Remote Work for Military Spouses: Find and Grow Your Meaningful Mobile Career

Introduction

Ispent eight years working toward a career in education, earning a master’s degree in political science, and working on my PhD in public administration and policy at night while I taught during the day as a middle school geography teacher. Then, I submitted my resignation.

My decision was a hard one to make. I was walking away from years of training. I had planned to become a tenure-track professor at a university. But that career choice did not mesh well with the Navy’s plans for my then-boyfriend’s future. So I chose to pivot my career and start fresh when my now-husband got his next set of military orders.

I started by searching online: How to become a freelance writer. In the years that followed—including the nine moves we tackled together—I adapted my career into a fully remote mix of working as a home-based freelancer and a full-time remote marketing director. Working remotely empowered me to take my work anywhere and not let my career take a backseat just because my spouse was an active-duty service member.

While there were plenty of road bumps, rejections, mistakes, and career issues to navigate during that period, there were also incredible rewards, such as a bigger professional network, more opportunities to learn new things, and being considered for positions I’d never thought of before.

This snapshot of my experience is just one of hundreds of thousands of stories from military spouses who have had to pause, pivot, give up on, or otherwise change their career plans because they married into the military. While each journey is unique, there are common threads. I wrote this book because of the common challenges military spouses face. Being a military spouse does not mean you aren’t deserving of a meaningful career. I want to help you find a career that moves with you when those orders inevitably come.

Why did you pick up this book? Did you seek it out intentionally or was it given to you by a friend or an organization helping you with your job search for remote employment? Knowing why you picked up this book is just as important as the contents. The first step to remote success is understanding why it interests you in the first place.

No matter how you landed here, this book is designed to give you the tools to make decisions about remote work: if it’s right for you, how you want to work remotely, what work-life balance looks like for you, and more. If you’ve decided that remote work is indeed a fit for you, you’ll uncover information in these pages about how to find jobs, apply for them, stand out in interviews, and even negotiate your employment offer. If you decide remote work is not a good fit, that’s valuable to know too!

There is a lot of promise in the possibilities of remote work options, but it is not always an easy journey. It might take a month to find the perfect position or you may feel stuck in application mode for a few months, filling out endless forms in hopes of an interview. A final interview you nailed may end with an offer going to another candidate. Perhaps the hardest of these challenges is the waiting, since it can take a long time to get interest from a company and to move forward with the hiring process.

Stick with it. Your military lifestyle has prepared you to be resilient, adaptable, and savvy. If you want this, you will make it work, and these resources will help you get there.

Chapter 1 —

Why Remote, Why Now?

The world of employment has changed significantly in recent years, largely due to advances in technology. Those advances have prompted many employers to rethink their work arrangements: Is it really necessary for everyone to be in a physical office every day to perform well?

Some employers choose to have a completely in-office workforce or multiple locations where all employees report to a physical place of work. Others choose to have a fully-remote or distributed workforce. Many land somewhere in the middle with hybrid teams.

With the impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic, employers have been forced to realize the possibilities of remote work. Many had to pivot their teams to work remotely for an extended period of time during the pandemic, which meant they had to adapt their communication culture, technology, and overall strategies to be successful. However, even without the push of a global pandemic, many companies were already transitioning to a hybrid work environment, leveraging remote employees or independent contractors to get projects done. In general, this is good news for most military spouses.

Military spouses who decide they are the right fit for remote employment are empowered to develop meaningful careers that stay with them from one base to another. Not every military spouse will be the right fit for remote work, but if you’ve picked up this book, there’s a good chance you believe you have the skills to succeed in a digital environment.

For many military spouses, it is difficult to take the time to focus on their own career when there are so many other ways to spend precious time and energy. You may wonder Is this the right time to try to make this transition? What if our orders change? What if there are unexpected shifts in family or school life? While these might seem like barriers to a career shift, they are also the perfect reasons to shift to a remote career path. If you have the drive—which you will decide—and the skills and resources—which you will learn in the following chapters—then now is the perfect time to leverage your need for a location-independent career as a military spouse.

Know that each company determines how remote work contributes to its culture and meets its needs. As a remote job seeker, understanding the different options and styles of remote work can help you determine the types of industries or companies to engage.

Landscape of Military Spouse Unemployment

One of the biggest challenges military spouses face is the ability to obtain and maintain meaningful career options. It can be difficult to secure positions that accommodate career progression in a mobile lifestyle.

Despite significant investment by the US Department of Defense (DoD) to address this issue and leverage nonprofit network support, about a quarter of military spouses are unemployed and more than half report underemployment, in which their qualifications and skills far exceed job requirements. Even in underemployment situations, the military lifestyle can make it hard for spouses to find and hold a position.

Under- and unemployment can cause a flurry of negative impacts on the quality of life for military spouses and families. These include frustration in marriages and significant relationships because the non-military partner is unable to pursue their professional goals, a lack of financial security for the entire family, negative feelings toward the military for the non-military partner, and even negative feelings about whether or not a service member should stay in the military.

These issues become most impactful when a service couple reaches mid-career and peak earning potential years. Retaining service members is a significant priority for national security and staffing purposes, which is why DoD and other organizations have made military spouse unemployment a top priority.

Working is not always about financial security, although it can be a driving factor. Military spouses also want to earn educational and professional achievements. Many feel they have to take a step back—or multiple steps back—in their career over the course of their marriage to a service member. This can be frustrating and overwhelming, especially when a spouse may have just enough time to get used to a particular base location and their new position before having to change and start all over again.

Furthermore, military spouses often have unique needs when it comes to flexibility and lifestyle. They need to be able to support their family and provide childcare, especially in the case of military trainings and deployments, which impact their day-to-day life on short notice. Since spouses often have to pivot and adapt, remote work has become an even more important consideration for military families.

Make Room for Your Career

Military spouses face unique challenges in developing their careers, because, in most cases, their service member’s career comes first. Some spouses may feel happy—empowered even—as a stay-at-home parent, allowing them to support their service member’s career, raise their family, and manage household duties. However, others are determined to maintain their individual career identity. For those military spouses who want to work, remote work can be a great option. Working remotely offers employees the opportunity to accomplish more, eliminate commute times, reduce their stress levels, save money, and bring their career with them no matter where they live.

While these benefits are appealing, wanting a remote position and being able to thrive in a remote position are different things. Understanding what a remote position requires will force you to think more carefully about the natural skill sets and personality traits you bring to the table and to understand where you may need to hone your skills.

Taking the time to identify your natural and learned skills and to analyze what you want most out of your remote career will make your journey infinitely more rewarding. Military spouses already deal with obstacles that average job seekers don’t—like resume gaps due to moving—so the practice of removing the guesswork surrounding what you want to do and what you are good at from your job hunt will help your career journey develop a bit smoother from the beginning. I’ll discuss more about self-evaluation and job-evaluation in later chapters.

Employers and Remote Work

Did you know that not all remote jobs allow you to work completely from home? In fact, the majority of remote jobs are actually a combination of at-home and in-office work. With at-home work, you’ll want to read between the lines on any job descriptions to determine the level of remote work that is being offered with that company. It is critical to know if any type of location requirement is listed in the job description, as this will mean needing to live within that local area or traveling to that area on a regular basis, which might not be possible for military spouses.

Why a Remote Job May Require In-Person Work

There are many different reasons why employers offering at-home jobs could still require certain geographic locations. These include:

Trainings or meetings in which the company needs onsite or ongoing training to take place in-person.

Clients. Remote workers may need to interface directly with clients for in-person meetings, troubleshooting, physical assessments, or sales calls.

Travel. Positions that require a significant amount of travel may need to be placed near a company’s main office or a specific airport to make travel more efficient or cost effective.

Taxes and insurance. Companies are registered to pay and collect taxes or provide employment-related insurance in certain locations. Registering in a new location for one remote employee can create a significant administrative burden, so some job descriptions will have specific US state residency requirements.

Legal reasons, such as government regulations, licensing requirements, or professional licensing certifications that require a person to perform duties on-site, in person, or within a certain locale.

Collaboration, equipment, or access to sensitive data. The nature of the work may require use of a laboratory, access to physical equipment or a manufacturing plant, or high levels of security not achievable in remote locations.

Terms Employers Use in Relation to Remote