Tag: interim managers

What do you do when you’re stuck “off assignment”?

It's a tough market out there
It’s a tough market out there

Over the past couple of weeks a rather wonderful discussion thread has been unfurling at LinkedIn (an unexpected sentence I never thought I’d write).

The members of the Interim Managers Group  have been discussing what they do when they’re out of work – stuck “off assignment” .

This is heartening, not just because of the advice they’re sharing (of which more later), but  for the  simple fact that they are publicly acknowledging that even the most experienced interim has periods out of work when no matter how good you are, how expert, how well connected, you still can’t get hired for love nor money.

People rarely feel comfortable owning up to the fact that they’re not as successful/busy/in demand/well-remunerated as they’d like to be.  There’s lots of success shared over the networks of LinkedIn, but very few accounts of troughs to go with the peaks.  Having just finished a period “off assignment” myself, I was particularly cheered by this thread. People tend not to talk about this side of consultancy so it’s perfectly possible to believe that you are the only person who doesn’t move seamlessly from one well-paid assignment to the next. But hey, waddya know, everyone’s in the same boat.  Lots of people – experienced, well-qualified, massively employable people – sometime endure hair-raisingly long gaps between assignments.

Advice from the horse’s mouth

It’s the notion of a shared experience rather than any one piece of practical advice which will be the most help to me next time I’m caught in between jobs. But here’s a digest of practical suggestions for what to do if you’re temporarily without billable work, with thanks to the massed ranks of LinkedIn’s interim managers:

  • Maintain a structure to your day, your week, your month. Set some goals to achieve, work-related or not, and work towards them.
  • Keep your networking fresh, especially during the time you’re in an assignment otherwise your network may see you making contact only when you’re looking for work.
  • Create a business plan every year which will ensure the business is sustainable. Plan in time for personal development and marketing activity.
  • Go to as many industry events as you can to keep your network and industry knowledge up to date.
  • Work on your Linked In profile:
    1- Look at other profiles and see how yours can be improved
    2- Participate in discussions
    3 -Look at your home page every day – use CTRL-F to search for       relevant postings.
  • Email your ISP contacts every 6-8 weeks to remind them you are still looking.
  • Keep the faith – you will find work again.

And here are some tips from a different source on how to stay positive while you’re looking.

Private profit vs employees’ rights

When I moved to London to seek my fame and fortune I worked as a temp, making tea for the Head of HR at Channel 4.    I’d graduated to picking up dry-cleaning for the Head of Comms before  I landed a job in the press office.  I loved every minute of it – just as well as I “temped” there for almost a year.  Since then I’ve been a self-employed consultant and an interim manager  in a range of organisations, so I’ve spent almost half of my working life without benefit of holiday pay, sick pay or employers’ pension contributions.  This has been my choice and I’m not looking for sympathy, but it does mean that I know a bit about what it’s like at the sharp end of what is usually referred to as Britain’s flexible labour market.

New regulations to drown temp industry?

New regulations coming in this October will give temps and agency workers greater employment protection after they’ve been working for a company for 12 weeks.  Or, as the Telegraph put it: New regulations will drown temp industry.

Warning that unemployment will rise as companies off-load temps they can’t afford, the Telegraph warns that fewer jobs will now be created.

“No regulations and no left-wing shit”

I’d expect the Telegraph to back the bosses, so the opposition didn’t surprise me.  I’d argue that if you’re temping for a company for three months you’re doing a job not providing holiday cover, so you ought to have the same rights as your permanently employed colleague at the next desk.  One of the comments underneath the story is a bit of an eye-opener though:

It’s better to have a chat with agency staff, cut out the middleman and give everyone a better cash deal.  This is what I do.  No employment regs, no nonsense and no left-wing shit.  Any problems and the company will start up next week with a slightly different name.

Let’s pass over thoughts of how that “better cash deal” might be administered, and ask instead – when did offering reasonable employment protection to working people become “left-wing shit”?  Are we really saying that nothing is as important as maximizing profit?  That only bleeding heart liberals care about people’s rights?

Maybe the fact that I’m reading Chavs at the moment made the comment leap out at me.  Here’s author Owen Jones on the rise and rise of the “flexible workforce”:

We have been witnessing the slow death of the secure, full-time job,  There are up to 1.5million temporary workers in Britain.  A “temp” can be hired and fired at an hour’s notice, paid less for doing the same job and lacks rights such as paid holiday and redundancy pay.  Agency work is thriving in the service sector, but an incident at a car plant near Oxford in early 2009 illustrates where the rise of the temp has brought us.  Eight hundred and fifty temps – many of whom had worked in the factory for years – were sacked by BMW with just one hour’s notice … The workers, with no means of defending themselves from this calamity resorted to pelting managers with apples and oranges  … It’s not just agency and temporary workers who suffer because of job insecurity and outrageous terms and conditions.  Fellow workers are forced to compete with people who can be hired far more cheaply. Everyone’s wages are pushed down as a result.  This is the race to the bottom of pay and conditions.”

Agency Workers Regulations 2011

For anyone interested, here’s the TUC’s guide to agency workers’ rights   and guidance on the Agency Workers Regulations which come into force in October.  And for the record, I’m with the bleeding heart liberals on this one.