Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

The best part about working from home, many telecommuters will probably agree, is the peace and quiet. You can stay in your jammies, rummage for lunch in your own fridge, and curl up on your couch with your Bluetooth and laptop, all while regular commuters toil through long lines at the subway, traffic congestion, smog, an endless supply of one-finger salutes, and a constant stream of people coming by your cube just to chat.

However, there are drawbacks to working from home. People may experience withdrawal symptoms from living apart from the daily working world, including feelings of depression, loneliness, and isolation. Also people feed off of and inspire each other when working in close quarters, which can bolster creativity and replenish our need for face-to-face connectivity.

Coworking has begun cropping up in metropolitan areas as a compromise between telecommuting and going to work. When you cowork, you share a space or a business with individuals who are like-minded or work in the same industry as yourself. The meeting place can be rented/purchased, or it can be a free space such as the library, a coffee shop, or perhaps a cozy nook in a book store.

Either way, coworking is fast-becoming a trend among independent workers. WebWorkerDaily, a GigaOM publication written by writers who cover the future of work in a post-Broadband world, have closely documented the appeal of coworking since its inception.

For those of you who are among the several thousand independent recruiters working in the U.S., coworking could be an option if you crave the company of others. It could also spark some healthy competition within your group. I found some tips for those who are looking to create a shared space:

1. join coworking@googlegroups.com
2. add your location to the wiki (name it CoworkingCity or CoworkingCityProvince)
3. blog about it
4. start hunting for others doing the same thing outside the coworking community
5. and if you find no one, bootstrap a location like a library or cafe until you build up enough interest to pay for your own space

Here are some pricing examples for those of you interested in starting a space of your own. Coworking doesn’t need to take place every day; for example, the coworking group in Orlando meet every Tuesday from 9-5 at a video and coffee store.

If any of you currently cowork and would like to share your experiences, good or bad, please share them below.

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