Jenny Scrivener is our UK Director of Interim and Recruitment. She has worked in HR recruitment for over 20 years and most of this time has been focused on interim and temporary recruitment.
How does working on interim recruitment differ from standard recruitment?
Interim recruitment is about supporting a client to fill an immediate need. The need tends to be urgent, requiring the consultant to go in and hit the ground running. As a supplier you need to ensure you have consultants you know and trust to deliver the work to a high standard. When working on interim recruitment you are in contact with both your consultant and client before and during the assignment to ensure everything is running efficiently. We often work with our consultants again and again and a lot of my customers (both consultants and clients) have become great friends of mine!
What do you enjoy most about interim recruitment?
The reason I love this so much, and honestly I do, is the pace at which you work, and the strength of relationships you build with your clients.
Why might a client require interim cover?
Some reasons a client might require an interim are for things like maternity cover, holiday cover, special projects, or just to have an extra pair of hands in the team to cover busy periods.
Why would you say an interim may be more suitable than a temp?
Our interim service at Hunter Adams not only offers you immediate cover, but also offers you the support and back-up of the wider Hunter Adams team behind the scenes. This is a unique part of our service that really differentiates us from other interim providers and what attracts both our clients and consultants to us. Our interim support team can offer our interim consultants advice, guidance, tools and templates to help them in their everyday work, and prevent wasting time reinventing the wheel!
What other preconceptions do you think clients might have about hiring an interim and how would you counter these?
Some clients may worry that they will be let down by an interim, or that perhaps they won’t see the assignment through to completion. Admittedly people can be unpredictable at times – that’s just human nature – so you can never be 100% sure what someone is going to do; but we do our utmost to eliminate any element of risk for our client.
80% of the consultants we use are permanently employed by Hunter Adams, so it’s their job to complete the assignment and to do so to a high quality. The other 20% are tried and tested consultants who, 9 times out of 10, we have worked with before. All our interim consultants undergo a rigorous recruitment process, are competence checked and referenced and we catch up with both client and consultant regularly to ensure the consultant is delivering, and importantly, both parties are happy.
For more information on our HR interim support service get in touch with us at team.admin@hunteradams.co.uk.