Flexibility promotes the labor market of the future
The role of consultant has broadened in recent years. Nowadays it is used interim management beyond traditional management roles and is a proven concept for specialist roles in everything from digitalization to marketing. This in turn means a shift in what is considered a typical consultant - a development that calls for more flexible forms of employment to suit all candidates. Here, Lena Arrelöv, Recruitment Consultant at Interim Search, explains why it is positive to offer consultants several different forms of employment.
With a rapidly growing consulting market, greater breadth of consulting roles and more niche needs from client companies, Interim Search has chosen to offer interim consultants two different forms of employment - both as a sub-consultant with her own company, and as a fixed-term employee during the assignment period. Among Lena Arrelöv's appointed consultants, about 25 percent have chosen to be temporary employees.
Lena, what does it mean to be a fixed-term employee at Interim Search?
This means that you do not need to have your own company to start an interim assignment through us, but you can be temporarily employed by Interim Search while you are on assignment with the client. The client is thus the client, while we are the intermediary and employer during the period. For us, it is a way to simplify for the consultant and offer our clients a wider selection of candidates to solve their skills needs. It becomes a mutual match when both parties are satisfied and the form of employment is not absolutely crucial.
What other benefits are there for the client?
They have access to a much broader skills base and an even wider range of consultants. We are generally experiencing a shift in interim management - more clients are looking for skills beyond the classic management team roles such as CFO, HR manager and CEO. They are increasingly looking for niche specialist skills in areas such as digitalization, marketing and ERP systems. These candidates are not always people who have fully embraced the consulting role, but want to be able to accept exciting assignments and new opportunities without necessarily having their own company.
Who are these new consultants? And what are the benefits for them of being fixed-term employees?
These are often people who are at a stage in their lives where they have not yet taken the step of setting up their own company and may not fully identify as a consultant. For these candidates, a fixed-term contract can benefit both the client and the consultant who, based on an urgent need, can try out a role during the assignment period, and later decide to move into a permanent position if both wish. In this case, there are no guarantees initially, but the focus is on the assignment, getting to know each other and then evaluating.
One of our values is simplicity - offering both sub-consultants and fixed-term employees simplifies the process by making it more flexible and fast. The selection process is also simple in that we simply offer the best candidate - in whatever form of employment the person chooses.
How do you think the consulting role will evolve over the next three years?
As I mentioned earlier, we are already seeing a development in that more people want to try working as a consultant and see it as a career step to be able to be employed for a limited period if they want to. This is a development that benefits the entire labor market in that it becomes freer and more flexible. Our company vision is to create a more flexible labor market where people are in focus. By that we mean that candidates have more courage in their careers and have the freedom to work on the assignments that stimulate them best, in which form of employment this is secondary.
Psst! For those consultants who also want to avoid company administration, you will find an excellent business partner in our sister company &Company.
