My dream job has come up locally - not sure how it would work with home life.

[TeaSqueezingpos]

Should I still apply and just see?
I’m worried I’m going to get my hopes up.

I’ve been thinking about going back to full time for a little while. I currently work 10 hours a week at a school.

Years ago, I wanted to get into weddings and events.. but I had no idea how and living rurally not much ever came up that was a reasonable distance to travel. But today a job has come up 15 minutes away from me. It’s a wedding coordinator - I don’t have much experience of wedding planning, other than my own wedding a few years back. But I do have a ton of people-facing, customer facing and under-pressure work experience.

I’m also unsure how it would work around home life. I have a husband who works 8-6 mon-fri and two children who need to get too and from school.

it’s working from home, other than to attend the weddings, meetings, viewing ect.

is there any point in me applying? I desperately would love it.. but if I apply and get invited to interview, then offered the job I feel like I’m going to be disheartened when it doesn’t work around my family. 😭

Apply and you can make decisions if or when you need to. I have a friend who when she sees a job she wants does this, she does all the weighing up and tells us all about each job application and what she's wearing to the interview (she never takes our advice on board anyway despite 1 of us being a recruitment expert and 1 being a recruiter in her specific field) and then there's the massive crash after she doesn't get the job. Thankfully, she finally did manage to nail one she was gagging for but it was exhausting!

A few things I've thought from what you've said:

• weddings will mean some evenings (to meet couples) and some weekends (to be present at events), this might appeal to you and it could work well
• it's from home most of the time, which could work well if they're happy to be flexible to allow you to still to school drop offs in the morning. depending on their age, they could be in the house while you work after school or you have to sort some after school childcare.
• your previous experience sounds great for the customer service side and dealing with pressure but one key area I think you'll need to evidence and have a think about is event planning and project management. I've recently recruited someone for an events role and the people who did the best in interview were the ones who understood and could communicate the timelines and considerations for an event (could be a conference, a show, a wedding, whatever)
• I love that you sound passionate about the job and the location. Which is fabulous. The area I've seen most promising people fall down in interviews in various organisations and projects is when they've not done the research about the organisation who they'll be working with. I've sat in an interview where someone's said "I loved x because it did y innovatively, it's such a good idea" and I was like "why haven't they mentioned that the company that's interviewing them is the leader in Y?!" They sat there and told this company how to suck eggs when they created egg sucking, advocate for it and train others in it. Wild! So your local knowledge about what makes this venue and location unique and why their vision and values match yours are what makes me really hope you throw your hat in the ring.

Look, it's an opportunity to brush up your application skills, maybe hopefully get some interview experience.

I've gone for jobs when I've known I'm not the perfect fit for a role but I really want to work for that organisation and TWICE in different decades of my life it's ended up with them going "you're not experienced enough for that role but we're looking for someone to do this other role and no one we interviewed for it was as good a fit as you" - I did the other job and ended up in the role I'd initially interviewed for but a couple of years later. The other was me going "I know I've not got experience with this specific thing but I'm available for 2 days a week around my other job and I bring x, y, z to you and I love what you're doing." to which they went "you're right, this isn't the job for you but we're in the middle of applying for funding for a (better) post which you'll be perfect for" and in a couple of months I ended up in that really cool role. I've waffled on to make the point that you've got to put yourself out there, take some chances, be a bit vulnerable but also be yourself. If you're not the best fit, that's their loss!

Almost no applicant ever has every single aspect of a job advert covered 100%. The important thing is first to get your application in. If the timeline is generous enough to allow for an informal chat, use that to tailor your CV and application. Once that's done, then you can think about whether you could make it work. Is the increase in salary enough to compensate for the loss of weekend time with your family and able to fund additional childcare? There's always lots to think about but it's not a waste of time to apply.

This sounds like a great opportunity and you may as well be 100% optimistic about it at the moment.
I would offer them that you work 9-6 on a Saturday every Saturday and shorter weekdays. That makes you permanently available for the weddings, which must be an advantage to them.

Your husband is entitled to request flexible working. What do single parents do if they work for his employer?