere with wifi. If you’ve got a good eye for arts, aesthetics, and design, this could be the perfect work from home job. And a nice creative outlet to boot.
Recruiter
Like customer service reps, this is another job more and more companies are going with remote workers for. And while many of them prefer you already have some in-person recruitment experience before they let you do the job online, it’s not always a dealbreaker. In many cases a bachelor’s degree is all you need to help other people get hired themselves. All without the hassle of going to an office every day.
Transcriber
A great job for military spouses with a good ears, fast typing skills, and a flawless grasp of grammar. From academic institutions to law firms to international corporations, business need good listeners. And they need those listeners to type up transcripts of audio recordings of everything from conference calls to lectures. Fluency in more than one language is usually a plus in this field. Every different one you know opens up opportunities for more transcriptions, either in the original language or as a translated document.
You can find positions like these on pretty much any major employment website, like Linkedin or Indeed. Great sites like FlexJobs are specifically tailored to help you find work from home jobs. And some big companies, like Amazon, have their own pages dedicated to work from home jobs for military spouses. A quick internet search for whichever of these jobs sound like something you’d enjoy will reveal tons of results. And, with a little luck and a solid application, you can start making money from your very own chair/couch/yard/poolside/wherever at a great work from home job.