The idea of Workforce Nomad has been rolling around in my head for some time. As I look back on my career, varied and broad, I begin to see the pieces come together to form something much greater than a first glance can comprehend. For a long time I felt frustrated with the seemingly disjointed turns my path has taken and even thought that I was heading nowhere slowly. I’ve always felt envy for the person who knew since an early age exactly what trajectory their career would take. How fantastic to be so good at and so obsessed with one thing that you don’t have to spend time wondering what you should be doing. I’m sure that is an idealized view and that everyone spends some time questioning their path, but having that one bright beacon to follow seems very enticing.
A short time ago I came to the realization that my path does have some consistencies in it. Over the years, (companies and roles) I have unintentionally developed a set of skills of which I am very proud. I could never have set out to do this on purpose but if I had known that I was collecting them I would have collected more. Putting the pieces of this puzzle together isn’t easy and if it isn’t easy for me it is even more difficult for the world of business, which counts on being able to put resumes in buckets. In business we spend so much time defining roles and then trying to find the person who fits into them that we frequently don’t know how to capitalize on the great people standing before us.
I wanted to start this blog to talk about issues facing people like me and the companies who hire or would like to hire people like me. How can a Workforce Nomad keep from becoming a Workforce Wanderer? How can a company tell the difference? How can we continue to grow in a world that insists we should fit in a bucket? And how can a company keep fantastic employees growing and contributing, which is why they hired that nomad in the first place.
