"previous colleague" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to refer to someone you have worked with in the past. For example, "I was surprised to hear that my previous colleague had been promoted to a director position."
At the heart of the film is a friendship, between this abrasive, driven woman, whom a previous colleague described as more frightening than the war they were reporting on, and the laconic, seemingly unflappable Conroy.
Instead, the panel was a miasma of what I called "insiders, former insiders, and a previous colleague of the president's".
As some have pointed out in recent days, the group is instead a slurry of insiders, former insiders, and a previous colleague of the president's.
The panel was stacked with, as I reported in late August, "a slurry of insiders, former insiders, and a previous colleague of the president".
Referred candidates are confident that their friend or previous colleague wouldn't put them up for a job at a company with low morale or unclear goals.
– Mr President, unlike the previous colleague who spoke, I do not own my own power station, but I do own a very old house – an 1840s house – and it is a wonderful house.
When you get the job, your new colleagues use an app to see how previous colleagues have reviewed you.
He destroys his previous colleagues with a barrage of homophobic slurs, and makes an antisemitic comment about Heller.
It wouldn't be sad, we wouldn't all be feeling like this, if you guys were up to your neck in it, like previous colleagues".
Within days, however, he was calling to "make Germany pay", had turned on his previous colleagues, questioning their support for the coalition and introducing the fateful list of approved "coupon" candidates.
or informal, based on personal contacts such as friends, family, previous colleagues, etc. (Pyka 2011).
