Executive on Demand: Why and How

Many people have asked me why we started the Executive on Demand offering here at Core Catalysts. Executive on Demand provides talented executives with skill sets ranging from COO, CFO, CIO, Sales/Marketing, and HR on a fractional, retained, or project basis.

The need for this service offering came about because of two major trends.

The first is the popularity of the Gig Economy.  The Gig Economy is the growing popularity of people who desire to be their own bosses, set up LLCs, and determine their schedules and work content.  The Gig Economy has been growing for many years and has become more accepted by people who either want the flexibility to work remote or to focus on a specialized skill set.  The availability and amount of people that want to work in the Gig economy has been growing due to many reasons:

• Baby boomers in early retirement that still want to work; other workers requiring flexibility
• Professionals coming back into the work force after time off for reasons such as starting a new family, taking care of elderly family, and military service to name a few
• Availability of the internet to facilitate remote work environments
• The growing services that allow people to market their skills and experiences to a much broader audience – Gerson Lehrman Group (www.GLG.it) for example

The second is the acceptability for employers to use flexible or temporary resources as opposed to full time hiring and the time/expense it takes.  There are many drivers for employers to use flexible or temporary resources and include such things as:

• Going through a Merger/Acquisition and need temporary leadership to get through these
• Business growth, though not enough to support a full time executive until certain targets are met
• Business wants much more seasoned expertise but cannot afford it on a full-time basis
• Business has sudden need for a temporary executive caused by death/illness or unexpected departure
• Corporate hiring processes for full time executives is long and expensive – often requiring outside executive search firms and fees
• Corporate HR teams are stretched and not as well equipped to find executive level talent for a position in a short time.

Here are some great examples of how clients have used our service offering:

1. Client had to suddenly release its marketing executive and needed someone to come in and stabilize the group in the short term
2. Client was launching a new business line and needed short term assistance with developing and supporting investor presentations
3. Client had trouble with operations and needed CFO level talent to help diagnose and fix issues while supporting the current CFO
4. Client was in turn-around mode and needed short term executives to make drastic changes and eventually turn back over the steady state operators

In short, there is both a market need from employers and an availability of people that desire to work on a flexible basis. These factors combined to encourage Core Catalysts to launch a new service called Executive on Demand.

Call us for more information at 913.752.9406 or visit our web site at www.corecatalaysts.com.

—Jim Wadella, Owner/Founder