With more than 29 million Americans receiving some form of unemployment benefits from the government and the July unemployment rate being 10.2%, millions of people are looking for jobs. Due to the uncertainty from the coronavirus pandemic and many businesses closing, if you’re looking for work, one option is to take a more entrepreneurial approach.
In short, start your own consulting business and provide your services to companies and people in need. However, competition for contract and freelance work is fierce, as many companies struggle to keep afloat by cutting costs.
Instead of competing in the same geographical location for work, why not broaden your search to work remotely in another state. If you’re still unable to find a job, why not become a digital nomad and obtain an e-residency card from Estonia?
What is an e-residency card?
The country of Estonian offers e-residency that “provides digital entrepreneurs the freedom to establish and manage an EU-based company paperlessly, from anywhere in the world.” By signing up online and then going through the application process, you can obtain an Estonian e-residency digital ID, set up a European-based company, and then with the digital ID card, be able to work with countries in the European Union.
Instead of competing for work solely in the United States, you can offer your skills to companies throughout Europe.
If you chose, you could then work from anywhere in the world. The possibilities are endless if you think from a different point-of-view.
Or, if you’re looking for a significant change in your life, Estonia began offering their Digital Nomad Visa back on August 1st that “allows remote workers to live in Estonia and legally work for their employer or their own company registered abroad.”
During the coronavirus pandemic, people have stopped to reflect on their career paths, life goals, and the very nature of work. If face-to-face work is more complicated due to health restrictions, taking an inventory of your skills and re-evaluating your career goals can help you chart a new path forward.
Richard Bolles’ What Color Is Your Parachute is a solid career advice book to help you identify your skills and define what you want out of your working life.
We’re living in a VACU (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) world, and economic markets may be in flux for quite some time. How we choose to handle a difficult economic period is up to us.
Millions of people will look for work as they always have: Receive job alerts and then apply for jobs the traditional way.
But suppose you take a more proactive approach, by reinventing yourself to think globally. In that case, you’re not only broadening your reach, but you’re displaying an entrepreneurial attitude in approaching finding a new career, and new avenues of opportunity will present themselves to you.
By applying for an e-residency in Estonia, you’re creating a path that would enhance your career by setting out on uncharted waters. All the basics on how to apply for the e-residency are available online to how to start a European company. Yes, these steps take time, but if you’re planning for the rest of your working life, learning and completing the process is minimal.
Although some might scoff at such a radical plan, we are living in unprecedented times. Why look to solve a problem with the same tools if there are other options available?
In December 2019, Estonian e-residency celebrated five years of the program and announced that more than 62,000 e-residents are participating in more than 160 countries. And service companies have cropped up like Xolo to help entrepreneurs navigate through the process of e-residency and starting a European company.
None of us can see the future, but we can see the signs laid out for us. Over the last six months, millions of Americans worked remotely due to lockdown requirements to help mitigate the coronavirus’s spread. People (as well as corporations) have realized that they can work from home. And “home” can be anywhere that you have electricity, a laptop, and the internet.
Recently, Google announced that its employees could work from home until June 2021, and other tech companies (like Microsoft) are following suit. If you can work remotely and are looking for work, why not consider your options and think outside of the proverbial geographic box? Though you may live in a certain state, what if you could obtain work in another country?
When we stop, reflect, and look at a problem from a different perspective and are open-minded, new solutions will present themselves. Where some people see a wall, others see possibilities.
The challenges and struggles that many have suffered through over the last six months are not to be ignored. If you have an opportunity to reinvent yourself, now is the time to do it. Take stock, educate yourself, and then ask yourself this question: Where do I want to go next with my career?
You might be surprised at the options you now have at your fingertips.
As a member of the (Philadelphia Area) Great Careers Network& BENG, you will receive a link in the automated receipt upon purchase. This link contains many valuable resources, including a very extensive list of links for remote jobs.
Author Bio
Ron Vitale, an accomplished director of digital project management, has successfully overseen the launch of more than a dozen websites and is seeking employment opportunities.
His colleagues have come to know him as a diplomatic problem-solver with a proven ability to envision people’s web needs and then launch viable new web-based systems on time and under budget.
Ron is also the author of more than 15 fiction and non-fiction books and uses his author career as a platform to learn new technology and online marketing techniques. Feel free to connect with him on LinkedIn.
