Remote Jobs at Kooku
I have been working remotely for Kooku Recruiting Partners since April. My parents shrug their shoulders soberly at this statement, while friends and acquaintances congratulate me in amazement. I want to share with you my experience, tell you what remote work is and how remote collaboration works.
What is a remote job?
You probably know them too, the stories of distant acquaintances and friends who pack up their laptops and travel the world. Then you see great pictures with tanned legs and laptop on your lap on the beach and you ask yourself with each of these pictures, “What kind of job does she have?” Remote work, i.e. working from anywhere, is one of the many manifestations of New Work, the increasing change in the labor market. While supervisors shook their heads at the topic of home offices ten years ago (and some still do today), some companies now offer the option of not having to come into the office at all. So you can combine a stay abroad, a change of residence or your couch at home with your work in a relaxed way. There are no limits to what you can do, as long as you manage your workload – and possibly stay in the time zone.
Remote Work: The Platform Makes the Difference
For me, this dream has become a reality this year. I live in Berlin, but since April I have been in Caen, France, a medium-sized city on the English Channel. I have a small office, continue to work for my clients from Germany, and since I only have a four-day week, I have enough time to enjoy the stay. This was made possible by Mathias, owner of Kooku. Kooku has knitted its service so that teams and colleagues can collaborate without being in the same place.
As
Interim Recruiter
we help our clients to find employees. Rarely can we do this alone; most of the time we need the help of our colleagues. Theoretically, the dream of working from abroad could already be over here. For many, cooperation, agreements and successes only work with a presence in the office, not just by e-mail. But with the necessary will and the right platform, this also works across city and state borders. The path to a company that functions even when no one is on site is still relatively new and solutions are not always obvious, but it is doable.
We decided to move all processes, communication and documentation to the cloud. To keep everyone informed, there are numerous reports; meetings are designed to keep them online. If everyone sticks to it consistently, there’s really nothing standing in the way of success. Trust in the employees is very important. In that everyone is doing their job. This includes, for example, transferring certain routines from everyday office life to the platform.
For example, if you start work in the morning, you may not make coffee for everyone first thing, but at least say “good morning” in the chat. Likewise, lunch breaks and closing time are announced. The result is that communication takes place, including and especially communication that not only concerns the job, but sometimes the weather on the other side of the world, the weekend trip to Omaha Beach or the food in Bali. Our platform on which all this takes place is “Teams” from Microsoft’s Office365 package, in addition to our email inbox. Here we can create projects, store files, share tasks, chat within projects, hold meetings and make phone calls.
Remote Work: the daily work routine
But what is it like to work remotely now? Unlike what my friends imagine, I do not sit on the beach, although it is not far away. I have a small office and share it with two French people. For me, it was clear from the start that I wouldn’t be able to work from home for half a year. So I get on my bike and ride across town. Unlike in the large coworking spaces in Berlin or Hamburg, I have my own space here and enough peace and quiet to work and make phone calls to applicants.
For our customers, working with someone who is not based on-site but works remotely is usually trouble-free. My colleagues in Berlin take care of the personal contact, so I can organize everything else by phone or webcam and take care of my customers. So it feels like just another job.
But what the work remote makes possible is to live abroad again for a while, to get to know something new, to gain distance and, in my specific case, to accompany my partner during her stay abroad. I didn’t want to get involved in turning our partnership into a long-distance relationship, even if only temporarily. So I came along to be with her. Nice side effect: Normandy is beautiful and we use the time here to discover it, learn French and meet many new people.
P.S.: Sometimes I also work in the garden. We rented a small house with lawn, terrace and carport. Unthinkable in Berlin.
