Maybe You Don’t Need a Full-Time Hire
Maybe You Don’t Need a Full-Time Hire
Why the shape of the role should follow what the business actually needs
At a glance: A fractional leader can give a New Zealand business senior experience for part of the week. A full-time hire may be the better fit when the work needs daily leadership and long-term ownership. Start with the outcomes the business needs, then decide the shape of the role.
There is a fairly predictable point in a recruitment conversation where we start talking about the shape of the role.
Full-time. Permanent. Five days.
Usually those decisions have already been made before we get involved. And often they are absolutely right. But every now and then, as we start pulling the brief apart, I find myself asking:
Do you actually need this person five days a week?
It can be a slightly uncomfortable question.
Particularly when the role is senior.
There is still an assumption that if the problem is important enough, or the person experienced enough, the answer must be a permanent full-time hire.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes, once you really get into what is happening in the business, the answer looks quite different.
Start with what’s actually going on
A business might say it needs a COO. Or a senior marketing leader. Or a CFO. But the job title only gets us so far.
What matters is what is actually happening underneath it.
Maybe the business has grown quickly and the founder is carrying too much. Maybe a team needs stronger leadership for the next stage. Maybe there is a particular problem that needs someone experienced enough to come in, make sense of it and get things moving. Maybe the business needs senior experience, but not five days of it.
That’s where the conversation gets interesting. Because perhaps the question isn’t:
Who do we hire into this full-time role?
Perhaps it’s:
What do we need somebody really good to come in and do?
Those are not always the same question.
Fractional doesn’t mean half committed
I think the word “fractional” can make something sound smaller than it is.
A fractional leader isn’t someone dipping in occasionally and offering a few thoughts from the sidelines.
Done well, they are properly part of the business. They are there to do a job, make decisions, build trust with the team and be accountable for what happens.
For some businesses, that’s exactly what makes the model work.
You get someone with experience you may not otherwise need, or be ready for, on a permanent full-time basis. They can come in two or three days a week, bring some perspective, help establish the right structure, steady things through a period of change or build capability in the people already there. Then, when the business changes again, the role can change with it.
That can be incredibly useful.
But it is not automatically the right answer.
Sometimes you absolutely do need someone there every day
This is the bit that can get lost whenever a new way of working becomes fashionable.
Fractional leadership is not “better” than permanent leadership. Sometimes a role needs someone deeply embedded in the business. Someone who is there every day.
Someone who owns a function long-term, leads a large team, lives with the consequences of decisions and is part of the leadership rhythm week in, week out.
Trying to squeeze that into two days because fractional sounds modern is no more sensible than hiring someone full-time simply because that is what the org chart has always shown.
The structure should follow the work, not the other way around.
The interesting part is getting the shape right
We had a similar conversation when hybrid work became normal.
For a while, the question seemed to be: “How many days should people be in the office?” Two? Three? Five?
But the more useful conversation was always:
What does this team actually need in order to work well?
I think senior hiring is starting to move through something similar. For a long time, the pattern was pretty simple. The business grows, so another full-time role appears on the org chart. But businesses don’t always grow that neatly anymore.
Particularly in New Zealand, where so many organisations are relatively lean, there can be long periods where a business needs serious experience without needing another permanent executive sitting in the leadership team five days a week.
Having more options gives businesses room to be a little more thoughtful.
It can also create a different kind of career
There is another side to this conversation that I find really interesting.
Some very experienced people no longer want the traditional next step. They have already done the five-day executive role. Sometimes several times.
They still want meaningful work. They still want responsibility. They still want to contribute at a high level. They just don’t necessarily want one job to own their entire week.
A three-day leadership role might sit alongside board work. Or advisory work. Or another business. Or family. Or simply some room to live differently.
That is not stepping away from ambition. For some people, it is becoming much clearer about where they want to put their experience.
And when the right business meets the right person at that point, fractional work can be a very good fit on both sides.
Good recruitment should be able to challenge the brief
One of the things I value most about recruitment is that we get to ask the question someone inside the business may not have thought to ask.
Sometimes that means questioning the experience requirements. Sometimes the salary. Sometimes the title. And sometimes it means asking whether the role needs to exist in the shape they originally imagined.
That doesn't mean making every brief complicated. Quite the opposite. The goal is to get clear enough that the eventual hire makes sense.
Maybe that is a permanent full-time leader. Maybe it’s a contractor for six months. Maybe it is a fractional executive for three days a week. The interesting part is not the label. It is whether the arrangement solves the problem.
So before we start building the shortlist, I think there is one question worth asking:
What does the business actually need?
Work that out first.
Then decide what shape the role should take.
Questions about fractional leadership
What is fractional leadership?
Fractional leadership gives a business an experienced senior leader for part of the working week. The leader takes responsibility for agreed work, makes decisions and works with the team, with the role shaped around what the business needs.
When might a fractional executive make sense?
A fractional executive may suit a business that needs senior experience to support growth, strengthen leadership, navigate change or build team capability, but does not need that person five days a week.
When is a full-time leader the better choice?
A full-time leader may be the better choice when a role needs daily involvement, ongoing ownership of a function, leadership of a large team and consistent participation in the business’s leadership rhythm.
Thinking about the shape of your next hire?
Start with a conversation about what your business needs. Explore our recruitment services for employers or talk to the Recruitment Studio team about your next appointment.
Related reading: Why the Right Fit Matters on Both Sides of the Table.