Category: Interim

You’re after a change.

This interim role is the exact challenge you’ve been looking for.

You’ve done all of your research…so of course you feel like you’ve nailed the interview.

Then you get the bad news that you didn’t get it. What a punch in the throat!

But remember:

As an interim candidate, all disappointments can (and should) be turned on their head.

That’s why we’ve compiled 8 of the most important tips to ensure you turn a rejection into a triumph.

1. Stop what you’re doing and take stock
If you’ve been rejected after an interview, you need to assess your rejection immediately after getting the call.

This means, you’ll want to analyse how you honestly felt you did at the interview.

Look out for feedback you get from the hiring manager that doesn’t match up with the company’s view of how the interview went.

If it is drastically different to your own, then there’s a problem.

It’s crucial to be able to assess your interview performance objectively. Only then can you turn a rejection to your advantage.

Critically looking at how you performed will help you get better at interviews, increase your success rate and decrease the amount of down time between contracts.

2. Don’t accept a ‘brief’ brief
A rejection at interview can often be the push you need to take a look at how you approach the whole job process.

Start with the brief you get from the recruitment consultant.

The cardinal rule of job briefs is ‘never accept a two-line brief!’

Just because the role is a contract doesn’t mean your insight into the role should be any less.

Remember: the same level of preparation is needed for both.

3. Treat an interim interview like a perm interview
There can be a tendency to walk into an interim interview and treat it more lightly as the role is short term.

You may even think the client is thinking along same lines.

This false sense of confidence is incredibly counterproductive, and it can come across as a sense of bravado or a lack of preparation which clients hate.

Make sure you treat each interim interview as you would a permanent interview by preparing well.

When you look back, even if you may have been rejected, at least you know you did all you could.

4. What can be taken away from a rejection?
As well kick-starting an immediate self-analysis, rejection also makes you look at how you approach your interim career long term.

5. Was it really the right role at the right time?
Rejection can inspire you to think in-depth about where you’re going.

It can also fine tune the roles you apply for.

You don’t know what is around the corner, but it pays to really consider if the roles you’re going for are the right ones for you.

6. Running a skills MOT
I always recommend doing a skills MOT every year or so.

If you’ve recently been rejected, this is the perfect time.

Take a circumspect look at your abilities and areas that need developing and make sure you’re fully promoting your top attributes.

After a skills MOT, you can also reverse the recruitment process by approaching businesses and keeping on their radar.

Lastly, make sure you build relationships with recruitment agencies and make sure you are front of their minds as well.

7. Don’t bet on one outcome
In interim recruitment, a lot more things could go wrong compared with permanent roles, so you’ve got to learn to play the odds.

You may be the best person for the role, but the situation could change – the role could go internally, the budget could be pulled, the project may get cancelled or the decision could be influenced by a multitude of other reasons.

Keep all your avenues open and never close yourself to opportunities because they don’t appear great on paper.

Don’t forget, it’s best to meet people face to face and the opportunity may surprise you.

8. Create long-term relationships
As an interim, it’s vital to develop a long-term strategic partnership with one or two recruitment consultants.

Use this relationship to your advantage.

Well if you want a quick win, how about working with us to get advice about the market and areas you could improve?

Let’s face it: We want you to be successful in your interim career just as much as you do.

The best recruitment consultants understand that your long-term career development is beneficial to you and them.

Ultimately, what’s important?
Well, playing the long game as an interim is more important than short term gain.

Learning from every rejection is as important as learning in every new role you take on.

You’ll never get to the stage of being successful in every interview you go to, but you will get better at picking up the roles that you want and getting more enjoyment and skills enhancement from your interim career.

So next time you hear those dreaded work “sorry you were not successful…”, don’t just walk away from it – learn from it.

It will make you a better interim and will allow you to develop the career you had planned at the start.

In one of my recent blogs I looked at how interims can plan their career by understanding their overall career goals and why they are doing interim work.

This got me thinking about whether companies can plan ahead for interims and how beneficial this can be when it’s done well. Generally, interims are taken on in a reactive way as a response to a bottleneck. However, with some advance thinking, hiring managers can take control of their interim recruitment needs, maximising their hiring spend and getting access to the best interims in the market.

Forward planning involves considering a few things:

1. Forecasting bottlenecks: Spending time at the start of the year anticipating when your team will be busiest and facing potential bottlenecks. These bottlenecks will give you an idea of when your team could be under resourced and as a result, when interims may be needed.

2. Understanding staff ambitions: Every good team will have people who are ambitious and looking to grow their careers. This can have a knock-on effect on the wider team as individuals look for secondments, promotions or opportunities outside your business. Recognising your high flyers and giving them opportunities could lead to you needing to build in an interim later in the year to cover the shortfall.

3. Recognising employment lifecycles: As well as career progression, there will be instances where people will retire, take extended leave or go on maternity leave. These should be the easiest wins for recognising when interims will be needed. Getting those gaps solved as much in advance as possible, as soon as you’ve been made aware of the change, gives you the best chance of reaching the top interims in the market.

4. Working in partnership: Remember to view recruiters as much more than just a sourcing channel. Strong, insightful interim recruiters act as a consultative partner. They will be able to tell you what the market for certain disciplines will look like at any given time helping you to assess what you need.

There are many benefits to forecasting your interim needs:

1. Cost savings: Usually, the more urgent the hire, the more expensive it will be. Understanding your interim needs as much in advance as you can means you can make the most of your budget. It puts you in a better negotiating position so you can get more ‘bang for your buck’. Also, working out how long you need the interim for helps prevent paying for extra, unnecessary time.

2. Reaching top talent: The best talent in the interim market is usually snapped up pretty quickly and unless you time it correctly, you will miss out on the best. Imagine a scenario where you know a month or two (or more!) in advance that you need an interim. You can find out who is going to be available and secure them using a golden handcuffs deal. Not only are you providing the interim with a secure contract, but you are also guaranteeing that you have the best person for the role.

3. Integrating interims: Thinking ahead can make a huge difference to how a person is integrated into your business. Sometimes bringing in an interim on very short notice can lead to disruption and there will be very little time for onboarding. Preparing your team in advance for an interim and providing effective onboarding, means they’ll be ready to go from day one. This is especially true if an interim is coming onboard to run a particular project. If they are aware well in advance, then they can start working out how they will run the project and provide the best possible outcome.

4. Noticing knowledge gaps: Within a team’s lifecycle, there will always be those points in time where knowledge gaps become visible. Anticipating these points helps stop them from being an issue as you will know when these gaps need to be filled. Having the right interim at the right time lets the team continue to perform at the level expected of them.

All in all, it is possible to plan ahead for interims. By putting in some time and thought at the beginning, it’s possible to save money and maximise the contribution an interim will make to your business.

Navigating your roadmap to a successful interim career
As the Interim and Contracts manager at Vertical Advantage, one of the things I always get asked is ‘how do you manage an interim career to gain as much career satisfaction or advancement as a permanent career?’

Most people would assume that as an interim you pick up new jobs as they come in so your career history will look haphazard with no direction. With a little planning and foresight, however, it is possible to chart a defined path through your interim career, which will allow you to achieve all your goals you set out from the start.

If you know what you want your interim journey to look like then you should take these important points into account:

What do you want to achieve working as an interim?
This is probably the most important thing to think about. Are you working as an interim for the money, for the challenge, or to allow you to experience several different sectors or disciplines?

Once you identify why you became an interim in the first place, you can decide which opportunities will suit you best. Sometimes it may be a combination of goals, but you may want to change your goals after a couple of assignments. There are no hard-and-fast rules on why you became an interim in the first place, but the most important thing is to know what that reason is and keep it foremost in your mind.

Accepting the first role offered?
The eternal dilemma for an interim is whether to ‘twist or stick’. Do you accept the first role offered, or do you wait a little longer to see if a role better suited to your goals will turn up? This depends on a couple of things: the current state of the job market (whether it is busy or quiet), and how far away from your goal is the job? When the job market is quiet it maybe pertinent to accept the first thing going, but then sometimes the role may be too junior, too far away from your ideal role, or a huge commute. You may have to turn down an offer rather than walking away mid-way through the assignment as that may tarnish you with a bad reputation.

How will the role develop?
The other thing to take into consideration is whether or not your interim role will evolve whilst you are in assignment. Maybe the role is not quite right when you are offered it, but most interim roles evolve over the length of the assignment, and it may add a skillset that your CV otherwise lacked.

Always keep moving forward
Interim careers are sometimes seen as stunted compared to permanent careers, because you may not go in a straight line as you would in a permanent role. It’s fine to move roles when they are not the most logical, but one of the key things is to try and always move forward with each interim role. Have a look at the role and decide whether it is adding to your initial goals. Is it more money? Am I picking up new skills? Am I learning about a new industry? These are some of the questions you need to ask yourself whilst pondering on whether to accept.

Will you go back into the permanent market in the future?
Sometimes an interim career is only a short-term lifestyle change, and you may want to ultimately go back to a permanent role. Picking the right interim role is paramount if that is your aim. The wrong interim roles, whether something too junior, short-term, or an industry change, may jeopardise your future earning potential. On the other hand, picking up the right interim roles may also enhance your career prospects, so you do need to think long term even when accepting something that may be short term!

One step back, two steps forward
Occasionally it might be worth taking a slight step backwards. Maybe you could take on a slightly junior role, or step away from management responsibilities to allow you to take a much bigger leap forward in the future. You may lack big brand or particular industry experience, and so if you take that junior role at a blue chip, it could allow you to rapidly move forward, opening up more avenues for you to explore in the future.

Cutting your losses
You start a new interim role and it isn’t quite what it is cracked up to be; it may have been mis-sold; the role may have changed, or a line manager leaves. When do you cut your losses and leave the role early? I would advise you to do so as soon as it is starts to become detrimental to you / your CV. Ultimately, the longer you stay, the more likely it will affect your future career. In the interim market, your reputation is very important, so being transparent is a key trait to a healthy interim career.

Whether you are looking at interim as a career change or you are a long-time contractor, a plan is key. Sometimes we are so engaged with the day to day job we forget to look at our long term goals. Let me know what you think! Did you have a plan of what you wanted to achieve when you became an interim or do you think having a plan may limit your options?

If you don’t yet have a plan and would like to discuss it please get in contact.

The oldest millennials have now been in the workplace for about 15 years and it’s clear to me as a manager for a top recruitment agency’s Interim and Contracts department, that they differ from Gen X and baby boomers with the way they work. They’re sometimes called the ‘entitled generation’ but this may not necessarily be fair. Most millennials have entered the workforce or were just at the start of their career in 2008 when we suffered the worst recession since the 1930s. Most could say this has influenced some of their general working outlook. I personally think this lack of stability will impact how millennials will view future lifestyle choices when it comes to work.

A ‘millennial’ refers to anyone born from the year 1980. The first millennials entered the workforce in the late 90s, and university-educated millennials from about 2001 onwards. World events in the last 20 years have caused unprecedented changes in the workplace. No longer are we stuck to our desks; there’s no real need to commute to work; humans are now truly globally connected in a way that doesn’t recognise borders or time zones. Loyalty to employers counts for nothing, as millennials have seen employees with decades of experience being made redundant. Not surprisingly, this has led to a mindset that work —- and the type of work chosen —- is there to support lifestyle, not just a stable rut to fall into.

When is the workforce like Snapchat?
As the millennial group of employees matures, the nature of work will change. Most millennials see themselves as job-hoppers with average tenure at most jobs for 20-somethings between 1.3 and 3.2 years. Whilst most of us from Generation X settled into careers because of family and mortgage commitments, 38% of 18 to 34 year olds still live with their parents. And mortgages are not the only things that are no longer feasible for many. As the first rung of the housing ladder gets more difficult to climb, millennials will not have the commitments that most Gen X or baby boomers have.

Add elements of flexible working arrangements and the ability to work anywhere in the world (not to mention remote working possibilities) and you have the perfect recipe for a transient workforce.

Millennials don’t see work as a validation of their existence but more of a means to an end. We have also seen the rise of the internship workforce where millennials work for short periods for minimal pay. Their attitude to work reminds me of Snapchat! A fabulous picture, right now, for no more than 10 seconds. Snap it, breathe, and it’s gone. Or they’re off, doing something else for a different company.

All of this adds up to a workforce who view work as a way of getting what they want in life, and is more amenable to interim work. The mortgages aren’t available, but transient experiences like global travel, material possessions, and interesting places to live are more likely to trend now.

The ability to work anywhere, for anyone, and for any period of time, whilst leaving room to pursue your passions, may appeal more to millennials than any other age group. With no final salary pensions, eroding benefits and work no longer being your life’s identity why would you want to pledge allegiance to just one employer?

How can employers benefit from this up-and-coming new workforce?
To reap the benefits of this transient but energetic workforce, employers will need to look at being more agile when planning a workforce. No longer is it necessary to rigidly employ just full-time permanent staff. You will miss out on a whole sector of society – the experienced veterans of the future – if you stay within this confined thinking.

Maybe you disagree and the future of work is not going to change massively as millennials age and decide that stability is the future. I would love to hear your thoughts on whether our workforce is changing and if employers are doing enough to accommodate that change. One thing is clear though, the nature of work is changing and employers need to be agile enough to adapt to these rapid changes.