The interim market has matured substantially in the last decade — the post-Brexit, post-pandemic combination has seen interim work move from the awkward stepchild of permanent recruitment into a genuinely first-rank category. Firms that previously wouldn’t have considered an interim engagement now do so routinely.

The downside of that growth is that bad interim engagements have become much more common. We see them weekly. The pattern is usually predictable.

Why interims fail

In our placement data, the three most common failure modes:

The brief is for a permanent role with an “interim” sticker. Sometimes a client says “we want a 9-month interim FD” when they actually want to try out a permanent FD and have a 9-month escape hatch. The dynamics of that engagement are different from a genuine interim — the candidate is being evaluated for permanence, the engagement structure is wrong, and the candidate often disengages by month four when they realise they’re being tested rather than hired.

There’s no clear handover plan. Interim engagements without a defined ending — including who picks up the work — almost always run over schedule, cost more than expected, and create dependency. The best interim work is the work that you don’t notice when it stops.

The interim is too senior for the actual problem. Hiring a £900-day FD to solve a £450-day Financial Controller problem produces frustration on both sides. The interim is bored, the work isn’t getting done, and the client is paying for senior judgement on routine tasks.

What good looks like

The interim engagements that succeed almost always have four characteristics.

First — a defined problem with a defined ending. “Cover the CFO during her maternity leave, with explicit responsibility for the Series C raise” is a real brief. “We need senior finance support for a while” is not.

Second — a clear day-one handover. The interim arrives with someone designated to brief them in the first week, access to the documents they need, and a list of standing meetings they should attend.

Third — clarity on what they will not own. Interim engagements work best with bounded scope. “You own A, B, and C. You’re consulted on D. You don’t touch E.”

Fourth — a permanent successor decided early. The strongest interim engagements know, by month two, who is taking over. The handover work then happens over months three to six, properly.

When to call us

We run a meaningful interim practice — roughly 30% of the finance work we do is interim, and a growing share of the senior commercial and operations work. We have placement data on what works and what doesn’t, and we’ll share what we’ve seen in a brief honest conversation.

Get in touch. Same number, same email. We respond within one working day.