Andrew McKinlay insists Hearts have already been inundated by CVs following the sacking of Robbie Neilson.

The 42-year-old left the Tynecastle club on Sunday as his second tenure in charge came to an end.

A run of five consecutive defeats sealed his fate, as the Gorgie club now looks to the future beyond this season.

Steven Naismith has been placed in temporary charge of the first team until the end of this season but will be given every chance to showcase what he can do in the dugout.

But while speaking to the media, McKinlay revealed that within 30 minutes of Neilson's sacking, there were already CVs flooding into his inbox.

He said: “It’s been very interesting for me. In the last 48 hours since the statement was made, within 30 minutes you have CVs in your email.

"We’ve been inundated already with CVs, with phone calls, etc. We’ll take our time with that, we’ll look at them all. We don’t just sit back and think that now the manager is gone we need to now look.

“The Sporting Director and I have, constantly throughout Robbie’s time, talked about (what would happen) if Robbie went tomorrow. Now, the hope was always that if Robbie went it was because he was going on to something better, on his own terms, but if he went tomorrow who might we look at?

READ MORE: Gary Mackay calls out Hearts fans over 'toxic' Robbie Neilson abuse

"So we would always talk about names, throw them around. Some of them are available, some of them aren’t. Some of them become available but things change and you’re always going through that in your head.

“We have views in our mind on what sort of manager we would like. We are doing work and we have been doing work around which managers are out there and might fit what we would like as a manager.

"We’ve also obviously got Steven, who is the incumbent until the end of the season.

"He has an opportunity to show to us why he should be that person longer term, and that’s entirely up to him to do. He is, as you can imagine, incredibly appreciative of the opportunity and very excited by the chance that he now has.

“It’s up to Steven to show us how much of a serious contender he is. He’s been put in charge and it’s a massive opportunity for him. I think anyone who is given that opportunity is always going to be in contention but it would be silly of us to say that we were going to wait until after the seven games and it’s not worked so we have to parallel things at the moment and look at various alternatives, which you would expect us to do.

"Steven is absolutely focused on the her and now and doing the best that he can for the next seven games, and rightly so. That’s what I would expect of him.”