HireaManager
16 October 2009
If you’ve lost customers or your margin is being squeezed, you will need to go after new markets to stay afloat...
Whether that means ramping up the sales and marketing drive or entering new sectors and territories, you may need new management talent to kickstart the project, which can be costly at the best of times, but prohibitive in the current recessionary climate.
Deirdre O’Shaughnessy is general manager of InterIM Executives, which sources executives who can take charge of a specific project for a specific time, saving companies the cost of employing a full-time, permanent, pensionable executive.
InterIM Executive, founded in 1998, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Merc Partners. “We supply interim managers to companies for a variety of reasons, but mainly to plug management gaps, manage a project or implement change,” says O’Shaughnessy.
This gives companies an opportunity to buy in senior skills as needed - often in human resources or financial services. “A permanent employee will cost a business a lot more than just the basic salary,” says O’Shaughnessy. “If senior executives come in on €100,000 per year basic salary, they’re costing the company a lot more than that, because you’ve got to factor in your recruitment costs, quarterly or annual bonuses, the employer’s national insurance contributions, pension, health, possibly company car benefits.”
Hiring in an interim executive can be a better deal, she says. “A company can come to us and say: ‘This is the project that we have, these are the objectives, this is the timescale, this is the type of person and the skill set that we’re looking for’. “We’ll then go away and look for someone with that specific skill set. This will be someone who’s over-qualified for the position, who’s done something like it before. They’re hitting the ground running.”
One of InterIM Executives’ recent clients, a leisure company, was looking for an interim CEO to come in, review the company’s position and devise a strategy to take it forward in the current troubled climate - and also to see where cost reductions could be found.
“I found them somebody who had a number of years’ experience in that sector, who had similar roles in other organisations. The person came in, was in place within a matter of weeks and was effective from day one, reviewing the organisation, the books, the people, devising a strategy and putting it forward in terms of reducing costs, resourcing, looking at the business elements in the overall business, and once that strategy was devised and agreed with the shareholders, staying to implement it.”
Interim executives have a long-term value, says O’Shaughnessy, because they mentor people within the organisation, and leave improved skill sets behind them when they leave. Rather than a company going to her and saying ‘We want a marketing executive’, her firm advises clients on what kind of skills they need, and then sources the right person with the agreed skills.
Executive who choose this style of work may have been years within the hard-shelled corporate environment and now want to work for themselves and pick and choose the challenges in new organisations. Some have taken a work-life balance choice and want to travel for three months a year and work for nine.
From The Market October/November 2009