兼职(jiān zhí) - part-time job in Mandarin

兼职 (jiānzhí) is a part-time job, or working part-time. 兼 (jiān) means "to combine, to hold concurrently" and 职 (zhí) means "post, job", so the compound literally describes a job you hold alongside something else, usually studying or a main career.

It is the word a Chinese teenager or student reaches for when talking about weekend or holiday work: 我做兼职 (wǒ zuò jiānzhí), "I have a part-time job", is a normal thing to say about working in a shop, a cafe, or tutoring younger students. It contrasts with 全职 (quánzhí), full-time, the word for a permanent, main job.

English speakers sometimes want to say 部分时间工作 (bùfen shíjiān gōngzuò) as a word-for-word translation of "part-time work", but that is not how a native speaker phrases it: 兼职 is the natural, idiomatic term, and it works as both a noun ("a part-time job") and a verb phrase ("to work part-time"), so 做兼职 (zuò jiānzhí), "to do part-time work", is the collocation to learn alongside it.