I haven’t got all day: A mum’s search for a flexible content design role
Part 1: Background
What is this?
- It’s a diary of my efforts to find a flexible content design role, because I have two young children.
- It’s solidarity with others who feel like I do. Who have been tagged with a piece of data that screens them out of job opportunities. A negative marker, incompatible with career growth.
What this isn’t:
- A retrospective. I haven’t landed a role yet. This could be the antidote to survivor bias — a story of someone who doesn’t make it. You’re joining me real time.
- Career advice. I need it. I’m not here to give it. I’ll tell you what I’m doing, and we’ll see if those turn out to be good choices.
Now for some background
As a kid, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up.
When I enrolled in university at 17, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up.
When I graduated in 2009 with an arts degree, I still didn’t know, but I was grown up, so I had to do something.
You can tell how lost (or curious?) I was for those 3.5 years, because I’d taken 9 papers more than I needed to graduate with a B.A.
After uni, I moved in with my boyfriend. I needed a job. My first permanent job was (to present-day me, a very desirable) 20 hours a week as an editorial assistant for a food magazine. I also worked a 4-day week for the same company years later in a different role. Print journalism was in trouble — these were the days when flexibility would only flow one way.
A near-redundancy moved me into digital marketing. The digital part has stuck, but marketing always felt deeply at odds with my personality. It was another 7 years before I discovered what I wanted to do. My husband was a UX designer and there were these people called UX writers who did the words. A potential career that blended writing with research and psychology? That puts people first? It sounded like a dream. I could really do some good.
Here’s the problem
I was 10 years on from high school before I figured this out. I spent two more years taking advantage of opportunities to flex my UX interests in my day job. And then I was 29. We wanted to have kids.
(Here is where I could write a thousand words about how much I’ve grown as a person since becoming a mum. About all the transferable skills. About how I’ve literally — literally — never worked harder before. About the grit needed to meet the demands of the role of parent. About how problem-solving with a child is not all that different from problem-solving with an adult. But I won’t.)
Five years and 2 children later, I’m trying to find my way into a career that offers abundant, generous, overflowing support to newbies. A podcaster will ask, “What advice would you give to someone trying to break into content?” And the answer will be an action plan that relies on a generous supply of time and/or money, and energy. Hard for a working parent. Hard for anyone living with constraints on those three resources.
The biggest obstacle, though, is the part-time knock-backs. They have been instant and non-negotiable. In Aotearoa, where I live, a full-time week tends to be something like 37.5 or 40 hours. I’m available 8.30am–3.30pm. That’s 32.5 hours a week. One hour a day short of full-time hours.
Let’s treat hours like we treat speed signs: they’re a maximum, not a target.
Your organisation is busy? Recruit more people. Build diversity. Treat them well. Save money from a lack of churn. Enrich your business with diverse skills and perspectives. I’ll stop.
Well, that’s the background. Next, I’ll talk about what I’ve been doing to get a job in content design.
