Rise of the Executive Temp

A recent Harvard Business Review article highlights the increase in former corporate executives offering their services to companies on a temporary or project basis. It is the creation of a new job category known as Interim Executive. As noted in, The Rise of the Supertemp, “Most supertems are refugees from big corporations and law and consulting firms who value the autonomy and flexibility of temporary or project-based work….They leave behind the endless internal meetings and corporate politics, which Trevisani reckons took 30% to 40% of his time back in the day.” Ed Trevisani, one of Cerius’ interim executives, is a prime example mentioned in the article. A Wharton MBA, former partner with IBM and PWC not to mention countless projects with Fortune 500 companies, Ed is among this growing population.

No longer does an executive need to spend countless hours working for the same company year after year, only to have most of the total accomplishments achieved in year one. Nor does a CEO or business owner need to spend months looking for the perfect candidate to fill a range of needs over the next couple of years to then have the executive peak within the first year or not work out at all. The speed of business in today’s market is pushing the need for quicker decisions, shorter timelines and immediate results. There is no one size fits all in the executive suite. As a result, the rise of independent executives is growing and we are seeing the shift from needing to own an executive’s expertise for a number of years migrating to simply leasing the expertise on an as needed basis. We see top level executives like Ed enjoying a long and accomplished career as interim executives.