Sellers

Selling Slivers-of-Time is not right for everyone. If you have just the right amount of work in your life, a great employer and job security; stay with what you've got! Others aren't so lucky. They may need to work irregularly, or want an express route to a track record and wide-ranging skills. For those people, Slivers-of-Time working can be a temporary phase in their life, or one part of their lifetime package of work.

Why might you sell Slivers-of-Time?

1. You need to work around other commitments
2. You need to prove yourself
3. You're looking after No. 1

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1) You need to work around other commitments

Not everyone can clear their diary for 9-5, or other shift pattern, for 48 weeks a year. Even the most flexible work arrangements tend to be driven by predictable needs, school hours shifts for instance.

But what if the times you could work aren't predictable? Perhaps you have children who sometimes need extra care, or kids on differing school schedules? Maybe your medical condition fluctuates, or you have adult caring responsibilities. For some of us, day-to-day work is not our primary focus; it's how we pay the bills while trying for a dream career, building a business or studying to better ourselves. Others are "part-employed": they have some work but need to find more that fits around current work-times.

Modern lifestyles are increasingly going this way. Research by Accenture shows 13.7m in the UK now need to sell their hours around other commitments at some point each year.

Accenture's breakdown of need for Slivers-of-Time Working

It is currently possible to find odd bits of on-going work to fill this need, although it can take a lot of legwork and finger-walking. Trouble is, your prospects then tend to be defined by your limited availability, not your abilities. Working the Slivers-of-Time way is not about being a partial resource for an employer who will always value more committed workers more. It's about working your way, on your terms, for lots of employers at times when each really needs you and is willing to pay your personalised rate. Fragmented availability no longer means low status.

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2) You need to prove yourself

Trapped in a despair inducing cycle of interviews and rejection? You know you're capable of being a good worker but perhaps:

• You can't help mumbling at the floor in job interviews?
• There are unhelpful gaps in your work record that you don't want to discuss at interviews?
• Postcode discrimination is a problem, employers won't hire from your side of the tracks?
• You're trapped in a Catch-22; no experience = no job offers = no experience?

Selling Slivers-of-Time can break this cycle. It's not reliant on your interview techniques, your history or where you live. What matters is: do you do what you say you'll do? Anyone selling through this kind of marketplace can quickly build a "My Bookings" list.

Think of this as a turbo-CV. Within 2-3 weeks in the market you may have accomplished 10 bookings for 4 different employers. Sure, the periods of work were small but you turned up each time, your timesheet was signed and there were re-bookings. That's all provable with a print-out you can attach to an application form. It shows you're clearly reliable, used to taking instructions and determined to do a good job. Who cares if you're not fluent in formal situations or you're breaking out from some past mistakes?

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3) You're looking after No. 1

We can't all find employers committed to our welfare. Even if we could, not everyone wants their career structured around one organisation, or even one sector. Some people don't know what they want to do for a living right now.

Slivers-of-Time workers are hired by a range of employers whenever they're needed. They can study the market for their services and make informed decisions about their availability and price. They are building a range of soft skills and becoming increasingly attractive to all sorts of employers who may be willing to fund induction in their ways of working.

Call it Flexicurity. These are people whose security is not resting on a relationship with one organisation but on the sheer depth of experience and resourcefulness they have acquired by engaging with a much wider universe. As organisations increasingly face change, they may even prefer recruiting these multi-faceted individuals to promoting one more Company Man.

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Slivers-of-Time and lifestages

Don't assume selling Slivers-of-Time and having a traditional job are an either/or. Selling Slivers is something you can opt in and out of throughout a career. It's good for when you want to broaden experience, earn extra cash or get a bit more life into your work/life balance. A track record in Slivers-of-Time doesn't disappear because you stop selling for a few years. Just re-list some availability and you can start again at any time.

Over a career lifetime, the pattern could be something like this:

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