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A friend of mine recently shared with me her experience in searching for new part time employment. I was both impressed at her innovative approach and shocked by the lack of progressiveness from HR professionals and Recruitment Consultants.
My friend is a senior HR professional who brings years of experience and is a top operator. She, like many women, left the workforce briefly to have children and then returned to work part time, as she found that with two young children the only option was part time work. She successfully secured a part time job share HR Manager role and enjoyed the work and the people. The job share arrangement worked wonderfully as she and her colleague both brought a vast amount of experience, professionalism and commitment to the role. The arrangement was a huge success. Unfortunately, circumstances changed and they both had to secure new part time employment.
Given that they both worked so well together they decided to go into the market as a “full time package” and apply for full time HR Management positions. Interestingly, they found that this approach was not embraced with open arms, but rather was received negatively by HR professionals and Recruitment Consultants (who strangely enough were mostly women). The response by many was that it was too risky and would not work, even though it had worked successfully at their past employer.
So many organisations speak of being innovative and progressive, yet they fail to deliver on these statements. In this situation, like so many, it was the job seekers who brought the innovative approach to the table. Needless to say my friend and her colleague experienced a lot of rejection until finally they actually found an organisation that practised what they preached and quickly snapped up the dynamic HR duo.
I am so inspired by stories like these, where you see progress being made and businesses truly embracing the talent that is indeed out there. Unfortunately, as this story supports, there are just too many businesses aught up in the old way of thinking and operating when it comes to sourcing and retaining talent.
If you have any job search stories where you have adopted a non-traditional approach I would love to hear about it.