Considering a job share - could this work?

[frazzledgirl]

I'm currently FT, but working three days at home to spend more time with 18-month-old DS. I really appreciate the flexibility, but TBH hate working at home.

I also like my job, but been in it more than three years and ready for something more challenging - although I don't want to spend less time with DS.

So. There's a woman in my office who also has young DCs and is in a jobshare which for various reasons isn't working out. We have discussed the possibility of looking for a shared promotion. We work in the same field, but are specialists in different areas. We'd both want to do three days a week, one of which would be together IYSWIM.

It's perfectly possible that we'd find a management vacancy which called for both of our specialisms - in fact, it's rare for one person to be experienced in both, so might even be a selling point - but do you think employers would be OK with the skills being divided in that way? It's not rocket science, we could learn from each other as time went on.

Any thoughts v much appreciated.

I think the main issue wouild be that you both want to do 3 days per week - so 6 days in total which would obviously cost an employer 20% more than one full time person! Maybe 2.5 days each would make the proposal easier to sell?

What sort of area do you want to work in? Public or private sector for example.

Public sector communications, and it seems to be fairly common to have jobshares doing six days between them - I know of a couple, anyway.