My new job

About a month ago I started looking for work - and I'm just starting my second week of work now, working on a data warehouse project at Tmobile.

The thing that really surprised me on this job hunt was how easy it was - not just to find a job, but to find a job where they were okay with the schedule I've kept for more than three years now. I work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with Tuesday and Thursday off. I got not one, not two, but THREE job offers within four days. And they were all okay with me working Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Previously I had the obviously mistaken idea that part time work was very difficult to find, that you had to have worked at the company for a long time and developed a great relationship, yadda, yadda, yadda. I think the thing that made a difference this time was that I didn't make such a big deal about it before actually meeting with potential employers. I mentioned that I had some schedule restrictions, but it was only after I had already interviewed with people, and sold them on me, that I told them what my schedule needed to be like. And they were uniformly fine with it.

Here's the two things that really helped me both with finding a job, and finding a job where they were okay with me working part-time:
1. Highly experienced database professionals are very difficult to find right now
2. I looked only for contract work. That way, there's no hassles with what the company policy on part-time work, do you get benefits, etc. It's very simple - you get paid per hour worked.