Introduction
Job sharing is not a new concept; it has been around as a flexible work model for a few decades. In a job sharing arrangement, two professionals would share responsibilities of the same job, each at reduced working hours. It is especially suitable for people who need a greater work-life balance but don’t want to leave their careers. How do they find other professionals to share a job with? How do they know they can work well together? Enter Job Pairing.
1. Creating a profile
The first step is to create a profile capturing user’s expertise and experiences as well as preferences such as the desired percentage of time available for job sharing, days of the week or times of the day, or preferred cities.
2. Matching
The matching algorithm uses individuals’ areas of expertise, availability and preferences to identify other professionals as potential “jobmate” candidates. The user can review the matching profiles and decide if they want to connect with any of the candidates to mutually explore becoming jobmates. At this stage, they have no visibility to candidates’ contact information until they get connected.
3. Connecting
If the user likes what s/he sees in a matching profile, they can send an invitation to connect to any of their matches. If their matches accept the invitation, the two become connected and the platform’s private messaging tool will become available to them for direct communication.
4. Vetting
After two potential jobmates have been connected, the next step is to vet each other. They literally need to interview each other for the partnership that they are considering to form. They need to decide if the depth of their common skills match well; if they have good complementary skills which increases the value of the pair for employers; or if they have good synergy. The Job Pairing platform provides a set of guidelines and templates to support the vetting process.
5. Pairing
Two potential jobmates become a pair when one of them invites the other to pair up and his/her invitation is accepted. When this happens, the platform automatically generates an initial “joint profile” for the pair which can be edited by the jobmates and be made available for employers to view. The joint profile captures the pair’s common skills, complementary skills, and (optionally) their compatibility score.
6. Posting a job
There are two types of jobs that can be posted on the Job Pairing platform. First, if a user (an employee) is sharing their current job, they can tag their job as a “job share” in their profile. The platform automatically generates a job posting from user’s profile and makes it available for viewing. Second, employers who have job sharing opportunities, can post their jobs on Job Pairing for pairs to view and apply. An employer can also post a jobmate position to find matches for an existing employee who needs to reduce their working hours.
7. Working as a pair
After employment, Job Pairing offers a set of guidelines and templates to assist and improve the pair’s performance on the job. This includes templates and tools for work handoff, tracking tasks, or communication with each other and the rest of the organization.
8. Professional Compatibility
Last but not least is determining the professional compatibility of the two jobmates which kicks in as soon as they connect and through the pairing process. Both jobmates have the opportunity to take a compatibility test (independently) which is exclusively designed by Job Pairing to determine the degree of professional compatibility of the jobmates in a job sharing arrangement. Learn more about jobmate compatibility.
Final thoughts & summary
Job Pairing’s value proposition is in quality of its pairs, scalability of the platform and automation of the process which can be summarized as:
- Jobmates are vetted and interviewed by each other for competency and compatibility.
- Jobmates are tested for professional compatibility by the platform.
- Employers get access to “vetted, paired and compatible” jobmates which saves the business time and money.
- Employers interview the pair of candidates to select the best match for a job share position.
- Pairs bring in common and complementary skills to their employers which offers diversity of ideas and approaches to problem solving.