Professional Part Time Work
A few weeks ago, Rita Arens wrote an excellent post on BlogHer titled, Where Will We Ever Find Part-Time, Professional Work? where she examines the difficulties of finding meaningful, professional work requiring less than 40 hours a week.
Though there are some jobs in medicine and nursing, they are not common in other areas.
There’s a pervasive attitude that part-time work isn’t “real” work in some areas, and, from an employers perspective, it can be (but, not always) more expensive to have more employees working fewer hours.
Though I’ve not been in the position of asking an employer for reduced hours, I know it’s not easy.
How about you? What has been your experience in part-time professional work?
Tags: blogher, Career and Kids, professional-part-time-work, Rita-Arens, working-mothersRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Career Change
5 opinions for Professional Part Time Work
Loth
Nov 28, 2007 at 2:45 am
Well, being a lawyer I tend to find judges react really badly to you walking out of court part way through a hearing. So part-time working has just never been an option for me.
Bluegrass Mama
Nov 28, 2007 at 6:08 am
I was fortunate enough after my son’s birth to return to my job on a part-time basis. I worked in the corporate office of a large insurance company. I worked 20 hours a week, going in 2 and a half days (figuring if I had to go in every day I might as well work full-time). It worked very well for a couple of years and I even received compliments from executives saying I did as much work as a lot of full-timers. Then I got a new boss who seemed to feel that he had to be very careful in what kind of projects he assigned to a part-timer. I ending up quitting for a number of reasons, one of them being sheer boredom.
I returned to work part-time in 2000, but have eschewed returning to the regular corporate world. I’m basically an administrative assistant for someone who works out of an office in his home. It’s not what I would consider professional work, but it pays a lot better than most part-time jobs and I can do a lot of the work from my own home.
DBN
Nov 28, 2007 at 2:23 pm
I’m in the same boat as Loth. Its a nice theory for us, but not really reality I don’t think. I read where people make it work, but not in a small firm in small town America.
DJ Nelson
Nov 29, 2007 at 1:53 pm
I have a cousin who works in HR 5 days a week but it’s only 6 hours per day. My mom works 4 days a week at a hospital. I think the options are there but it’s hard to come by. You really have to get out and look for it or decide to create your own opportunities.
Pete Aldin
Nov 30, 2007 at 12:06 pm
When I injured my back several years ago (and occasionally now when my business goes through a lull), part-time work kept us alive. It simply has become a matter of determining what are your marketable skills, who needs them, and how can you offer them on a part-time basis. In Australia there are personnel agencies who find placements for you…
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