HR professional looking for an HR interim role?

An HR interim is employed on a fixed-term contract to carry out a particular job role, and this may last from several months to a number of years.

HR interim positions often become available due to the extended absence of permanent members of HR staff, resulting from maternity leave, long-term ill health, or the like.

Alternatively, there could be a temporary increase in workload due to the seasonal nature of the work or spikes in business, or a recruitment freeze meaning that an organisation can only appoint HR interim roles, as opposed to recruiting permanent HR staff.

When a company is looking to fill an HR interim role, they can employ us to carry out the recruitment process on their behalf.

They may choose to do this since we can provide specialist HR and interim recruitment skills that they might not have available in-house, or simply to manage the workload of their in-house HR team.

We get paid by our client, the end-company we’re recruiting on behalf of. Which means that we don’t charge our interims any initial registration fees, or take a cut of their wages.

Interim HR roles are unique in that you will often be taking on a role covering an immediate requirement. Which means that typically you will be expected to hit the ground running and get up to speed quickly with the immediate HR challenges. Sometimes, there can also be a backlog of work, for example, if you are covering a role due to long-term ill health.

Interim HR roles also demand that you be happy with the fluidity of the job security, and you will need to be proactive towards the end of the contract to secure your next role.

One advantage of interim HR roles is that you can quickly gain experience in a variety of different sectors and businesses. This can help you gain HR knowledge across a broad range of topics. Another is that they allow you do adopt a much more flexible lifestyle than with a traditional permanent career path, meaning that you can intersperse interim positions with extended periods of travel, study, or other life goals.

Alternatively, an interim role can be a great stepping stone into securing a permanent or project role within the organisation and allows you to ‘try before you buy’ a role with a specific business.

Indeed, our founder Sarah Loates secured her very first HR role as an HR interim, which then led to a permanent HR position.

You are employed directly by the end-company that you’re actually doing the work for.

So, any contractual arrangements will be solely between you and them.

No, all our interim assignments are as employees of our client, the end-company.

Yes, we encourage our end-company clients to offer as much flexibility as their business and role can allow.

We also encourage less obvious options, such as job shares.

Towards the end of the contract, we will contact the end-company to determine whether they plan to extend the contract. If not, and with their full knowledge, we will contact you to help you secure your next role.

We’re looking to form a long-term relationship with both you and our client, the end-company, not just make a one-off placement.

Yes, we’d be delighted with this outcome!

Being an interim can be a great way into a permanent role, as it allows you to demonstrate what you can actually bring to the role, especially if a lack of formal qualifications or previous experience is holding you back in your career.

Indeed, our founder Sarah Loates secured her very first HR role as an HR interim, which then led to a permanent HR position.

Our recruitment process involves traditional advertising, sifting, and shortlisting. We also conduct a detailed requirements analysis with our client, so we know exactly what we are looking for.

Sometimes, we will ask you to complete a technical desktop exercise to assess your level of technical knowledge and how this relates to the role in question.

We always conduct an initial interview; we carefully explore your motivations and what is important to you. So we can assess if the role offers what you require. Finally, a values-based interview where we consider personal organisation fit.

Unlike some other recruitment agencies, we do not ‘spray’ our client with many CVs; we focus on quality, not quantity.

Consequently, we’re happy to have a ‘warts-and-all’ discussion with you about what working for a particular client will actually be like. We’re HR people ourselves, so we totally understand what the job will involve, and what the pros and cons in any particular case will be. We want the candidates we put forward to have a completely realistic expectations about the job role.

That’s because we aim to send our clients a handful of carefully curated applicants, all of whom can do the job and ‘hit the ground running’. Not only that, but we want to make sure they will stay for the duration of the contract. So, if we’re not completely confident that you’re a good match for a particular role, we won’t put you forward. Conversely, if you are put forward for an interview with our client, that means you’ll typically only be up against one or two other candidates, although they will be stiff competition.

Our clients often tell us that we give them a real dilemma regarding selecting a single candidate from the shortlist we provide.

We operate across England; we specialise in roles based in the East and West Midlands.

We take data protection very seriously, and so only use your personal information for the types of legitimate purpose that you might reasonably expect.

See our privacy policy to find out more about exactly what we do with your personal data.