🏡 Coworking reaches suburbs

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Good Morning,

It feels like summer is in full swing — Memorial Day is behind us, everyone’s kids are out of school, and all of a sudden everyone seems to be taking time off work. And here in Texas, we probably won’t see a sub-90° day for another 100 days 😬

But it brings to mind another reason remote work is so desirable. Anecdotally, I’ve seen that it’s far more common these days for remote workers to get Airbnbs in cities with more temperate summer climates to escape the brutal southern heat.

And if you’re still handcuffed to an office, we’ve got a few tips and tools in this edition to help you land that new remote job 👇

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Remote Source Job Board

Featured companies:

SecurityScorecard: 16 remote jobs
Enphase Energy: 15 remote jobs
OneLogin: 18 remote jobs

🤝 Find Remote Jobs Here

Need to Know

🤬 Execs used RTO to encourage employees to quit
They’re finally saying the quiet part out loud: in a wide-ranging study on remote work, BambooHR found that 37% of managers, directors, and executives “believe their organization enacted layoffs in the last year because fewer employees than they expected quit during their RTO.” Further, 25% of executives admitted wanting voluntary turnover.

It’s basically a legal method of creating an undesirable workplace environment.

And it does sometimes force employees to leave on their own — but at what cost? 45% of employees who have gone through an RTO policy reported “significant talent loss” at their organizations. It’s a theme that we’ve covered in each of the last two weeks as well.

Some more interesting data points from the study:

• 42% of employees returning to the office believe they are only showing up to be seen by their managers

• 22% of HR professionals say their company isn’t measuring the success of their RTO policies

• 32% of managers say that tracking employees was a primary goal of their RTO policy

There are a lot more data points, though we’ve seen many of them before: most remote workers consider time flexibility the top benefit of WFH, caretakers and those with disabilities are more likely to want remote work, and a leading driver behind office time is the opportunity to connect in person with colleagues. (BambooHR)

🔎 Not finding work in a “strong” job market
This WSJ podcast episode (link is to the text transcript) discusses why this job market is different from anything we’ve seen recently.

• The Philadelphia Fed tracks the “Employer-to-Employer Transition Probability,” which is the likelihood someone will leave an employer for a new one. During the strong job market of 2021, this was about 1-in-37. Today, it’s 1-in-50, meaning about 25% fewer people are voluntarily changing jobs.

• Job seekers are being reached out to by recruiters less frequently, and have to go through more rounds of interviews than in past years.

• Some recruiters are increasingly frustrated when they have great candidates but companies are being far pickier than before.

• Tech, finance, law, and accounting have seen very limited job openings.

• There’s sustained demand for upper management and less-experienced employees, but those in middle stages of their career — typically with around 15-20 years of experience — have been seeing less demand.

Recruiters have two pieces of advice:

1. Apply early to job openings. Recruiters would prefer not to sift through tons of applications if they can find a quality applicant early.

2. Keep all of the market conditions in mind, and remember that many high-quality candidates are having trouble. It will likely take more effort than it would have a few years ago, but the unemployment rate is still relatively low and fewer people are actively looking to change jobs. Keep your head up and don’t get bogged down by conditions out of your control.

Worth noting: we have a filter to find recently posted jobs on the Remote Source job board: click on the “posted anytime” drop-down to filter for jobs posted in the last day, week, month, quarter, or year. (Wall Street Journal)

🤝 Coworking reaches the suburbs
The industry giant in coworking, IWG (formerly Regus, and the parent company of HQ and Spaces), is quickly adding coworking locations in suburban areas, noting the shift in workplace habits.

Today’s knowledge workers are far more likely to work in hybrid or remote arrangements, and more likely to avoid long commutes. But they may still want a place to work from outside their homes every now and then.

IWG has opened coworking space recently in Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains, near Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, and in Destin, Florida, among many other less-dense suburban regions. (Bloomberg)

⚓️ Use anchor statements on your resume
This piece of advice comes from Nike’s former head of talent acquisition. An “anchor statement” is a one-line description of the place you worked, which goes underneath your job title and company name.

An example he gives is “fintech company with half a billion dollars in revenue and 3,000 employees.”

The purpose is to provide additional visibility into what it was like to work where you did, and it can even allow the hiring manager to draw their own parallels between your past workplace and the company you’re applying to. (CNBC)

☕️ Working from hotel lobbies
This travel writer makes a strong case for working from hotel lobbies. They’re mixed-use spaces with “social white noise” and typically only a few steps away from any food or drinks you could want.

Further, some hotels have been encouraging this public usage of their lobbies. For example, the Moxy hotel chain wants their lobbies to be a sort of “public square,” used for coworking and all kinds of social gatherings. (I’ve worked from the Nashville Moxy lobby — that one’s fun, but with the live music inside it can get pretty loud.)

The important caveat here is that there are “ground rules” work working from most of these places. Treat them like you would a cafe: you shouldn’t use the space without buying a coffee or snack at the very least.

For what it’s worth, I wholeheartedly agree with this take on hotel lobbies. In Austin, some of my favorite places to work from are hotels: the South Congress Hotel, The Line, and Carpenter Hotel all have great spaces to work from, with all the coffee, food, and happy hour drink options you could ask for. And if you follow along on Instagram, you may have seen this reflected in the spaces we highlighted with @Austinfoodstagram! (Washington Post)

Stuff We Like

🚀 Pathrise*
This trusted career accelerator offers specialized training, programs, and mentorship designed specifically to help individuals in their job search.

Further, there’s no upfront payment — it’s completely free until you’re hired, using income-based repayment. It begins with a 2-week trial that requires no commitment at all, so you can decide if it’s the right system for you. (Pathrise)

🔌 A folding, electric standing desk?!
An Instagram ad for this caught my eye a few days ago and I wanted to share: it’s an electric standing desk designed to fold up for storage in small spaces.

Pretty great idea for anyone who works from a smaller home, or any non-designated office space. (Lillipad)

🏡 Kindred: members-only home swap
If you travel a lot and don’t want to break the bank by constantly staying in hotels and Airbnbs, Kindred offers a model that may be worth considering.

It’s a members-only organization where you have to be able to offer up your home for others to visit as well. Fees are far lower than what you’d be paying at a hotel; it’s a well-organized home-sharing service for like-minded travelers. (Kindred)

*Denotes a sponsored or affiliate link. Any paid sponsorships, products, or services are thoroughly vetted by us before we make recommendations to readers.