Why Don’t I See Any Fractional Jobs For My Function Area?

This blog post originally appeared on one of Fractional Jobs weekly newsletters! 

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I have a unique vantage point on the fractional market given I sit squarely in the middle of it. I probably see more fractional job openings and have more conversations about fractional hiring than almost anyone else (*very humble, Taylor*).

It’s crystal clear what the most popular fractional jobs are today. We all see it. What I think is much less clear, even misunderstood, is why.

The most popular fractional leadership roles today are for:

• Marketing
• Finance
• Engineering
• Design

It’s not even close. Sales, Operations, Product, Customer Success, HR (aside from recruiting), etc. are all significantly less frequent. Why? Yes it’s an education issue, but that doesn’t explain it all.

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The “Lowest Hanging Fruit” Hypothesis

It all has to do with the founder (CEO, owner, hirer) mindset, specifically how they think about the jobs to be done for the company. Let’s put on our founder hat for a minute.

The Finance function is extremely compartmentalizable. It’s an entirely discrete function, and everyone knows exactly what it is. If I as a founder don’t have these skills, and there’s a need for it in my company, it’s absolutely SCREAMING at me. And every single company on earth needs it at some point.

Marketing is basically the same. Absolutely everyone knows what it is, it’s very well-defined, and it’s obvious when it’s needed. It’s so incredibly common to hire a marketer for marketing work that when I as a founder identify a need, my first instinct is almost always to hire for it instead of going without it or doing it myself.

Engineering is all of the above PLUS most founders can’t even pretend to have this skill, so it’s a given from the get-go that they need someone else to own this.

These are examples of lowest hanging fruit fractional jobs. The question isn’t “what is this” or “do I need this”, it’s simply “how am I going to get it”, and fractional can be a great solution.

This is the reason Finance, Marketing, Engineering, etc. roles are the most popular. They are the first successful use cases of hiring fractional because they are the most obvious and well-understood needs.

As the fractional movement picks up steam, these are the use cases I think of as “Level 1” fractional roles.

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Level 2 & Level 3 Fractional Roles

As Level 1 continues to become more popular, it will start to make way for level 2 fractional roles and beyond.

Some examples of Level 2 are Sales, Product, and HR. They all have very well-understood full-time job equivalents, but are less understood for fractional hiring than Level 1. Again, put on your founder hat for a minute.

A Fractional Sales use case is less obvious because I as the founder am often doing the Sales myself, even if I’m not a salesperson. If you missed it, Ryan Ing wrote a great guest post last week on how Fractional Sales Leaders can help support a founder-led sales motion.

A Fractional Product use case is less obvious to me as a founder because it’s fairly common for other people at the company to take on this responsibility. Founders often act as the Product leader. Or, the CTO steps in to “run Product” (famous last words, sorry CTOs).

And HR? It’s a common joke among startups that the company “grows up” when the first HR person is hired. Companies often procrastinate on this, even when the need is burning.

The critical takeaway For Level 2 roles - companies are used to solving these problems without a dedicated expert, at least for a while. The initial instinct is to solve internally, or put it off until a full-time role becomes inescapable. Fractional is a new option - today we have Fractional Heads of Product! It’s going to take more time for founders to understand this and start to work it into their toolbelt.

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The TLDR Summary - Why Aren’t There Fractional XYZ Roles?

Level 1 Fractional Roles (e.g. Finance) - The low hanging fruit. It’s obvious when there is a need and companies are used to solving this need by looking to experts from the get-go.

^^^^ We are here right now in the fractional journey!!!

Level 2 Fractional Roles (e.g. Product) - Companies are used to solving this problem by others in the org stepping in to fill the gaps, for a while. This instinct needs to be retrained because now there is another option - a fractional leader.

Level 3 Fractional Roles (e.g. UX Research) - Similar to Level 2, but there aren’t even good full-time equivalents. Even at larger companies these roles are often done by non-experts.

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If doing fractional work sounds exciting to you, or you want to learn more, check us out at https://fractionaljobs.io. We've got plenty of live jobs from startups looking for senior-level fractional talent.