Asking for part-time in an interview for a full-time position

[AnyDream]

Many places offer flexible working arrangements after a minimum qualifying time - so depending on how bad you want the job, you may need to commit to FT work before you are in a position to negotiate.

Be honest about being interested in flexible arrangements if they ask you directly, but I wouldn't advertise it in the interview unless it comes up. But you need to think about this and be prepared, because if you're not and you're sitting there feeling conflicted, this will show up in your body language and (if they're good) they will know something isn't quite right.

[wysiwyg]

I haven't had a job yet that has been advertised as part-time - but I am on my 5th part-time contract post kids. I have always been upfront and specified prior to interview. I couldn't sit there myself and not declare it - unless I was prepared to do full time and just hoping for part time - if I was not prepared to do full-time I would always declare up front.

This may be very industry dependent but I do think that while people haven't always thought about the possibility of part-time, if they would be put off by you declaring part-time in the interview or prior then they also aren't the sort of job that would be happy with you just declaring part-time when they offer you the position.

I always think what if I was them - what would I think and I really would not like part-time being sprung on me upon an offer, but I would be quite open to part-time if suggested. Having seen how job adverts are compiled at several places they don't always think that much about them - e.g. default is full-time they don't even think about whether could be part-time until a candidate they like (either from CV or interview) presents the idea to them - the exception here I think is government, council, university positions - which seem to be quite well thought out and defined.

In one interview it turned out that although they had advertised full-time, part-time actually suited them better. In the most recent one, they actually reshuffled the team because the original role had travel at a time when DH was also travelling and we were able to discuss this all in the interview (I had also outlined the position prior to interview).