It’s the perfect storm—a competitive, tight labor market paired with economic uncertainty. Luckily, there is an option that offers companies and candidates greater flexibility and short-term commitments: Interim consulting.
I have been advising people for over 15 years through my professional experiences in sales, leadership, strategy, and talent acquisition. I’ve worked with different-sized organizations to help define their talent strategy, attract, hire, and retain top talent to improve and drive their business performance, even through volatile markets. Now as a Director of Client Partnerships for Human Resources at Versique, I partner with HR leaders of companies and listen to their unique needs while creatively implementing the best solutions to meet their short and long-term objectives.
Through my conversations, I’ve found that having interim talent can help companies achieve strategic business initiatives and growth more quickly, by putting in place the right skills at the right time on a temporary contract basis.
You may be asking, “what exactly are Interim consultants?” Interim consultants are highly skilled, experienced professionals in an area of expertise who typically contract to work for a defined period, versus full-time employees who are hired by the company. The defined period can be anywhere from several weeks to months.
Businesses of all sizes are increasingly looking beyond the conventional hiring models. Implementing a mixed workforce model that includes interim consultants allows for increased organizational flexibility, agility, and accelerated response time to changes in the market as business demands shift.
But don’t just take my word for it, below are 5 reasons to hire an interim consultant to drive growth in your organization:
1. Cost savings
As an organization, you may only need certain skills and experience for a short period of time to help you through a talent gap, special project, time of rapid growth or transformation. An interim consultant can save on overhead costs by paying for the level of talent at the time of need, where compensation is based on the nature and length of the assignment (not to mention no recruitment, benefit packages or payroll tax costs). Overall, hiring an interim consultant on a project or temporary basis can mean long-term savings for your company.
2. Quicker process
By hiring interim consultants, an organization can fill talent gaps and needs in a matter of days, versus several weeks or months. Quite often, it can take months to identify top talent, or even longer to find unique, specialized skill sets, with interim you have access to the highest quality of talent more quickly.
One of the challenging parts of running a business is navigating unexpected resignations, short-term and long-term employee leaves, or rapid business growth. Not having the right talent or internal bandwidth can put a strain on the business and add a layer of risk or lost opportunity.
An interim consultant with the right skills can provide a specific skillset or experience and/or bridge the gap until there is sufficient time to fill or determine the full-time permanent staffing need.
3. Less risk
Hiring someone with the wrong skill set or realizing too late an organization may need a different skill set as the business needs are quickly changing can be a costly mistake. A wrong hire can take 12 to 24 months to fix—or up to 27x the employee’s salary.
Interim consultants allow the organization the flexibility to fill talent gaps or to vet out for future employee needs as the business grows. Hiring interim is an easy “no strings attached” approach, as they can transition seamlessly when their assignment is done.
4. Fresh Insight
An interim consultant can offer a unique and external perspective to bring fresh insight to a problem or task. Outside perspectives can remove some of the pressure that leadership and internal teams sometimes feel and quite often, push those teams to think more creatively and challenge problems objectively.
A consultant’s outsider status removes the chance of burnout and status-quo thinking, enabling them to make swift, strategic decisions with less emotion, navigating internal politics and/or bias.
They also join a company with a set of clear, predetermined tasks and objectives that align with the leadership’s vision and strategy, which allows them to onboard, bring value, and provide impact more quickly.
5. Diverse Expertise
Interim consultants are seasoned experts who have worked in multiple industries, various company sizes, and cultures, and have been challenged to solve various problems in many unique circumstances.
Because of their diverse background and experience, interim consultants are skilled at bringing strategic thinking, implementing processes, advising, and solving issues that help organizations see potential blind spots, avoid common pitfalls, and minimize risk.
To learn more about interim solutions in Human Resources and Finance Accounting and how to unlock your organization’s potential by accelerating your human capacity, check out our website and reach out to connect with me on LinkedIn to schedule a conversation.
