Rise of the Interim Executive with Executive Recruiter, Jacinta Whelan

In this episode, Leah interviews Jacinta Whelan, a partner with Watermark Executive Search and co-author of The Rise of the Interim Executive.

Jacinta is an award-winning author, thought leader and popular speaker on the concept of Interim Executives, Portfolio Careers and future ways of working. She leads the Melbourne office of Watermark and has over 25 years’ experience starting and leading Interim businesses in Hong Kong, New York and Australia.​

 Jacinta advises corporates and governments on the Executive Interim marketplace.  She is regularly asked to speak to Boards and business leaders looking to stay abreast of the way organisations are engaging executive talent. ​

 In this episode, Leah and Jacinta discuss the following

• Can you explain the meaning of ‘Interim Executive?
• What are the advantages of working as an interim executive?
• Who is interim work most suitable for?
• Challenges of working as an interim executive? 
• What skills do you need to be successful?
• What should someone considering an interim career need to think about? 

For further resources or to buy The Rise of the Interim Executive book, see the links below:

https://www.watermarksearch.com.au/disciplines/interim-executive?source=google.com

https://www.theinterimexecutive.com.au/

If you are requiring support with finding your 'best fit' career, preparing for your next interview or need help with writing a keyword optimised Resume or LinkedIn Profile, then  contact Leah Lambart and the team at Relaunch Me for further information or to book a coaching session.

If there is a career that you would like to learn more about, the please email me at leah@relaunchme.com.au to make a suggestion.

If you would like to support our podcast, we would love you to write a review on your podcast of choice.

Thanks for listening.

www.relaunchme.com.au

Transcript

[00:02] Leah Lambart: Welcome to the relaunch your career podcast. I am your host, Leah Lambart, career and interview coach and founder of Relaunch me, where we help you find the work that you were meant to do. Welcome to the Relaunch your career podcast. Today I am excited to introduce you to Jacinta Whelan, lead partner of Watermark Executive Search. Jacinta has an extensive background in recruitment and specialises in placing seasoned professionals in interim roles across the public and private sectors with a focus on C suite. Jacina is a passionate advocate and practitioner of interim executive solutions and portfolio careers, and she is also the author of the Rise of the Interim Executive, which is a great book that provides lots of insights, guidance and case studies to help executives explore whether interim work is right for them. It's great to have you here Jacinta, what a pleasure.

[01:19] Jacinta Whelan: I can't wait for our conversation.

[01:22] Leah Lambart: Jacina, you've done a terrific job establishing yourself as an advocate and thought leader in the interim executive marketplace. Can you start by explaining to listeners what is the meaning of an interim executive?

[01:36] Jacinta Whelan: Yeah, surely. Interim executive is when highly experienced professionals assume a temporary role within an organisation. Now, what they can do within that organization is either step into a functional role that has a gap, or they can come in and help with the project. Clients call us essentially for two reasons. They call us because one of the key executive roles that sit around in the leadership team is vacant. Either someone's left or they need to move someone pretty quickly and they need to buy some time until a new person can come in. And so we can have someone sit in that seat and assume the responsibility of that role. And that might be the CFO, it might be the chief people officer, it might be the head of strategy or the head of marketing. The other reason that clients call for an interim executive is they might have their full executive on board, but they're trying to do something over and above business as usual. So what they do is, I like to refer to it as borrow talent. If you think of David Ulrich as a HR sort of specialist with language of buy, borrow, build, I think about interim pieces where you borrow talent and companies are really starting to see the benefit of borrowing talent who over hit the mark to help them deliver on a project or get them through a period and move through a program of work.

[02:57] Leah Lambart: I assume for people to step into the role, they need to be people that have done those types of roles or those particular projects several times before.

[03:07] Jacinta Whelan: Yeah, a really important part of that's what an interim comes to do. There's a piece that sits behind that of who does this and how do they package their skills and their experience so that someone might be able to borrow them. Because there's a key difference between when you go for a permanent job and when you go for an interim job, how you narrate that experience. And I would suggest that if you're going for a permanent job at the executive level, and that's where I kick in, people are buying your generalist skills, so they're usually buying your leadership, your ability to lead a team, your strategy, your stakeholder management, and then they give you some Runway to get up to speed with the organization. And six months grace before you really sort of hit the road with the role that you're in, what an interim has to do is hit the ground immediately and make a difference and an impact. So what that means for your skills as an interim, it's really about out of your toolkit of experience. Where do you excel? Where would you hit the ground? What would the market say? I call it your superpowers. What are your superpowers that you bring to an organization where someone say, we would love to borrow that you've got, and it's your skills and your currency are two really important parts of an interims toolkit. So, and let me explain what I mean by that. You can be the CFO for 30 years and that's fabulous and that's lots of experience. What someone wants to borrow from you as an interim is the 30 years is a bit of a price of entry. Of course, you know, some of the basics. What have you done in the last two to three years that's current that we might need to do that you could help us with? And so that's a piece that we work a lot with the interims about. It's how do you reframe and package up slightly differently your experience? It's no different. And we're not giving any less value to the generalist leadership skills, but as an interim, they're actually a price of entry, because as an executive, I very rarely meet anyone that doesn't tell me I'm good at leadership, I'm good at leading a team, I'm good at strategy. And so if they are pretty much on an equal playing field, what else? What do you bring us as an organisation? Or what do you take to the organisation that's over and above some general skills?

[05:36] Leah Lambart: That's really interesting. That currency piece. Yeah. In your book, you make it very clear that working as an interim is not something you do to fill in time until you find a permanent role, which I think people often don't understand, that this is a conscious decision to choose this way of working. We might call it a portfolio career, and we'll go into that in a bit more detail. Can you explain why this is so important that this has to be a conscious and a permanent choice?

[06:08] Jacinta Whelan: Yeah, for sure. And I would sort of say we would look for people who are running towards this and looking to have a portfolio career rather than running away from something that's hard. So we get when people are between roles that finding a job's hard. It takes longer than anyone thinks. Everyone would like a quick fix. And I think for the most part, people hope we're a bit of a silver bullet. We'll get a quick fix. You'll fill in time until my perfect role comes up. I get that from the candidate point of view, from our model, what the client is buying from us is someone who wants to solve this problem and work this way. They don't want you for four weeks until a better option comes up. So I would sort of say to people, we want people who, this is their plan a, not their plan b, until a better option comes along, and where the rubber usually hits the road for that. And I get it when people are looking for a role, and Leah, that's what you do so well, is work with people in that really vulnerable stage of looking for work and haven't been in the market for a long time, and sort of just trying to re understand the rules of engagement for this, I get the quick fix that we'd all love. Why interim is not. That is because to make a successful portfolio career work over a longer time, it's probably just as hard as finding a permanent job. And you're in a constant mindset of what's my next opportunity? Where's my bd, where's my networking? So for those that hate that time of looking for a role, I would sort of caution you to say that's almost your default position as an interim, because you're only as good as your last assignment. You've got to look for the next one. And when people run towards that and run towards the excitement of the change and the freshness and the variety that I can see their eyes light up when we start talking about those things, which I don't see when people would really like a permanent job. And the other thing I'd sort of say there is, that's our model. It doesn't mean that in your own network, if you're out there looking for a job, someone might say, look, we don't have a headcount yet, but come and start for a little period and it might turn permanent. So it's not that. That's not an option ever. It's not an option through our model. And so that's the piece that we try and distinguish.

[08:32] Leah Lambart: Yeah. So your interim roles would never necessarily become permanent roles.

[08:37] Jacinta Whelan: Well, we do a lot of statistics behind this. Statistically, over 30 years of doing this, about 10% of the time it does. And what usually happens there, the very nature of interim, is you over hit the mark. So let's have a scenario where there's a role that someone needs to sit in the seat of the chief people officer, and the salary for that role is $200,000 in the permanent sense. In our pool of people, we would have people with the equivalent salary of 200, 300, 400,000 when we ring them and say, could you sit in the seat for six months? Yeah. Really interested. An interesting organization, some variety. They've got good challenges. I've done similar thing really recently. I can bring something to the table here, but without a doubt, they are overheating the mark. So that $300,000 chief people officer, it's probably not going to go for the 200k permanent role because the business was buying that extra capacity for a short hit so that it could really hit the ground running. And so when it does convert to perm, that 10% of the time and everyone falls in love, what usually happens is something changes, either in the job scope or, you know, the client might say, instead of it being the chief people officer, we might make it the coo because we've all fallen in love and we'd love you to stay. So that's probably one of the key reasons why it doesn't convert to perm, because you're already bigger than the role by the very nature of you being in there.

[10:05] Leah Lambart: Yeah, that's a great explanation. Another comment that I found really interesting from your book was one of the case studies. One of your clients mentioned the difference between being an interim executive and a management consultant, and you obviously just touched on before that. Interims are excited about these opportunities because there's variety, there's different projects, which obviously people get in consulting as well. Can you explain the difference?

[10:33] Jacinta Whelan: Yeah, I'd love to. The key difference I see between management consulting and interim is the interim has the seniority, but they execute so often a management consultant will come in and present the theory or the concept of what needs to happen. And the image I have is an interim. Comes and sits in the physical seat of the role. And a management consultant, for the most part, sits on the shoulder of the executive. So sits on the shoulder of the chief people officer or the HR or the strategy, and gives them some advice. This is best practice and sort of throws ideas onto the table. I think the key difference for an interim is they get in and deliver and do and execute the role. Same level of seniority of people and experience. But the day to day activity is very different.

[11:24] Leah Lambart: So different skill set required.

[11:27] Jacinta Whelan: Yeah, we absolutely have some people who have been, you know, with the big consulting houses who can now come and want to be what I would sort of call closer to the tools, actually delivering, maybe writing the actual policy, seeing the execution of the piece through so the skills can be useful. And if you're an interim executive, the ability consultants are good at winning work, scoping work, and as an interim, you actually have to be good at some of those skills, the BD. So there's parts of that that are helpful, and the skills are the same. I think the core difference, when the client buys it, when they're coming to us, they are buying someone to sit in and deliver on the piece of work and execute on it.

[12:13] Leah Lambart: Right. And we talked briefly before about the portfolio career. You and I both talk about that a lot, but not everyone is familiar with that term. And so for those who don't understand that, it means you might, I guess, an executive might do interim executive work, but they might also sit on some boards. They might do some lecturing or some mentoring or some volunteer work even. And that means they might still be working full time, but they are doing a number of different things. Would you say most of your interim executives are doing other things in addition to the interim role?

[12:51] Jacinta Whelan: Yes. Yes. The way I picture the sort of the difference between a portfolio career and a traditional executive career is you're trading one employer, full commitment, 52 weeks of the year, 60 hours a week or whatever, for one company, and you are having multiple forms of income and activity. Some may or may not be income producing. You might be on a board that's a charity and it's not for profit. But I. The visual that I probably guessing I'm quite visual, but I picture it like a funnel, where the top of the funnel has different buckets that fill up your work. And so I would say 99.9% of the people we work with this interim have some board roles, and they combine. But not everyone wants boars. So boars doesn't have to be. The beauty of a portfolio career is you get to choose what you've put in your bucket. And that choice piece is really exciting when people are running towards this, boards might be one of it. Interim work, maybe they've got sort of non professional work. They flip a house or they airbnb a property, or some people then do other lifestyle things. They run marathons, they write a book, they look after elder care, they look after grandchildren. And so what they're essentially saying is I no longer choose or want a permanent role and I'm going to think differently about how I work and the different activities that make up my work. So that's probably the key difference with a portfolio career.

[14:26] Leah Lambart: Right. And in your book you also talk a lot about, you know, who is this type of role suitable for? Because it doesn't suit everyone. Can you elaborate on some of the, you know, the key things that people need to consider if they're thinking about interim work?

[14:43] Jacinta Whelan: Yeah, we've got this great survey that we've now been doing for 14 years, so it's got really good longitudinal data of who does this work. And what we've produced out of that is some avatars. So what do these people look and feel like? And some of the common themes that they tell us will be that they sort of usually have 25, 30 years of experience and now thinking a bit differently about work, want some flexibility and control on their destiny and how they engage with work. And they would tell us things like, for the most part the kids have grown, maybe the school fees have paid, the mortgage is all but under control, and they can think differently about working in income than many of us who are still on the treadmill of life, of kids and responsibility and mortgages and all those sort of things. So that's the typical profile. Now everyone's circumstances will be different and we've got people who never chose to have kids and they could do it earlier. So there's so many scenarios. And the beauty of this whole future of work that I'm seeing is that there's no rules. So you get to write your own and what you want to be doing and how you want to engage with that is up for grabs. And so I know you love working with people that were thinking about that, leah, and that's, they're the sort of people that make excellent interims for a whole. They've got their risk profile, can sit over that. Sometimes people come to me and say, Jacinta, am I good for interim? And I say, I don't know, are you because it's actually not my decision to make. All of the reasons and the risk and the approach and your personality, all of those things will determine if you're right for interim. What I would say to people, if you choose to do interim, we can help you and we'd love to help you, but it's not my choice and I don't have to. I don't want to be convincing people to do this. And so that's that point where we started by interim. Why it's not quick fix for perm, because in that environment, I think people would like me to convince them that this is good for them. And I will always say to people, if you've got one more biggie in you where you still want permanent work, go hard at that. Doesn't mean it's easy, but it also probably means interim is not right, because when it's right, you are doing it anyway, and then you come and find us. So to some degree, people find us because they, they're, now I'm here, and I could see you as a channel to market, but I would be doing it regardless. And so that sort of mindset of thinking is probably the key to who does interim. Are you at the stage where you're thinking differently about how you engage with work?

[17:28] Leah Lambart: What would you say are some of the biggest challenges on working as an interim?

[17:34] Jacinta Whelan: We've got lots of data on this. The biggest challenge, biggest pushback I get is the lack of continuity, the lack of continuity of income, the lack of continuity of work. We're a bit of creature of habits, and for a long time, the model of work has been to trade our time for salary and go to work 40 hours a week. And so it's quite confronting for a lot of people to rewire your thinking to not have that in your life. And so the biggest pushback we probably get is, I'd love the idea of working this way, but could you guarantee me to keep me busy, enroll me from assignment to assignment? And that's probably hard to do and no one else can guarantee that. And when people sort of have that sort of nervousness around that, I say, maybe you should still be in permanent work. It feels like that's going to give you the comfort. And we don't want people to be anxious. Now, the way to dial up how busy you are, there's things you can do for that, but you have to be really engaged and you have to engage your network. You have to have a really strong pitch. There's a whole lot of things we can work with people. This is how busy they are. But it's a really good lead indicator and one of the things that people say is a challenge. The other biggest challenge for people often is promoting themselves, business development, because for the most part, executives are really good at doing their craft, but selling their craft is really hard. Now you're in coaching and you've got a business around helping people package up what they do and the narrative and the commitment to self about what that is and aligning with purpose and passion. And to be out there, hang your own shingle consistently, be selling what you do is harder than I think a lot of people think.

[19:29] Leah Lambart: So that personal branding piece is really, really front and center, isn't it? If you are committed, working this way, yeah, and yes.

[19:38] Jacinta Whelan: So the two biggest, all the data says to us and people tell us that lack of consistency are both around work and income and then the promotion of yourself. How do you keep yourself busy? They're probably the two biggest challenges.

[19:54] Leah Lambart: What would you say the successful people that you've had on your books have had ongoing careers working this way? What would you say would be some of their traits?

[20:05] Jacinta Whelan: Yeah. And it's pretty obvious. You see them pretty clearly when people run towards this, the thing that they quite like is the nature of the variety and they're coming in and solving a problem. One of the biggest successes I see is people who no longer need or want that permanent role. So it's ego they sort of have. Ego is left at the door because if you want to be the head of the team or want the team to follow you or want the title, perhaps that all happens in a permanent role. What happens when you come in this interim? You have to really quickly make an impact. You have to often have no title or tenure with the organization, so build credibility off delivery. And these are things that if you haven't done it before, you sort of almost take for granted. Well, of course people respect me. Like, do they respect you or do they respect your title? You know, that can be a bit confronting. And the people who do this really well thrive. And in that environment of not quite knowing the, the situation at the moment, without all the facts, people who, and they're probably the ones throughout their career who've had a theme of the fix it person. So what, as we unpack, when people write for this, they, like, even within my organization for 20 years, I was, can you go and look at that? Can you fix that? The ones who ran towards the new problem and weren't sort of moved out of business as usual. I would say the ones that doesn't suit as much. If you really like to know where you're going to work every day and it's month end and this is what we're going to do this week and that probably doesn't work for interims, but the people who can come in, leave their ego at the door, impart their knowledge and their experience. Most people love upskilling while they're there or a piece of mentoring. They're at the stage of life. They don't have to prove anything to anyone. And that's probably a big piece. I would say to people, this is in an aspirational role. If you're a human resources business partner and you dream of being the chief people officer, you don't get interim opportunities above your station, if you will. What you do get is, we always say to people, reach your highest jump off point because what interim needs you to do is probably jump down. You're bigger than the role and clients aren't coming to us for people who'd like to do a role, they're coming and putting money on the table for people who have done a role and have delivered. So I keep going on about that, but when people are successful, it's that they run. And the other thing I think that's important for people to be successful in this is it's not a blame game. In interim, you're very rarely there because things are going well, something's happened, some sort of catalyst. If it was business as usual, life was going well, they just wouldn't call us. So it's. And when you arrive, even if we take a brief the day before, this is the brief, as we understand. Often when you pop the hood, you really see what's going on. And that's what they're buying your experience, because you know what this looks like. If, if it's presenting as we've got high turnover, you usually know, let me pop the hood and let me look at a couple of things that usually are the reason for that. And it's not shoulda, coulda, woulda. It's not. Everyone before me was bad. It's really, do you know what? Here we are. And trusting that people before you made the decision with the knowledge what they had at the time was the right decision. And we have to honor that. But my job is for six months to move it forward to a place now. And also, for me, that's enough. If I can move it forward, if I can upskill the team, I'll be really happy to leave this place better off. I don't have to see it through for three years. It doesn't have to be my legacy. It doesn't have to be my name. That was the title. And so that's the type of person, and that's why it usually tends to be people with that sort of at the stage of their career where they're saying, I don't really have much to prove. I've been the CEO of an organization, I've been the CFO, and now I'm choosing to work differently. And now I'm a bit more interested, less the title, but the variety that, you know, the flexibility. There's a whole lot of other things they're interested in.

[24:28] Leah Lambart: Jacinda, I know when you work with people who are interested in working this way, you are, I guess it's fairly, almost like a strict validation process. If someone out there is thinking about whether they're right for interim work, what would you suggest that they need to do?

[24:50] Jacinta Whelan: Yeah, I mean, I did write a book that has a whole. That's exactly this. Thank you, leah, for the segue. But we have so many tools and this is now becoming much more common. So you can find your way to seeing if this is right for you a lot easier than maybe you could in the past. So there's the book that's sort of got tips and tricks and tools, but even if you don't have to buy the book, that even on our website at Watermark, there's a whole lot of. We've got an interim checklist that just lets you to get you thinking. We have monthly webinars on people who. So we give market updates, some things to consider for people. We do a lot of work with coaches and outplacement organizations. What I would say to people who are thinking about this is we're probably best to get you less the day you finish work when it's a bit of a scramble and I've got to get the next role. When people come to me at that point, I say, usually go and work with your coach, go and work with Leah and come back in six months when this is actually what you want to do or you've been through the process of, whether it's the grief of redundancy or the sort of refocusing what you want out of your career at day one, you won't be in the right headspace for this to be right for you. What we are not is coaches. We love Leah. Then we put a lot of people to you because that's not my skill. The best thing I can do for people is be out in the market finding the roles for them, so that when the people want to work this way, we've got a broker market that's bringing them opportunities because we can be nice and we can give you lots of tools and tricks, but what you really want from us is roles brought to the table. And so that's the best use of my time. And what we then ask in a very transparent, mature way with the people who we're working with, is that they've done some thinking, they've sort of had some discernment about, is this what they want to do and not come and ask us that question? Am I right for interim? Because I don't know, are you? And it's the thinking that's behind that that's really helpful. How do they go about these? Lots of tools, tricks, probably coaching, because you will start, it'll become quite clear and fabulous. People like yourself can help people guide through what that looks like, but you'll find us when you're ready.

[27:21] Leah Lambart: Great advice, Justina. Just a couple of other questions. You're Melbourne based, but do you recruit interim roles outside of Melbourne as well?

[27:31] Jacinta Whelan: We've got three partners in Melbourne that do. We do Australia wide, but we're based out of Sydney and Melbourne. The Sydney team cover Brisbane and Canberra. There's a lot of activity there and then probably less so in the other states just because of the size of the market. But we absolutely have done roles in Adelaide, we've done roles in Perth, we've done roles in Tassie and then regionally. So we do work, whether it be a hospital in Gippsland or a tafe in Wodonga, or very risk. Sometimes people ask me, I'd love an overseas opportunity. Very rarely happens. Australians are just. The wage arbitrage just means we're too expensive. People can't come the other way either because of visas, so we can't have a sum. And it turns around so quick. So when a client calls us today, I just got off the phone to a client before our call. It's Friday. When we're having this conversation, we will say to a client, give us three to four business days and we will have you an answer of someone who can start is available. And so the nature of that means it's very hard for people to be from overseas, but it's a bit more local. And the other thing I'll say about geography, I thought post Covid geography would be off the table and I was really looking forward to that. You know, we could have people remotely, it's not. I don't know why, but geography is a really sticky one people still want. And I think it's the nature. We've got executive level people. So if you've got an interim CEO coming, there's got to be some sort of presence and there's something. They're there because something's happened, some sort of catalyst. And so face time presence is really important. So every single role post Covid we've ever worked on has flexibility built in, but probably slightly more present in the operation, particularly for the first week or two, just to get your head around it, to make an impact, to know the players, to know the organisation. And then maybe about three days a week's the norm for people to go in. And the skill set that I've noticed that all our executives have a muscle they've had to develop since COVID is influencing online, because we had during COVID some people who did assignments and never ever met anyone. And so you're the CFO of an organization, you've just got to find your way through files on a g drive or something. Right. And I find that fascinating. And the thing that really stood out for me is the people we would always give our clients choice. So we will say, we'll give you two or three people to choose from that we think can do this role within three or four days. Now that's pretty quick turnaround, and we need to know lots of people to be able to make sure they're available. But then out of those two or three who go and meet the client online or face to face, I found the ones who had the best presence. They had developed this muscle for influencing online in terms of a coaching piece or for anyone listening. It was a muscle that we've never had to have before. But I cannot overstate it. Too many people fall back onto their years of experience or their education end or the project. They might. They might have. They might be, on paper, the perfect person for the role and they blow it in and online because they either can't get their system to work, or you look up their nose, or they stammer and stutter over answers and aren't crisp and don't have really good examples of what they do. So that is a really important part. And that's the piece that you can help people with and I think is underrated a bit. People at that level are sometimes reliant, too. Reliant on? Well, I don't really have to practice an interview or I'll get in there and I'll wing it. I know this, and there's no substitute for that preparation. And because it's that you can get to the final three, we know this perm or interim, that doesn't matter. But the preparation and not resting on your laurels at that point, I think we need to leave. It's a great place for interims to sort of think, okay, I can be everything. I can have all the skills, and I've still got to learn new things or stay current.

[31:53] Leah Lambart: That might be another episode. Just. It was wonderful to have you. I've learned so much. Totally recommend your book, which I assume we can find on the watermark website.

[32:07] Jacinta Whelan: I will send you a link that you might be able to send or put on your website for anyone that wants to have a look at that.

[32:13] Leah Lambart: Yeah, it's great read, really practical, really interesting. So I'll put that in the show notes. Thank you, Jacinta, amazing to talk to you. And I better let you go so you can find someone for that role next week. Thanks Leah.

[32:27] Jacinta Whelan: Great to talk.

[32:28] Leah Lambart: So you just enter.

[32:29] Jacinta Whelan: Bye.

[32:36] Leah Lambart: I hope you enjoyed this episode of relaunch your career. If you did, please subscribe, share with your friends, leave a review, or connect with us on social mediae launchme career consulting. If you have any questions about the episode or the work that we do, then contact us via via the website relaunchme.com au thanks for listening. Have a great day.