Meet Our Team: Director of Candidate Experience

How many hours have you spent scrubbing job boards, searching for ‘remote’ positions in a sea of open-plan offices and 2-hour commutes? Is your inbox full of new job listing alerts that are barely relevant to your experience, skills, and interests? Have you invested hours writing, then triple-checking a custom cover letter, only to be left wondering if a human will ever read it?

After I left my last position as executive director of an international nonprofit where I led searches to build our remote team, I found myself on the other side of the tedious search for a perfect “match.” In my prior role, I would receive 100+ submissions for a remote position and spend hours in our applicant tracking system reading full-page cover letters and generating regret emails for 99% of the candidates. It was laborious, impersonal, and inefficient. As a candidate newly on the job market after more than a decade, I was frustrated by how much effort I put into my own cover letters only to often not even receive a confirmation it was received!

There is a better way.

Luckily, my search turned up acework, both as a potential job and a solution to the job application game (that’s what it can feel like sometimes). I was excited to learn about acework’s vision to disrupt the remote job search marketplace by eliminating time-consuming cover letters and providing a platform for vetted companies and candidates to match with one another based on their alignment and availability. How refreshing!

As an employer and applicant, the candidate experience is something I highly value. Luckily, acework does too. As Director of Candidate Experience, I make sure our platform is your preferred source for securing meaningful professional remote work reliably, quickly, and easily. We carefully vet and select all our partner companies and candidates, since we don’t want to waste anyone’s time by serving up irrelevant job postings.

Upon registering on the acework site as a candidate, we will jump on a quick video call together to say Hello and make sure everything checks out as “remote ready!” Making this personal connection is an exciting part of my day, one that opens the door for ongoing feedback on how our process is working (or not) for you. I want to know!

During my recent job search, I only considered remote roles. After working partially-remote for more than nine years and full-time for the last two, I just could not go back to working in a traditional office every day. When a winter blizzard is unleashing more than a foot of snow outside my home in Maine, USA, I am grateful for the ability forego the treacherous commute and remain safe, connected, and productive all day. When our fleeting summer finally arrives (basically July-August), I cherish the flexibility to grab my pup for mid-afternoon mushroom foraging in the forest and later settle in to deep work once the sun has set. While I primarily work from my home office, I’m also a regular at a few local cafes, local parks, and our beautiful light-filled library. For a total change of scenery, my family passionately takes to the road in search of high adventure in our renovated 1972 Shasta Starflyte camper, which works quite comfortably as a mobile office.

Our small team here at acework are all inspired advocates of remote-work. I hope that as a candidate, your experience on the acework platform will lead you to your dream remote job, where you can do your best work while living your best life. I am looking forward to meeting you when you register for acework. Let’s start a conversation!

Renée Johnson

Director of Candidate Experience

My vintage Shasta is both the perfect place to both disconnect, and also connect more deeply. Finch is always by my side, making sure things don’t get too boring.
My home office in Bangor, Maine. Currently listening to Fkj & Masego – Tadow and reading A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger.

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Remote Readiness helps all teams work better

Are you remote ready?

We developed a unique soft skills assessment to vet for remote readiness, and have screened hundreds of candidates based on it. We screen for intrinsic motivation, organisational skills and independence, among others.

Assess your remote readiness with this free, remote-ready checklist, that we created for individuals working or looking to work remotely. The checklist includes essentials such as:

  1. Reliable, high-speed internet connectivity
  2. Appropriate video conferencing hardware
  3. Experience with current productivity tools… and 13 other expert tips to help you assess your remote readiness.

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