Press reports might all be doom and gloom and some sectors might be off-loading IT staff at a rate of knots, but the credit crunch could be a bonus for temporary staff, contractors and interims.

According to interim management and recruitment specialist Phil Young, temps will be winners as companies try to “avoid adding full time employees to the company balance sheet but still need the work doing”.

In a recent survey of specialist agencies conducted by Phil Young and his consultancy Johnson-Young Associates, many were seeing certain sectors slow down their recruiting while other sectors remained buoyant.

However, because of the amount of people seeking work, Young suggests it is becoming increasingly harder to filter out the good applicants.

Young also suggests that head-hunters are finding this a hard time primarily because the people they call are very reluctant to leave what they perceive to be stable positions; as a result, interims are once again benefiting by backfilling those roles that are being recruited for.

He explains: “What we tend to see at times of recession are companies flexing down the workforce to save money. But they often flex too far and this then means that they do not have the resource to move the business forward.

“This is when the market for interims picks up – once the companies have bottomed out and realise they need people.”

Young’s report comes hot on the heels of recent news from AluimPartners which revealed that over 40% of the 1,072 interim management executives they questioned had witnessed pressures of the credit crunch in their most recent client company.

“It doesn’t help that we are also now in ‘holiday silly season’,” says Young. “At this time of year a lot of decision makers are either away from the office or are demob happy and therefore are holding off on recruitment decisions. But, in general, after a short lull this could be a very good time for interims.”