Mumsnet Talk

Oooh some more posts, coming back to thread after a couple of days. Thanks everyone. Very helpful.

On 'proper' job share: actually we have a job share in the organisation (not in my dept) which seems to be working very well, although the sharers knew each other already I think (I must check this). I might feel less certain about recruiting to a job share cold (ie the candidates don't know each other) in case the two didn't get on. Obviously there's an important role for the manager here, but still ...

CIPR group on LinkedIn - I must take a look, I don't think I'm in this. Thanks for the tip.

Bling - just checking I understand what you're meaning - yes comms and marketing are different but I'd pretty much expect both sides to have a measure of knowledge and experience using digital channels in their different areas of work. Now I put it like that does this sound recognisable to you?

Hmo2b- I'm in West Sussex and will happily take the other two days

Personally, if a job like this came up in West Sussex I would go for it. I have been working for 6 years at the same company, just back from maternity leave and am working virtually full time as my boss will not even consider a job share or major reduction in hours. I would love a 3-day week job in PR/comms and know at least one or two friends who would too. Excellent idea.

There have been a few conversations on the CIPR group in LinkedIn about this lately - or rather about flexible hours and that sort of thing. I think you'd probably get people who were keen, and you'd do better through bring able to recruit two specialists.

I think you would get a lot of interest but you may need to bear in mind that pro-rata pay would not be that high so might not be worth it. But really, this is the holy grail

Also, I would consider making it a proper job share so the two are well positioned to cover each other.

Finally, pedantic point : lots of people would not consider marketing and digital PR. it would be marketing or comms.

I spend much of my time each week looking for such roles (am based in Sussex so big London commute not worth it for p/t only) - so I would definitely recommend this to your boss and wish more employers did this!

Someone helpfully PM-ed me about this, which was good. So if you have a view which is unprintable on main board please do PM me - much appreciated.

Timewise - yes. But an agency advertising part-time jobs has an interest in telling me that the p-t route will work, right?

I think potentially there could be - but you need to advertise in the right places to find them - I have mentioned them a lot recently -I promise only satisfied client but have you come across Timewise jobs they advertise lots of part time roles -

I'm not sure I'm allowed to post this sort of thing, MN may be along in a minute to tell me off but ...

... I want to recommend to my big boss that instead of trying to recruit one full-time PR post to cover a lot of bases, we split a new proposed post in two and look for two part-timers who have complementary skills eg 1 x internal comms, 1 x marketing (or something of that sort), both with at least a bit of digital experience. This would probably look like 3 days a week each, although could also potentially be school hours, I'm agnostic on this. It's based Home Counties (I won't say where) in the sort of place that MNers would move to if they wanted to leave London. Salary would be £30-£40K pro rata based on experience (I think, without checking the existing job description). Public sector-y.

So ... although I think there ought to be a whole raft of good applicants out there who would be interested in a part-time post like this, when they may not be interested in a full-time one, I don't have any real evidence that this is the case (bar all the articles in the paper saying parents with the option would like to work part time). So I'm asking the question here, to see what you all think.