如果你依然認為兼職工作主要是煎漢堡或者沃爾瑪門童之流,那你就過時了。職業網站FlexJobs.com最近調查了涵蓋5.1萬名雇主的數據庫,并得到了一份今年一季度發布兼職崗位最多的50家企業清單。上榜雇主不乏知名的蘋果、CVS Health、TD Ameritrade、美國紅十字會以及美國司法部。它們尋找的是擁有各類技能的人員,從金融和會計一直到醫療管理和社交媒體品牌,只要是人們叫得出名的崗位,它們都需要。 這是一個大趨勢的一部分。美國勞工統計局將兼職工作定義為每周工作不超過35小時。它指出,總的來說,美國從事兼職工作的人數在過去10年中保持在較為平穩的水平。如今的區別在于,過去很大一部分兼職人員在勞工統計局調查中稱,他們從事兼職工作的原因是因為無法找到全職工作。作為對比,當前從事兼職工作的人越來越多,原因在于他們希望如此。目前,全美有2200萬兼職雇員,其中僅有約300萬是“非自愿的”,也就意味著其他1900萬都是自愿的。 在當今的工作市場,鑒于失業率已經降至49年的新低,而就業機會也已經連續101個月(仍然在繼續)增長。我們并不難理解,為什么各大公司寧愿招聘兼職員工而不是讓之前的全職崗位空著。FlexJobs的資深職業專家布里耶·雷諾茲表示:“雇主看到,基于各種原因,優秀的天才可能不愿意或無法從事全職工作。招聘兼職人員對于初創企業和小型企業來說也是一個不錯的選擇,此舉在提供更多團隊成員的同時還可以讓公司以低廉的成本保持增長。” 雖然有限的工作時長必然會導致薪資(有時候還包括福利)的下降,但依然受到了求職者的青睞,其原因也不用多做說明。全職工作,尤其是智能手機讓很多人處于全天候的待命狀態,往往會沖掉陪伴家人的時光、從事副業的時間,或任何其他主要的業余愛好,例如參加奧林匹克鐵人三項團隊培訓。縮短工作時間,并將更多的時間和精力投入其他活動,這個理念聽起來頗有吸引力。 需要注意的是:兼職工作,哪怕只是從事聊聊數年的光陰,可能會對自身長遠的職業道路造成不利影響,這一點對于男性來說更是如此。2016年,在斯坦福大學教授社會學的大衛·裴杜拉發布了一項調查,其中,他共計向1210個真實的工作崗位提交了2420份虛構求職申請,這些工作遍布美國五大城市。隨后他跟蹤了雇主對每份申請的反饋。每一位虛擬求職者都于同一年畢業,年齡在30歲左右,擁有6年的所在行業工作經驗。各份簡歷的唯一區別在于性別以及是否存在兼職工作經驗。 裴杜拉發現,首先,雇主對于半數虛構求職信毫無反饋,這一點與性別以及是否從事過兼職工作無關。對于男性求職者來說,雇主回復率甚至不到50%。其次,在裴杜拉和他的團隊跟蹤其中的903名收到此類虛構求職信的招聘經理之后,他們發現,這些經理認為,對比那些在職業生涯中一直從事全職工作的員工,有兼職經驗的男士“能力較差”,而且“不夠投入”。奇怪的是,在這些經理眼中,擁有同樣工作經歷的女性只是“能力較差”,但不能說“不夠投入”。該調查在總結中指出,“兼職工作會嚴重損害工作前景”,對于男性而言尤為如此。 當然,這只是一家之言罷了,而且其結論可能也不再適用,因為越來越多的公司都難以找到他們所需要的人才。然而,對于那些最終打算在隨后步入全職工作的人士來說,我們有必要記住這一點。(財富中文網) 譯者:馮豐 審校:夏林 |
If you still picture part-time gigs as mainly the burger-flipping or Walmart-greeting variety, think again. Career site FlexJobs.com recently dug into its database of 51,000 employers and came up with a list of the 50 that posted the most part-time listings in the first quarter of this year. Among the top 50 are well-known outfits like Apple, CVS Health, TD Ameritrade, the American Red Cross, and the U.S. Department of Commerce. They’re looking for people with all kinds of skills, from finance and accounting, to medical administration, to social media branding, to just about anything else you could name. That’s part of a bigger trend. Overall, the number of people working part time in the U.S. has stayed fairly steady for the past decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which defines part time as 35 hours or less per week. The difference now is that a huge proportion of part-timers used to report in BLS surveys that they were working part time because they couldn’t find full-time jobs. These days, by contrast, many more people are working part time because they want to. Of the the 22 million part-time employees across the country right now, only about 3 million are “involuntary”—suggesting that the other 19 million are working limited hours by choice. In this job market, with unemployment at a 49-year low and job creation on the rise for 101 straight months (and counting), it’s not hard to see why companies would rather hire someone part time than leave a formerly full-time job unfilled. “Employers understand that, for a wide range of reasons, great talent may not be willing or able to work full time,” notes Brie Reynolds, senior career specialist at FlexJobs. “Part-time jobs are also a great way for startups and small companies to bring on additional team members, so they can keep growing while keeping their costs low.” As for why limited schedules appeal to job seekers, despite the inevitable drop in pay (and sometimes benefits), that hardly needs saying. Full-time work, especially now that smartphones keep many people on call 24/7, often cancels out time for a family, or a side business, or any other major outside commitment like, say, training for the Olympic triathlon team. The idea of putting in fewer hours at work, and having more time and energy for everything else, sounds great. Just one note of caution: Working part time, even for just a few years, might throw your career off-track over the long run—especially if you’re male. In 2016, David Pedulla, who teaches sociology at Stanford, published a study wherein he submitted 2,420 fictitious applications for 1,210 real job openings in five U.S. cities, and then tracked employers’ responses to each one. Every hypothetical applicant had graduated from college in the same year, was around age 30, and listed six years of experience in his or her field. The only differences among the resumes were gender and a spell of part-time work. Pedulla found that, first, employers didn’t respond at all to about half of the hypothetical candidates, male or female, who had part-time jobs on their resumes. For men, the response rate was even less than half. And second, when Pedulla and his team followed up with 903 of the hiring managers who had received those made-up CVs, it turned out that the managers viewed men who had held part-time jobs as both “less competent” and “less committed” than candidates who had been employed full time for their whole careers. Oddly, those managers saw women with the same employment histories as less competent, but no less committed. The study concluded that “part-time work severely hurts the job prospects of men” in particular. Of course, that’s only one study, and its findings may no longer apply as more and more companies struggle to find the talent they need. Still, it’s worth keeping in mind—especially if your ultimate plan is to step back into a full-time job later. |