Part Time Associate Director, Interim: Changing requirements at short notice

The interim desk moves at a much quicker pace than the perm desks, assignments can come in at any point in the day and may need to be filled immediately.

In this instance one of our regular candidates, an experienced Associate Director called to ask for our help.

She was about to start full time 4-month contract when her personal circumstances changed and she could only work 4 days a week.

The client in question was going through a very busy period so was keen to hire someone full time and had been very specific about that when we took the initial briefing.

We were potential back at the drawing board looking for a new solution. I spoke to the candidate in detail to understand the situation and then had another conversation with the client about how we could make it work.

We were able to provide testimony from previous clients who had engaged this contractor and with confidence suggested that our candidate would be up to the task and that it was worth trialling. The beauty of freelance is that you can be responsive quickly and make decisions knowing that you aren’t tied in. I checked in throughout the contract and both client and candidate were happy with the work.

This candidate has been regularly booked and there have never been any issues with the 4 days a week.

Building good relationships with both our candidates and clients mean that we are trusted advisors, so everyone is more open-minded, ending up with the best person being booked.