Keep your career moving in the interim

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment Section - May 17 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

"There has been a significant increase in the numbers of people approaching us, many of whom are more senior than might have been coming to us before,” said Robert Wasson, managing director of Watershed Interim Management.

"We have a flood of people at the moment, people who have been made redundant recently and others who feel they are about to lose their jobs. The seniority of some of the people coming to us has been a bit of an eye-opener.”

The increase in candidates seeking interim opportunities echoes the growing popularity of this option for employers, according to Patrick Dwyer, managing director of Executives Online.

‘‘We have seen a number of Irish companies, which cannot hire permanently owing to hiring freezes, take someone on in an interim capacity,” Dwyer said. ‘‘There has been a rise in the use of interims for projects that are a direct response to the economic crisis. Demand for interims to work on cost reduction - such as financial directors or procurement professionals - and sales improvements, are up.”

Career choice
When Michael Cowan decided to enter the interim market in 2005, he already had 18 years’ experience as a marketing director under his belt in the FMCG field. Among Cowan’s previous employers were multinationals, including Proctor & Gamble, Diageo and PepsiCo in Ireland, Britain and Central Europe.

‘‘It was pretty much a deliberate career choice,” Cowan said. ‘‘My wife and I decided to move back to Ireland. At the time, I looked at my CV and felt that interim management just suited my long-term career aspirations.”

Cowan said the move into the interim market was relatively straightforward.

‘‘The first role I had was working for a well-known Irish drinks business which was looking to launch a new product,” he said. ‘‘With my background, the functional skills and experience were there. It was just a matter of focusing on the assignment at hand and delivering a certain project brief.”

He said that the interim management projects he had so far worked on had been varied and interesting.

‘‘I am on my fourth interim assignment in five years,” Cowan said. ‘‘I have worked for drinks companies, an international sports body on a particular tournament, a financial institution and now an iconic Irish retail business.

‘‘Typically, I would be with a client for six months. Quite often, you are replacing someone who has a very specific skill set that might take longer to recruit long-term.

‘‘Also quite often, as in my current role, you are brought in to fill a void that is not just one particular job, but work across the organisation to sort out some fundamental issues and devise the best way forward.”

Working as an interim manager allows Cowan to focus on the project to hand, while avoiding long term management issues and the potential to become involved in company politics.

‘‘Working this way is about meritocracy,” he said. ‘‘You are very much rewarded for getting the job done, rather than being part of a department and getting established within the company politics and infrastructure. You are just there to do a job, which helps keep you focused, and helps you to be much more effective.

You can switch in and out of different companies and challenges. It helps to keep fresh that way.”

The flexible nature of interim work suits Cowan’s personal circumstances. ‘‘I come from New Zealand and this allows me the flexibility to, if I want, take three months off without it interfering with the business,” he said. ‘‘It suits our family lifestyle as well.”

Candidates who make the move from full-time roles into interim management tend to a mass to an established wealth of professional experience, said Was son of Watershed Interim Management.

‘‘Clients tend to select people who are slightly over-qualified for the position,” he said. ‘‘Typically the people we would place would have significant managerial experience, generally greater than ten years in senior management positions.”

Dwyer said interim management work suited people who were flexible in their approach and confident in their own abilities.

‘‘A successful interim manager needs to be very self-directed and resilient, and have a strong track record of delivering results,” he said.

‘‘Interim managers must be able to find their own assignments - although agencies can help - and cope with the on-off pattern of work, live out of a suitcase where necessary and be held to a very high standard for the results they are being asked to produce.”

Lifestyle change

Lifestyle is an important issue for anyone considering a move into interim management, Wasson said.

‘‘Some people may not want to work at certain times of the year, or may not want to work five days of the week,” he said. ‘‘They may want to keep a few days a week to work on something else, or for family purposes.

That is quite a common thing, especially with senior professional women who often want to work three days a week.”

Interim management and consultancy are not the same thing, according to Wasson.

‘‘The main difference is that consultants come in and advise people what to do,” he said. ‘‘Interim managers come in and roll their sleeves up and do it. Not everyone who is a consultant can be an interim manager, and vice versa, but you do get people who can do both.”

Interim roles

Many different types of organisations use interim managers - and for many different reasons, according to Deirdre O’Shaughnessy, business development manager with Inter IM Executives.

‘‘There is no ‘typical’ client,” O’Shaughnessy said. ‘‘Opportunities come from all sectors of the economy - private, public, and non-profit - and cover all managerial functions and qualifications. Interim managers can support one off projects, such as integrating mergers or acquisitions, product or market diversification or IT initiatives.

‘‘Interims can also be taken on to support organisational change, such as the introduction of new processes or management strategies, or to take over a critical role where a senior executive is absent through illness or pending the replacement of an outgoing executive.

‘‘An interim manager can even test a new or changing role in advance of a permanent candidate being appointed.”

Salary prospects

Senior executives could increase their annual power by working as an interim manager.

‘‘Successful interim managers can earn orders of magnitude more than they did in permanent employment,” Dwyer said. ‘‘If they replace a salaried role paying €100,000 per year, with interim roles where they earn €1,000 per day and are on assignment just 75 per cent of the year, they could easily double their earnings.”

Wasson said that interim managers working with Watershed typically earned between €750 and €1,200 per day plus Vat. He warned, however, that working on an interim basis did not automatically guarantee a high annual wage.

‘‘Interim may not suit someone who expects a very high salary, because of the rates available in Ireland and the number of days you can expect to work,” he said. ‘‘There are 220 days available and we would say that 150 days is fantastic. Therefore, you will have difficulty earning more than €150,000 through the interim route.”

Cowan said his yearly earning capacity as an interim equalled fulltime employment.

‘‘I operate through a limited liability company and my interim management services are part of a broader marketing services agency that Iown,” he said.

‘‘There are benefits to doing that versus being a PAYE worker. There are risks though. You do not get sick pay or paid holidays and there are no bonus schemes or share options. The rate takes that into account, so it probably evens out in the long run.”

Market trends

Wasson said there were more interim managers seeking roles than there were positions available. He said, however, that companies driven to interim management by the downturn were likely to stick with the model when the economy picked up.

‘‘Just at the moment, the stream of opportunities is drier than we would like,” Wasson said. ‘‘Having said that, we are seeing signs that companies are looking to interim managers as the way to start to reemploy people again.

‘‘We are convinced that will be an increasing trend and that the recession will be very good for the interim industry. It will break the permanent-only idea in people’s minds.

‘‘When companies think about taking on a senior executive, they will think about what they really need, and more often consider taking on someone for just six months, or just three days a week.”

Despite the downturn, Cowan said he would continue to work as an interim manager.

‘‘With the risk of the gap between assignments, there is a temptation if an offer came along of a permanent job, but at the moment I am pretty comfortable for the future of interim management,” he said.