I got an email last week from someone who asked me a question I didn’t know the answer to, so I thought I would throw it out to the readers to see if any of you have any insights.
The Ph.D. who asked me this question has, since graduating, worked as an adjunct/sessional teacher. Though she has an impressive CV, her decision to live near her family has limited her ability to apply for jobs far from home. As a result, she is considering leaving academia. But, she writes:
I have a pretty big obstacle standing between me and the Outside World: I have a hidden physical disability that makes going into a workplace five days a week impossible. College teaching, on its every-other-day class schedule, allowed me to excel at my job without becoming ill or having to say “no” to employers’ expectations.
I had tried other professions before grad school, and despite good health care and a stabilized condition, I couldn’t work within the 9 to 5, Monday to Friday parameters. Are there job placement offices or career advisors for a situation like this, and how do I find them?
I told the reader I knew of no particular career resources for people with disabilities. All I could suggest was the obvious, which she had already looked into (you know, the campus career centre, the office for persons with disabilities). So the first question to you, the readers, is whether anyone knows of job offices or career advisors who specialize in persons with disabilities.
Our email conversation then moved on to trying to identify forms of work that don’t involve the 9 to 5 life. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), a movement towards flexible labour (read: part-time, contract, home-based, etc.) is the way the job market appears to be going these days. Isn’t that what Time Magazine just said?
The help-seeker said she had tried consulting and entrepreneurial enterprises when she was younger, but her health and the trials of job searching has made it difficult to cobble together the work that being self-employed requires. Moreover, she likes working with and for people. She also said:
I just wish I could simply show up at a stable, humane place and “serve.” You know what I mean?
Reading this, my suggestion was for her to
Pinpoint some organizations that are in need of people showing up and serving, and see if you’d be interested in working for them. If you made some cold calls (gulp!) and did some information interviews, you could find out from people what kind of flexibility those organizations offer (like telecommuting). If you found work with a place that let you work part of the time at home, perhaps that would be a way for you to manage your disability.
When she replied, she said she’d like to first know more about what kinds of industries have flexible scheduling and hire Ph.D.s. These are, of course, two different questions. Here’s my take on the first.
Some job ads will actually specify that some of the work is done virtually, aka, no need to come into the office; you interface with co-workers and/or clients from home via the web. I actually just helped a client write a resume and cover letter for a job in Washington that stated that much of the work was done virtually. So it’s a good idea to keep an eye open for language like that (”flex-time available,” “virtual work environment,” stuff like that) when you’re scanning job ads.
But in some cases, that kind of working arrangement is negotiated between an employer and employee. Sometimes this negotiation will happen once you’re already working for a company or organization. When my crack I.T. team was still working for the big I.T. company, he had orchestrated a routine work-from-home arrangement. A friend of mine who’s a former academic works in an office in the recruitment sector, and she has been able to make occasional arrangements to work from home; she also gets Friday afternoons off in the summer time.
But in other cases, it can happen prior to even starting the job. I have a friend, for example, who negotiated a 4-day work week with her previous two employers. She did this simply because she hates the 5-day work week; she is a more efficient and happy worker at 4 days. The negotiation occurred when the job offer was in hand and they had gotten down to salary negotiations. With the first job, she ended up actually working the equivalent of a 5-day week because of the time she put in on the weekends. With her current position, though, her 4-day week is actually a 4-day week.
So to answer the first question (who offers flexible arrangements?), my take is: potentially anyone, if you ask them at the right time and in the right way (by “the right way,” I mean, “by spinning it to their advantage,” in terms of lower costs, increased efficiency, etc.). On this, I’m going to quote from that Time magazine article:
More and more, companies are searching for creative ways to save – by experimenting with reduced hours or unpaid furloughs or asking employees to move laterally.
At Deloitte, each employee’s lattice is nailed together during twice-a-year evaluations focused not just on career targets but also on larger life goals. An employee can request to do more or less travel or client service, say, or to move laterally into a new role – changes that may or may not come with a pay cut. Deloitte’s data from 2008 suggest that about 10% of employees choose to “dial up” or “dial down” at any given time. Deloitte’s Mass Career Customization (MCC) program began as a way to keep talented women in the workforce, but it has quickly become clear that women are not the only ones seeking flexibility. Responding to millennials demanding better work-life balance, young parents needing time to share child-care duties and boomers looking to ease gradually toward retirement, Deloitte is scheduled to roll out MCC to all 42,000 U.S. employees by May 2010. Deloitte executives are in talks with more than 80 companies working on similar programs.
…The recession provides an incentive for companies to design more lattice-oriented careers. Studies show telecommuting, for instance, can help businesses cut real estate costs 20% and payroll 10%.
To me, the task of finding work that interests you and uses your skills is about seeking out (or, the case of entrepreneurship, creating) that work specifically. While you are at the research stage, it is useful to know who hires Ph.D.s (and you can start with this list here). But the fact of the matter is that there are ABDs and Ph.D.s everywhere, in every sector, at every pay scale. Thousands of people earn Ph.D.s and don’t get tenure track positions. They scatter to places that interest them. So that’s why I urge people to do the same: look for work in fields that interest you. Then find out (through applying, networking, information interviews, studying the web site, etc.) whether or not particular organizations can cater to your needs (physical, emotional, mental, geographical), etc.
What kind of requirements do you have of a post-academic job? What steps have you taken to ensure those needs are met? And what companies have you found hire Ph.D.s?
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An excellent resource might be the DS-HUM listserv. Although it does center around academic discussions relating to disability, I suspect many on the list have had experience seeking accommodating postacademic employment.