About Stay at Home Jobs

Many people dream of working from home. To be able to make a decent living without leaving home allows families to have closer relationships and parents to keep an eye on children while working, and saves workers money on transportation and clothing.

History

Before the Industrial Revolution, most people worked from home or owned businesses near their home. Most people had simple trades or family farms that kept them close to home. Work from home jobs became popular again as Internet technology allowed people to communicate with each other more easily across the miles and to transport files back and forth.

Function

Stay at home employees complete clerical duties at home using their own equipment or possibly computers provided by the employer. They then transmit that work to the employer electronically, or by going into the office in person. Some stay at home employees take and make phone calls on behalf of the employer or perform other duties.

Types

There are different types of stay at home jobs, such as call center operators, online writers and editors, programmers, medical transcriptionists and online virtual assistants. Most of these online jobs are actually contract work, with the worker being a small business owner and the employer being a client. However, the employee-employer model of work at home jobs is beginning to become more popular.

Features

Stay at home jobs are not for everyone. Some jobs require more day-to-day interaction with co-workers and with the public. A stay at home worker must be detail oriented and self motivated. He or she must be able to meet goals and make deadlines without oversight of a supervisor. Hemust also have great communication skills so he can work at home without seeming absent from their job.

Benefits

For many people they are actually more productive when working at home then when in the office. They do not have the distractions of meetings and co-workers interrupting them throughout the day. For employers, they save the costs of the overhead of providing a place to work and possibly the equipment for the employee to use.

Potential

More and more employees are seeing the value of having work from home employees. Hilton Hotels, for example, has benefitted from the work of stay at home call center operators and continues to expand its work at home program. In fact, the number of Americans who work from home increased 63 percent between 2004 to 2006. There are currently an estimated 12.4 million people who work from home at least one day a week.

Warning

Legitimate work at home jobs are hard to find. The pure glut of work at home schemes and fraud jobs on the Internet makes finding good jobs difficult. In fact, if you are seeking a stay at home job you will more success finding a job through your current employer or through someone you know than through an online help ad. However, with a diligent search, you can get some leads for online work. There is one element that distinguishes a real job from a scam opportunity. No real job will charge you any type of fee. Never pay anyone a fee to find a stay at home job.

Resources

• 10 Jobs That Let You Work From Home