My wife has an interview tomorrow. It’s some kind of internet editing, and she’s done some freelance stuff for this company before working on-line from home. The main obstacle I see is that my wife is back in school and has classes all day Tuesdays. Her friend who works for the company and helped her get the interview told us that there are several people in the office who work four 10-hour days so it shouldn’t be a problem for my wife to do the same.
How/when should she mention this in the interview? Is that something you don’t mention until they’ve made an offer?
When she gets to the part where the interviewer asks, “Do you have any questions?” then her main question is : Does this organization offer a flexible scheduling policy? How much does it matter exactly which 40 hours I work?
Through the process of the interview, she should be getting a good idea of workflow and how appropriate that question is. Sometimes, within the same company, one department can be really flexible about your work hours while another requires phone coverage during certain peak hours, or an on-site person to be the front line/first response for customers. Just because someone who works there says “Oh yeah, 4 ten-hour days should be no problem” that doesn’t mean that’s a universal policy for everyone. It could mean that person’s boss thinks it’s just fine in her or his department; it may not apply company-wide.
A flexible work week may also not be allowed during the probationary period. Where I work, our department offers flexibility,depending on the needs and responsibilities of your particular position/projects, but flexible hours are not allowed until after the 6-month probationary period.
For something that specific and potentially thorny, I’d wait until the 2nd interview/offer to bring it up. First interviews IME are where an interviewer is looking both for reasons to hire and NOT to hire you. Too easy to get shitcanned over a “I need every Tuesday off” request, even though it isn’t completely out of the question. You want to make it past that first hurdle before bringing up your own particular oddities.
I’m not entirely convinced of this. It’s been quite a while since I’ve really hired anyone, but needing one day off every single week is a pretty big thing to wait to bring up until an offer is made. I could see someone getting very irritated that it wasn’t brought up earlier, wondering what else this potential employee is deciding to keep to themselves, and deciding that they’ll find someone else who really does want to work full time. This could be even worse if she’s going from freelancing to working full-time for this company, as there might already be concerns about her ability and desire to work full-time. I think bringing up schedules fairly early in the process is probably better than waiting. Remember, they already know what she can do, so it’s going to be about fit and logisitics, etc.
I work four tens and I like it. I waited until the offer was made to ask. I think asking too soon can make you seem like a potential pain in the ass or not committed to the job. Once they’ve decided on you, I figure they’re going to be a little more charitable in how they respond to such a request.