The recruitment sector in Ireland is becoming increasingly open and mobile, writes Gabrielle Monaghan.

What do you do if your finance director has a heart attack? Or the chief executive suddenly quits? Finding a replacement from within the company is one option but Irish companies are increasingly looking to interim management providers for the answer.

"Interim management is a small but growing market," says Robert Wasson, chief executive of Watershed Consulting, which has more than 250 high-achieving executives on its books.

"If you have to replace your MD or finance director, and for a significant period, it's difficult to do within the organisation, especially since you have to staff the vacancies it creates all the way back down."

Companies have been using interim management providers to fill top-level positions for about 20 years in the United States and the UK, where there are now several thousand interim managers and a dozen established providers.

The British interim management market is now valued at about £500 million (€722 million) a year.

A Mori (Market and Opinion Research International) survey of more than 100 British industry leaders carried out for BIE Interim Executive, which supplies senior-level interim executives in the UK, found that about 58 per cent of FTSE 500 companies had used senior interim executives during 2005, up from 50 per cent a year earlier. Because of Ireland's size, companies used to find new management by networking and exploiting their contacts in their respective industry.

The increasing presence of foreign employers, especially in the IFSC, has made networking as a method of hiring top management more difficult.

Instead, the recruitment landscape is becoming similar to that of the UK, where senior managers are increasingly mobile, according to Watershed's Wasson.

"A senior operations manager in the UK financial services industry might spend two or three years in London, then two years in Leeds, and if you know a client in the UK and go back five years later, all your contact people have gone," Wasson says. "It used to be in Ireland that you would know everyone in town. Now it's going the way of the UK."

In the last few years, there has been a growing pool of interim managers available in Ireland to fill any senior role, helped by the roar of the Celtic Tiger. These executives have typically worked for multinational companies or on management boards at indigenous firms but no longer want to be tied down to one single employer.

They can earn up to €1,000 a day and are not beholden to a boss. Interim executives are typically senior managers in their 40s who like to go to new organisations, make a change, and move on again, without getting involved in office politics, according to Wasson. The role often gives them a better lifestyle - an interim manager can spend nine months in a well-paid job and spend the remainder of the year with family or pursuing other interests.

This style of work has become a career choice for a number of senior managers in Ireland because it is attractive to those who are highly experienced and skilled in a particular sector but enjoy challenge, variety and risk.

The decline of the orthodox career path has made this possible.

"Managers are much more mobile now. The day of a person working for one company for 20 years is over," Wasson says.

"People are bringing more self-choice to their career paths and more choice is available to them.

"Employers now look more favourably on a person who has held a variety of roles. Twenty years ago, it was the other way round. They were seen as flitting around and disloyal."

The typical interim assignment can last from several weeks to several months, although some managers can stay on permanently.

Some interim executives are what Wasson describes as "generalists" who can turn their hand to anything in any industry.

Some roles, such as a regulatory compliance director at a financial services firm, require an interim who has experience in doing exactly the same job.

The role of interim executives is also expanding into the management of acquisitions, change programmes, turnarounds and crisis management.

Watershed has turnaround specialists on its books who go into a company for four to five months to cut costs and even roll out large redundancies.

Other managers, Wasson says, are good at just "minding the shop" until a permanent replacement is found.

After food group Jacob Fruitfield bought the Jacob's biscuit company in August 2004, Watershed provided a human resources director, a former Glanbia human resources executive, to integrate the new business.

The company also came up with a senior adviser for RTÉ to work with a team over a four-month period to put in place a detailed transition plan, and found a senior finance manager for Bord Gáis to fill a vacancy for 10 months.

Wasson, a former head of KPMG's strategic consultancy division, hadn't initially planned on entering the interim management sector.

Then two years ago he began getting calls from companies Watershed had done consultancy work for, asking if he knew managers who could replace top executives they had lost due to illness, resignation or maternity leave. He began filling vacancies for companies on an ad hoc basis.

"We are getting calls because we had a trusted relationship with these companies and they were hoping we could point them in direction of people to fill those roles for them," Wasson says.

"It's the core focus of our business now, whereas two years ago we were mainly a consulting company."

Watershed now charges €8,700-€10,100 a month for interim managers, plus VAT.

The firm argues that the real cost of hiring an interim executive is less than the cost of permanent management because companies don't have to pay interim executives pension provisions, stock options, bonuses or expenses.

Interim managers can also be let go at short notice, without termination bonuses or severance packages.