Our Procurement & Supply Chain Interim team look at what the sector experienced towards the end of 2016 and share their views on the recruitment landscape for 2017.

The final quarter brought an interesting end to 2016. Many Interim professionals wound down as the end of the year drew closer and projects came to an end. Across both the construction sector and financial services, this led to a number of seasoned interim’s seeking their next project, and consequently an exciting start to 2017!

We have been dealing with an extremely competitive candidate market due to the number of experienced and skilled specialists immediately available for work. However, there is a slower turnover in requirements for staff, and therefore a new trend has emerged where interim’s are willing to take a cut in their daily rates in order to secure contracts.

We are not concerned though – this is always changing and we are hopeful that rates will start to rise over the next few months.

Approaching the end of 2016, it seemed some organisations did not have as much interim work as experienced in previous months. Not surprisingly, hiring managers were reluctant to approve new projects to enable them to stay in line with their 2016 budget. As seen in previous years, the contracts released to the market were mainly for Technology Procurement Specialists, particularly within the Banking sector.

Our regular clients predict expansion across their procurement divisions during 2017. They have expressed a need for an instant impact for their teams, and therefore this should lead to a significant increase in requirements over the coming months.

During the last few months of 2016 we worked in partnership with a new client in the financial services sector. The business needed a new Head of Procurement, and we successfully introduced them to a candidate for their global financial services organisation. This role required working alongside the Financial Director in preparation for a separation in the business, midway through the year. As well as this being a new client for the procurement team, the successful candidate was also taking their first steps into the interim market.

We have continued our regular work with long-standing clients in the legal and construction sectors and introduced an IT Procurement Manager and Senior Buyer on long-term contracts stretching into the back-end of 2017.

As ever, we are keen to speak to existing and new Interim consultants in order to gather their thoughts on the market and industry, especially with regards to the significant new IR35 legislation due to be implemented in the next few months.