Recruit Interim Executives to Solve Your Executive Recruitment Challenges

Executive recruitment slowed significantly in the first quarter of 2020 in response to market upheaval and recruitment challenges. Businesses acted to ensure stability where they could and were not motivated to make significant changes at the top. Executive travel was limited. Businesses couldn’t carry out thorough in-person executive interviews. Although we have all become more accustomed to hiring and working via video and phone, there was a general reluctance to make executive hiring decisions with long-term consequences.

We are far from done with the coronavirus pandemic, but executive recruitment is returning to something like business as usual, albeit in a radically different landscape that has its own recruitment challenges. It has become cliché to talk about the new normal, but work patterns and expectations in June 2020 are not what they were at the beginning of the year.

Nevertheless, businesses can’t afford to leave essential posts unfilled. Challenging times require reliable, creative, and experienced executives with the leadership skills to reshape companies to meet new realities. Many businesses want to fill gaps in the executive ranks that were left unfilled when movement became challenging. They are planning to launch initiatives to adapt operations to the changed landscape. And they are looking to leverage technology to streamline operations and support new ways of working and buying, both for employees and customers.

Executive recruitment for a permanent executive can take many months. Businesses need to be sure they have the right executive before they commit. That’s one reason we at TD Madison are seeing an increase in clients looking to hire interim executives to fill senior positions temporarily.

In this article, we’re going to look at some of the executive recruitment challenges facing businesses today and how interim executives can help to resolve challenges in hiring.

Deadlines Loom

COVID–19 is not behind us yet, but the phrase “the new normal” implies normality of a kind. Projects that were slowed or stopped are beginning to resume, often on more urgent timelines than was initially planned. We can see this most prominently in the telecommunications industry.

The pandemic severely disrupted 5G rollouts. But the surge in remote working, which is unlikely to return to its previous levels, and the widespread need for reliable connectivity for health monitoring underlined the importance of ubiquitous wireless connectivity. As we wrote in our report on 5G and COVID–19, the FCC and federal government are trying to expedite 5G deployment in rural and urban areas, creating opportunities for businesses in the 5G space that require experienced leadership.

Around the U.S., technology projects that were put on hold are being revitalized, and businesses are looking to recruit executives with the ability to move quickly. However, executive recruitment for senior technology executives remains challenging. It has always been difficult to recruit executives with expertise in emerging and highly sought-after technologies, and current events haven’t made it any easier.

Interim executives offer a solution. Many specialize in reinvigorating stalled projects on short timelines. They are well-equipped to adapt to new challenges quickly, providing the solution-focused leadership that is required to move projects forward quickly.

Recruitment Budgets Are Tight

A talented executive is worth every cent, but business units working on a locked-in budget may not have the financial flexibility to recruit a permanent executive when new leadership and expertise is most needed. A permanent executive is a long-term investment and includes many costs beyond salary that a recruiting executive may not be able to meet.

Recruiting an interim executive may be a viable option when recruiting a permanent executive would break the budget:

• Interim executives are typically paid by the day with only a short-term commitment. When they aren’t working, the business isn’t paying for them.
• Interim executives can be paid from a business unit’s operating budget, and not from the business’s recruitment budget.
• Interim executives are often recruited as the discretion of a managing VP, avoiding the extensive and expensive process required for a permanent executive.

Businesses often experience sticker shock when they see the daily fees charged by in-demand interim executives. On a naive calculation, they look far higher than the pay of an equivalent permanent executive. But, in reality, interim executives are typically less expensive.

Interim executives don’t receive many of the benefits and perks permanent executives expect. They aren’t usually paid relocation fees. They do not normally expect performance bonuses, holiday pay, or sick pay. When an interim executive completes their period of employment, they don’t expect an exit package.

If executive recruitment is a challenge for budgetary reasons, an interim executive is often the most cost-effective solution—especially when you account for the improvements a highly-skilled and experienced executive can bring to the business’s operational efficiency and revenue.

Achieving Culture Fit for New Executives

Businesses prefer to recruit executives that fit their culture. Here culture fit has a somewhat constrained meaning. In the simplest terms, it means that an executive can conform to their new employer’s established way of doing things; they fit easily into existing relationships and processes. An extended definition captures the importance of an executive’s values and behaviors aligning with the values of their employer and colleagues.

Culture fit matters, in part, because it governs how effective an executive can be within the business. The Society for Human Resource Management estimates that poor culture fit can cost an organization more than half of an individual’s annual salary.

Ensuring culture fit is a recruitment challenge, especially in in-demand fields in which talented executives are scrutinizing your values as closely as you are theirs.

Interim executive recruitment helps to cut through the culture problem in two main ways. First, people who chose to be interim executives enjoy moving from culture to culture. That’s not true of everyone; some people find it challenging to adapt. But experienced interim executives have the empathy and the intelligence to adjust quickly to the culture in which they find themselves.

Second, interim executives are recruited for short, fixed terms. In the unlikely event that they are not a great fit for the company’s culture, recruiting them is far less of a risk than it would be for a permanent executive.

HR Is Too Busy to Manage New Executive Recruitment Challenges

HR departments don’t have infinite bandwidth. It can be challenging for them to run multiple executive recruitment programs in parallel, especially when other external and internal disruptions also consume their time. 

A key benefit of interim executives is that they require less direct oversight and complex steps from your HR department. As discussed in the previous section, interim executives are often paid from existing budgets and hired at the discretion of a senior executive. There are excellent reasons to lean on human resources professionals’ expertise when hiring a permanent executive, but interim executive recruitment is less complex and more easily managed by an experienced 3rd party.

So the challenge becomes: how can you be certain to find the right candidate with less oversight from HR? How can you be certain they are qualified to address your problems? 

TD Madison can help. 

We apply the same exhaustive search and assessment standards to interim executives and permanent executives. We can find the right executive, supplementing some of the functions of your HR department and helping you to fill vital gaps in your org chart quickly, and without overloading the current HR workload.

It Takes Too Long to Hire a Full-Time Permanent Executive

Employment site Glassdoor estimates that the interview process takes an average of 23 days for a non-executive hire, and that executive recruitment takes up to ten times longer. There is a great deal of variance in the amount of time it takes to hire an executive, but it is not unusual for several months to elapse between recognizing the need to recruit and a new executive arriving in the office for their first day.

What if you don’t have the time to wait? The sudden and unexpected departure of an executive imperils a critical project. A three-month executive recruitment process to find the ideal senior executive leadership would leave a critical business team rudderless. An experienced interim executive with the leadership abilities your team needs right now can be recruited far more quickly than a permanent executive. They can keep your projects moving, solve business problems, and maintain order while the business takes the time to find a permanent replacement.

To solve your organization’s executive recruitment challenges, contact an interim executive recruitment specialist today for a free consultation.