Legitimate work-from-home opportunities in northern NY state?

August 20, 2013 11:06 AM

Greetings all. I'm looking to move to northern NY state - most likely Clinton County, within an hour or so tops of Plattsburgh. I was wondering if anybody happens to know of any good websites or other resources for finding telecommuting jobs in that area? I ask this because there seems to be legions of "get rich quick" scams masquerading as legitimate employment opportunities, as well as telecommuting jobs in other areas. (I've never telecommuted in my life, and from what I gather many such jobs do require physically traveling to a job site every now and again.) Any useful links, and/or accounts of your own telecommuting experiences (preferably in the aforementioned area) would be much appreciated. For the record, I'm already familiar with Monster, Craigslist, Trovit, and Snagajob. Thanks in advance!
posted by DavidfromBA to Work & Money (11 answers total)

Flexjobs.com is legit. You have to pay to join ($10 a month I think) but when I was last looking it seemed useful. It was recommended in a previous job related Ask MeFi.
posted by COD at 11:41 AM on August 20, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure that any legitimate work-from-home opportunity is going to have a travel requirement. My father-in-law works as a software project manager for a small company; he works from home full-time and can live anywhere he wants, but he has to travel to Tampa for meetings once a year.

I couldn't tell from your question; is the infrequent travel requirement a problem for you?

I telecommute on occasion. (My current project doesn't allow it, so much less often now than I used to.) I actually prefer working from home; I seem to get more accomplished when I do, and I save gas money to boot (helpful given my long commute when I do go into the office). I don't like not being able to wander into someone's office and bug them; you're limited to e-mail/IM/phone, which some people ignore sometimes.
posted by tckma at 11:44 AM on August 20, 2013

It depends on what you do, really. If you're a developer or back-end IT pro, there's lots of places that are 100% remote (Github comes to mind immediately). Likewise for various writing and editing jobs.
posted by Oktober at 11:51 AM on August 20, 2013

Response by poster: @ COD: Hadn't heard of that site, will have to check it out. Thank you.
@tckma: I have a car, so driving to work and back wouldn't be an issue per se. However, the idea of keeping that to a minimum is very appealing to me. Thank you for your feedback.
@Oktober (and to anybody reading this for that matter): Unfortunately my computer skills are underwhelming. Mostly I was thinking in terms of something like Data Entry. Aside from that I'm bilingual (English and French), but I don't know that there are a whole lot of telecommuting opportunities in which that would come in handy other than freelance translating. Thanks to you as well for your input.
posted by DavidfromBA at 12:14 PM on August 20, 2013

A lot of customer service type jobs are home based now, and I would think being bilingual would put you in really good shape for that type of job. Good luck!
posted by COD at 12:24 PM on August 20, 2013

Best answer: You may want to look into legal transcription either for private firms or for your county (or both). I worked for a law firm when living in CNY and the county's DSS office contracted their transcription out. That may/may not be a statewide thing.
posted by headnsouth at 12:57 PM on August 20, 2013

I worked for VIPdeskconnect (which appears to be called Aspire Lifestyles now) for 2 years and it was a legit work-at-home job. It also sucked but I kind of miss it sometimes when I have to sit in the same room with my coworkers every day now.
posted by masquesoporfavor at 1:05 PM on August 20, 2013 [1 favorite]

You might want to look into customer service / distributed call center jobs. The fact that you're bilingual can only help.
posted by Oktober at 1:48 PM on August 20, 2013

If you're not Canadian, it might be a bit tricky to get the Canadian or Quebec governments to hire you. However, there's going to be some demand for French speakers in that part of New York and in Vermont from companies that do business in Canada or are tourism-related. The intersection of that with telecommuting might be pretty small, though.
posted by hoyland at 2:29 PM on August 20, 2013

What's worked for me for nearly 20 years is web development as an independent contractor. You may want to say what your skills are.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:02 AM on August 21, 2013

Response by poster: Once again, thank you to everyone who responded. I sincerely appreciate your insight and suggestions.
posted by DavidfromBA at 12:26 PM on August 24, 2013