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2015: The Year of Questions

Each year end, I always look back at my blog posts and do a recap. Some years, I have commented on the most popular. Other years, I have commented on the ones you may have missed.  This year, I was looking back at the year in workforce development and I noticed a theme.  The year 2015 was a year of questions.
 
Of all the topics that I have covered in my time as a workforce development blogger, nothing has sparked more conversation, comments, and emails than when I just questioned the day to day business of life in workforce development land.  It seems that I am not the only one that asks questions in this industry. This year, I was just the reporter.
 
The best example of my questions, was a post from September 2015 called “Workforce Development 101: What to Call the People.” The conversation that this post sparked continued on for months past the post.  It seems that in each corner of workforce development land, in each program, there are so many different terms for the people. Interestingly enough, I still do not have resolution on the most popular term. I still agree with my post that “job seeker” seems to be the most universal and best term.
 
Next I tackled the question on trying to figure out the industry of workforce development in an October 2015 post called “Workforce Development 101: What Kind of Industry is it.”  This post commented on trying to explain the industry to people not in the industry. Again, looking at different sources, I found different ways to describe the industry, but decided on my own definition of “Workforce Development is a public-private hybrid industry that seeks to connect job seekers and hiring employers in order to grow the economy and its workforce.”

Finally, I questioned the way job seeking was completed. In my post, “Job or Company: Which Comes First” I proposed that for some job seekers it was better to find the company and then figure out the best position.  For job seekers that do not fit inside the traditional job seeker box, this was a way to flip things over and get another much needed view. Sometimes questioning the status quo opens up a whole new set of answers.

What I learned in 2015, was that the more that I questioned, the more I realized that I had the answers that I needed. Sometimes, it is not about right or wrong, but rather making sense of it all. If 2016 is anything like 2015, I expect there to be new adventures in workforce development land. With anything new, I would imagine there will be new questions, answers, and perspectives. For my readers, I wish for you the same. I wish for you new adventures, questions, answers, and perspectives. .

I can be reached by email at kcirincione@gmail.com, on Linked In at www.linkedin.com/in/karenjcirincione, or on Twitter @kcirincione. Have a happy and safe New Year! ~ Karen Cirincione   

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