Are you an with a wealth of experience, looking for a new challenge? Interim Management might be a great fit for you. Interim Management can be a vital resource for an organization looking to implement big changes, strengthen an existing team with outside expertise, meet a critical goal, guide a significant restructuring effort, or fill an unexpected gap in leadership. Interim Managers are skilled, qualified, and practical executives with a vast and varied array of experience. If you are flexible, willing to travel, and have experience fighting fires and conquering the mountains in your industry, this may be the job for you. Here are a few of the pros and cons involved in a career as an Interim Manager.
Pros
- Opportunity to travel. Interim Management positions are available all over the globe.
- Challenges galore. These positions often have tight deadlines, involve integrating changes to established systems and cultures, and involve organizations in flux.
- Those challenges may be in your wheelhouse, but chances are, you’ll be learning more as you go, and gathering new experience and knowledge with each position.
- You’re able to focus on discrete goals and leave the everyday chores and politics to others.
- There is quite a bit of freedom involved in being the outsider and the firefighter, you aren’t weighed down with concern about the long term.
- Great for networking, these positions continue to polish and improve your personal brand as you go, as your contact list expands!
- Compensation can be very rewarding for these positions.
Cons
- Working in different cultures and languages. It can be stressful to be the “fish out of water”.
- Challenges can be exhilarating, but these positions involve high levels of stress much of the time. If you don’t love pressure, this may not be the right career for you.
- You’re only as good as your last success. These positions are given to those with great reputations, and a misstep can be quite damaging. That knowledge adds to the pressure.
- Fast paced, and finite, you’ll rarely have time to settle in and build a legacy.
- Switching from company to company, culture to culture, and working with teams experiencing anxiety and tension requires a level of detachment and pragmatism that can be difficult to maintain.
- There will be dry spells, when little work is available. You have to be financially secure to be able to afford riding out the famine in this feast-or-famine field.
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