There tends to be very little movement between the public and private sectors. It's a bit like the North London versus South London situation - you opt for one, rarely leave it and defend it to the death.
According to a survey by Capita Interim Management, almost half of interim managers believe that they could find work in both the public and private sectors irrespective of their background. However, when interims were asked in which sector they had worked predominantly, only five per cent had worked in both the public and private sector in equal measure.
The survey showed that both interims and employers agreed that skills were transferable between the sectors, 65 per cent of interims had found that their skills were recognised as transferable, and 75 per cent of employers agreed. But it was a different story when it came to hiring - while interims felt they could move easily between sectors, employers disagreed, preferring candidates with extensive experience in their own sector.
According to Gwen Carter, director of Capita Interim Management,"There has always been a belief that public and private sector organisations are very different. From my experience of recruiting in both sectors, I have found that candidates often think that they should be able to move between sectors, but clients are a lot less likely to share this view and typically hire from within their own sector, and the survey results certainly uphold this. However, there doesn't appear to be a skills gap between the sectors as both candidates and clients alike seem to think that skills are transferable, so we must assume that it's purely a working culture divide that causes this disparity."
The survey pointed to cultural differences between the public and private sector as a reason why employers are reticent to hire interims from outside of their sector. 87 per cent of employers felt that there was a cultural difference between the public and private sectors, and almost 40 per cent felt that this affected the way they hired people.
Carter concludes that "Despite years of selling the benefits of private sector experience into the public sector and the increasing commerciality of the public sector - nothing really seems to have changed."
