During the past several years, full time jobs were hard to come by. Employers nervous about the economic picture were reluctant to hire full time workers. Over the past year things have begun to change in some market places, but here in Vero there are people still working part time and hoping for a great full time position.

Monster.Com had some good tips for those of you who are working part time, but hoping to transition to full time.

“Kevin Fogarty, Monster Contributing Writer

As of August 2010, 8.9 million people were working part time when they would have preferred full-time work — about twice as many as in January 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

About 70 percent of those involuntary part-time workers are full-time workers whose hours had been reduced due to business conditions, while the rest could find only part-time work, according to the BLS.

The question for many workers — whether laid off or long-term underemployed for the first time since they were teenagers — is how to put together part-time work that really works. That is, how to work enough to cover the biggest expenses without spending so much time on go-nowhere work that they neglect their job searches and risk missing out on full-time jobs that could make them financially whole again.

Contract to Keep Your Career on Track

The first thing to remember, even if you’ve been laid off and are trying to put together short-term gigs, is that you don’t have to walk away from your career and get a job bagging groceries, according to Art Romero, CEO and managing director at The Academy Group, a Denver recruiting agency specializing in sales positions in financial services.

“The first thing I’d do is go to the customers you worked with when you were still employed and offer to do the same kind of work for them on a contract basis,” Romero says. “If you were an engineer … you probably worked with other companies and built relationships with people there. Call and see about going back as a contractor.”

In addition to offering your services to your former clients, look into getting work from former colleagues — whether at the company that just laid you off or the companies where former coworkers now work, Romero says.

“A lot of the hiring has gone electronic, but the personal network is still there and still works the way it always did,” he said. “You can get contract or short-term work that way just as well as referrals or pointers for full-time work.”

You could also gather former colleagues or current networking contacts into an ad hoc company that can take on larger challenges than one person could manage alone, says Lynn Hazan of Lynn Hazan & Associates, a Chicago executive search firm that specializes in marketing and communications.”

I know of too many young people who still haven’t found full time work. They are intelligent, talented, and willing to work, but if you aren’t in construction or retail, jobs are still hard to come by here on the Treasure Coast. A good solution could be part time work and consulting on the side.

Jennifer Comer