What I learned building a fractional executive career

After landing two part-time General Counsel roles through networking, one executive discovered how fractional leadership offers flexibility, higher earning potential, and a hedge against layoffs.

[Photos: Hunters Race/Unsplash; rawpixel.com/FreePik]

As a graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School I believed full-time roles were the only way to succeed, until an unexpected Bollywood acting opportunity opened my eyes to freelance-forward careers. Since then, I have toggled between holding full-time executive roles and fractional ones. 

If you’re not familiar with the phrase, you can think of fractional work as the executive version of freelancing. Fractional leaders work in a C-suite or other senior role part-time, usually for multiple companies simultaneously.   

Landing a fractional role

I landed my first fractional General Counsel role when I attended an industry conference in the hopes of finding my next job. Instead, I met a startup founder who needed legal support but didn’t have enough work to justify hiring somebody full-time. A month later, I got my second fractional General Counsel role from a different founder in similar circumstances. 

Job postings for fractional work are fairly limited, owing to their custom nature and partial workload. Instead, this job type relies heavily on the “hidden job market”. To maximize your chances of getting a fractional role, seek out events that your future manager would attend. Fractional roles are often at startups and SMBs, so prioritize conferences attracting those companies’ founders, leadership, or investors. If you can’t meet your prospective clients organically, try to have a mutual friend introduce you, engage on social media, or send a thoughtful cold email directly. 

After securing your first fractional role, you can follow the same path to get your second, or ask your existing client for a referral. Building a book of business takes time. Depending on your circumstances, it might make sense to seek out other freelance or even full-time work while growing your fractional career. 

Here’s what my day usually looks like when I’m doing fractional work. I wake up by 7 am, do yoga, then scan messages to see if any fire drills came in overnight. If not, I’ll eat breakfast and get to my desk by 9 a.m. Then I log in to each of my company accounts.

Since I have a different calendar for each company, I confirm I don’t have any double-booked meetings or deadlines. I’ll then triage the requests that came in overnight, and make a master to-do list mapping out the day’s tasks for each client, as well as administrative tasks for running my own business. Inevitably, new work comes in during the day and I’ll triage that by urgency too.

Expedia CEO Ariane Gorin on Turning AI Into a Competitive Advantage

© Fast Company