Working from home? My God, it's full of scams!

harvest

First, my resume. This is kind of dated but I haven't learned or forgotten any skills since I last used this.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=d8v9krz_0fphx9kg8
Don't miss the part where I'm interested in writing classes and I'm bilingual. The time gaps are easily explained if you're interested in interviewing me.

I'm a student, I need a job. I live out in the sticks and my car is shit so I'm trying to find a job I can work at from home online. Googling for "work from home" will yield some list sites, and about a hundred million scams. Pyramid scams, MLM scams, straight up robbery, there's apparently a lot of money to be made scamming people who are looking for work.

The legit sites are hard to work with. They want people with 3+ years of proofreading experience, or a list published books you edited, or your testicles, or whatever. I can't find any entry-level stuff. This site for example http://www.worldwideworkathome.com/ seems like a legit list of companies that offer work-at-home jobs but they all seem to require a lot of experience I don't have. There's gotta be a way to actually get started on the ground floor of these fields, right?

Any of you people work from home? Got any leads on companies I should check out? Get with the up hooking!

PS Are there any dedicated job-hunting forums I should be looking at?

Nibble

What kind of skills, education, or work experience do you have? You're unlikely to find any legitimate jobs with no requirements whatsoever.

harvest

Feel free to click my resume. It's very technical but it's what I had available. Besides what is listed I have strong verbal and written skills, I can teach or train, work a multi-line telephone and follow directions. I really need to write a second resume for my softer skills, but it's awkward because all my work experience is technical stuff.

Nibble

Whoops, missed that part. If you're truly fluent in Spanish, you could do some proofreading or minor translation work, although you'll probably have to look for clients on your own. Your school may also have some openings for TAs, which is usually a paying job. It's not at-home, but at-school is nearly as good, I think.

With your technical knowledge, you could do some tech support (not that prior technical knowledge is really a requirement). I have heard that some places will allow you to work from home, by either forwarding calls to your home phone or by VOIP. Unfortunately, I don't actually know if such companies exist.

Aridhol

You could try http://www.apply.westathome.com/
It's basically a call center job you do from home.
Some caveats is that the pay isn't that great, the call center where I worked 5 or 6 years ago is now closing due to lost contracts and the management was a bunch of cockbags.

The jobs are easy though so I guess check it out.

OremLK

It's not easy trying to make a living from home, even now. But one way to do it that can be effective is to contract out services or sell your own products on the web. It's all very dependent on what you want to do, though, and how marketable your skills or products are.

ihmmy

no jobs on campus? our campus has a few food joints, including some that aren't unionized (therefore higher turnover and easier to get hired at), plus TA'ing, student marking, tutoring, editing for cash (won't make tons with this, but it's a start). And our campus has a couple other food joints across the road, a whopping 5min walk from the centre of campus... does yours have any businesses you could apply at?

Etelmik

I've worked from home before, and all the work I got was highly lucky. Craigslist occasionally has legit work from home stuff, but most legitimate work from home is any of the following:

a. call center at home
b. freelancing (this is difficult, and you essentially become 2/3 a salesperson)
or c. being really good at something and a normal employer is willing to employ someone remotely. But even here, they usually want someone local, and who can at least make it to a meeting once a week, if nothing else.

In short, it's not that there's no hope, but you're going to be very hard up if you stake your money on this at your age. It's much easier to get experience, then try to freelance a little bit.

TexiKen

The work from homes I've come across are kind of rewards to the people who have busted their butts for their company and it's a way of saying thank you. They got to a certain level in engineering/management etc. and they only have to go in to office once a week just to get the weekly meetings and reports done.

That being the case, your best bet is to avoid the work from home issue, either fix your car or trade it in towards a more reliable vehicle, and look for something that way. Don't use your car as an excuse for not wanting to get out there to increase your chances at getting a job.

And if you are bilingual, look for Berlitz offices near you. They hire college students to teach languages to local schools and stuff. My old roommate taught Spanish to a class of 6 yr olds at a catholic school near the campus twice a week and made 200/week easy.