A founder-led company doing about $40 million is five months into a bridge. A fractional COO has been holding operations together while a retained search looks for the permanent leader. In the debrief after the finalist interviews, she says she would like to be considered. The founder is pleased, then uneasy. She helped write the brief. She sat in on two of the interviews. The plant managers already report to her, and they have opinions about the finalists that sound a lot like hers.
The person holding the seat controls much of what the search depends on. They describe what the role needs. They shape what the team thinks. They brief the board on how the function is really running. That is useful when they are neutral. When they quietly want the job, every one of those inputs is conflicted, and the founder usually finds out late.
Russell Reynolds described a search in which the interim CEO did not say they wanted the permanent role until very late, while the board had assumed they did not. That is one example, not a measure, but it is the pattern to plan for.
Bridges are longer and more common
Heidrick & Struggles' 2026 High-End Independent Talent Report, based on client request data from its Business Talent Group platform in North America and Europe, found interim C-suite requests up 151% since 2021 and 14% year on year. Interim CFOs were 51% of interim leadership requests, and 24% of engagements were tied to transformations. Heidrick does not state the number of requests behind those figures.
Growth in interim C-suite requests since 2021, in Business Talent Group's North American and European client data.
Heidrick & Struggles, 2026 High-End Independent Talent Report, April 23, 2026The assignments are getting longer. Heidrick's 2026 Talent Lens survey of 3,810 independent professionals, fielded in August 2025 and 64% North American, found 42% of projects ran longer than six months, up from 27% in 2021. In the UK, the Institute of Interim Management's 2026 survey of interim managers put the average assignment at 10.0 months, up from 9.6, and found nearly a quarter of last assignments were delivered fractionally. The longer someone holds a seat, the more natural it becomes for everyone to treat them as the heir.
What nobody publishes is how often the interim becomes the permanent hire. We looked. None of these sources reports a conversion rate, and the pages that quote one do not name where it came from. We could not find a credible public source, so we are not offering a number.
Three candidacy rules. Pick one on day one.
| The rule | Who writes the brief | Sees other finalists? | Fits when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bridge only. Not a candidate, paid to hand over well. | The interim, with the founder | Yes, as an adviser | You want their judgment on the role and the finalists |
| Open candidate. Declared up front, assessed like everyone else. | The founder or a named director | No | They may be the answer, and you want a fair comparison |
| Candidate of record. The bridge is the evaluation. | The founder, with measures agreed in advance | No external slate until the review date | You already lean toward them and want proof first |
Each rule is fine. The problem is having none. A bridge-only interim who later becomes a candidate has already shaped the brief and met the competition. An open candidate who still writes the scorecard is marking their own work. A candidate of record without a date and measures tends to become the permanent hire by default.
The interim can be a candidate or an adviser on the search. Trying to be both is where it goes wrong.
If the rule changes partway through, reset the inputs. Take the brief and scorecard back to the founder or a named director, keep the interim out of other finalists' interviews, assess them through the same process, and tell the search firm in writing. The same discipline applies to Bridge-to-Hire engagements, including ours: the bridge is most useful when everyone knows whether it leads to the job.
What this is not
It is not an argument against hiring the interim. Sometimes the person who held the seat for ten months is plainly the best choice, and the bridge did exactly what it should: it let you see the work before committing. It is not an argument against bridges, either. A fractional leader often learns what the permanent seat needs better than anyone, which is the case we made in The Job Description You Can't Write Yet.
Write it down on day one. Name the rule, record why, and set a review date. If the answer changes, change the inputs with it.