Dear Colleagues
We've gotten had many great questions raised in our Social Change Career Helping Line this week (and discussions, answers, ethical reflections). Please check us out, share with others and participate.
One question that just came in is how can one find jobs that allow one to travel and work remotely of change?
We will be doing a full blog post or two about this on PCDN as part of our Career Series in the fall. But here are some quick thoughts (please join in the conversation in our Helpling Line)
It is important to know in general the world of work is changing radically for many people in the world. There are both positives and negatives to this. The concept of stable full-time and permanent employment (with benefits) unfortunately is becoming less common for many. Increasingly positions are becoming short-term and contract (see this post I wrote for our career series on preparing for your dream job where I discuss trends). There are many reasons for this change at the global and local level and this will present incredible challenges for the global workforce.
A positive aspect is that for many young people, they are becoming the stewards of their own career and this gives them flexibility (of course combined with great uncertainty financially and benefits wise in many cases) where they are putting together a diverse set of skills and building their own careers as freelancers, contractors or working short term. It used to be switching jobs frequently was viewed as negative thing, but it is becoming more frequent. An increasing number of people are also becoming location independent and working as "digital nomads" where they have no permanent residence but float around the world to different spots (it is important to stress one generally has to have the financial means to do this and also the "right" passport so I don't want to overglamorize this).
But I've friends who realized how much they are paying for rent in expensive cities such as DC or NY and chosen to give up their place and made the calculation that they can live better and much cheaper in other places (often without a permanent residence). They may have a set of skills (or a full-time job) they can do anywhere with good internet access. Many of these jobs are more focused on tech but not all (and some do cross into social change). A few resources include:
Teleport a great free resource for exploring/finding the ideal city to live in the world based on criteria one can customize.
Some organizations that work in change are very open to people working from anywhere, but others are still quite reluctant to do this. Many development organizations will have staff work a few years in one location and then you can move to another country.
What are are some of your resources/suggestions and experiences working for change globally?
