Virtual Vocations–There’s No Place Like Home

For those who haven’t quite come to grips with the fact that work is changing (forever), perhaps this blog post will change your point of view.

Virtual Vocations has 2239 open positions posted.  This list consists of jobs that companies are hiring where employees will work from home:

• VP Engineering
• HL7 Integration/Interface Engineers
• Software Engineers
• Contract Administrators
• Instructional Designers
• Virtual Assistants
• Swimwear and Toy Designers
• Seamstresses

There are other openings for positions that are traditionally done remotely like technical recruiters, writers/bloggers/editors, animators/graphic designers, bookkeepers and translators.

As organizations look to be more nimble and respond to changing customer requirements quickly, virtual teams are needed to come together to meet these new and demanding schedules. How companies find, recruit, provide remote work tools for and pay the talent they need is going to be a big challenge. And for those of us who have the specialized skills that are needed, we will need to make ourselves known to these employers.

Flexibility, outstanding communication, updated skills and the ability to adapt are critical to being successful in the evolving world of work.  And the best news is; we’re more likely to be able to attend our kids ball games, concerts and parent teacher conferences.

Work As Collaboration – Freelancers Please Apply

I’ve already had three careers. I was a foreign language teacher, then I was an information consultant and now I work  in marketing. These changes were my choice and a natural progression of my interests.

For many of us, the way we have worked in the past has changed. Most of us will no longer work for one employer for a lifetime; we’ll need to act as freelancers who ‘market’ their skills to organizations who pay to get work done.

For employers, the economics of this might make sense but how can they be sure that their ad hoc work team has the right skills? How do they compensate them?

For workers, how will we keep our skills up to date? How will we get benefits? How will employers find us? What skills will we need to negotiate our new contracts? These are just a few of the questions that we and the next generation of workers will need to face.

Technology is enabling new ways of working together. Google Wave, cloud computing, Google docs and Basecamp are just a few examples of current tools that are changing the way we work.

Sure there still will be plenty of ‘regular’ jobs, but it’s worthwhile for all of us to think about what we will need to do to rise to this challenge. Entrepreneurs have a golden opportunity to create the tools for the coming freelance boom.

For more thoughts about the changing nature of work check out, Predictions for 2010: Five Changes in the Way We Work. I’m looking forward to hearing what you think.