Fortune 500 companies like IBM, Lockheed, American Express and UnitedHealth Group are just some of the many firms hiring home-based workers. And, if you want to supplement your income, transition into the civilian workforce, or develop a portable career, telework is a great way to go. Here are some tips on how to find legitimate work-at-home jobs and projects online.

Searching with Google: “Good” and “Bad” Search Phrases

When you’re hunting for home-based work online, it makes all the difference what kind of search phrase you use. A generic phrase like “work from home,” for example, produces more than 7 million returns, while a targeted phrase like “this is a 1099 position” (referring to IRS form 1099, which is used by freelance contractors, many of whom are home-based) retrieves only 392.

Always keep in mind, however, that using a “good” search term doesn’t mean that all of your returns will be legitimate, and you may still find bogus ads mixed in with the legitimate leads. Likewise, a “bad” search term may snag legitimate leads along with all the bogus leads. But don’t let this discourage you. Anyone can learn to tell the difference between a legitimate job lead and a scam, it just takes a bit of homework and practice. If you’d like some help separating the good apples from the rotten ones, see our previous article, “Work at Home Scams.”

The following are just a sample of the 75-plus “good” phrases we use in our daily search for job leads for the Rat Race Rebellion, before we subject the leads to our own screening process. 

Note: Be sure to put phrases in quotes to ensure focused search returns.

Bad Search Phrases:

"home employment"    
"home based work"  
"telework jobs”  
"telecommuting jobs"   
“work from home”
"home business opportunity" 

Good Search Phrases:

"this is a 1099 position"
"will have the option to work from home"
"must be willing to work from home"
"this is a freelance position"
"this is a telecommuting position"
"we are seeking a freelance"
"we are seeking a freelance"

As you’ll see when you try the examples yourself, the good phrases use language that appears often in legitimate ads. (Of course, as we mentioned, scammers — who are always highly adaptive — may sometimes use these phrases in their ads too, so always be on guard.)

You can add your own “good” search terms to these examples by jotting down the phrases you see repeated in the legitimate leads that you find in your own searches. This will steadily broaden and deepen your overall search results, increasing the likelihood that you’ll find home-based work that fits your needs.

Ongoing Hirers of Home-Based Workers

In addition to searching the better-known jobhunting destinations like Monster, Craigslist and CareerBuilder, you can find leads by checking the websites of the many companies that hire teleworkers directly on an on-going or periodic basis.

Some companies may not have job openings currently (see websites for details), so you’ll want to bookmark those sites for future reference. Finally, be sure to resist the temptation to write HR departments with queries about unpublished telework openings. That’s a surefire way to end up on someone’s blacklist. To be safe, take your cues from instructions or notices posted on the company’s web pages.     

Stay Focused and You’ll Succeed

The trick to any job search, whether the position be on-site or at your laptop in the local café (where, by the way, millions of Americans are already teleworking), is knowing what you want and staying focused while you pursue it. While it’s true that home-based jobs and projects are in high demand, and you certainly won’t land that “plum job” overnight, every day in our research we see a wide range of legitimate leads across a variety of sectors.

If you do your homework, keep your “scam glasses” on, and stay proactive, you’ll find the job you’re looking for. And you may also discover, as many do, that you never want to go back to “cube life” again.