Auditioning New Talent: The Value of Temp-to-Perm Employment
Hiring a new employee is risky. There’s always a question of how well they’ll perform and how well they’ll mesh with your team. No matter how great an interviewer you are, no matter how thorough your hiring process is, you won’t really know if you’ve hired the right person until after your new employee has worked for your company for a few weeks.
Taking a new job is risky for a candidate too. Who hasn’t been surprised in a bad way when they started a new job? Too often, an employee starts work only to find out that there were a lot of details that were simply glossed over, or worse yet, actually misrepresented.
Hiring the wrong person can really throw a monkey wrench into your company culture, your staffing plans, and possibly, your fiscal plans as well. On the other side, taking the wrong job can potentially sideline your career. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to take out at least some of the mystery in the hiring process? Wouldn’t it be great if you could have insight into who’s coming into your company, how they’ll work with your team, and how they’ll deal with the daily obstacles that come with any job?
Well, here’s an idea – what if, in addition to interviews and skills tests, we give potential employees the chance to audition for a new job?
How to Audition Employees
In the performing arts, people have resumes. They look different from the resumes that we see in business, but they still give information about someone’s skills and experience.
In addition to a resume, performers are expected to audition. Whatever their niche, singing, acting, and/or playing an instrument, they’re expected to perform for a brief period of time to show how they would fill an open role.
Business is, of course, different from the performing arts. But we can still give people the chance to show their talent and give us an idea of how they’ll perform in the job they’re applying for. We can do this by hiring the candidate on a temporary basis, with the idea that if all works out, they’ll be made a full-time employee. This is commonly called temp-to-perm employment, and more and more companies are choosing this option as an alternative to direct hiring.
What is a Temp-to-Perm Employment?
A temporary employee is someone who is hired for a specific period of time. Often, they fill in during a company’s busy season or when an employee would be absent for an extended time. Temporary employment is usually short-term.
The stereotype is that temporary employees are largely unskilled and less likely to succeed in a long-term job, or they’re fresh graduates looking to transition from school into a career, without a lot of work experience in the real world. Temporary employment can be a great way for a new graduate to gain job skills, and there is a need for temporary manual labor. However, more and more experienced and accomplished workers are choosing to freelance to freelance today. This may be due to market conditions or a desire to have closer control over one’s job, but whatever the reason, this trend has greatly improved the quality of people available for temporary work.
What’s so Great About Temp-to-Perm
When someone comes to work for your company as a temp-to-perm employee, you’re essentially giving them the chance to audition for a new role. You’re also giving the temporary employee the chance to better evaluate what it would be like to work for your company on a permanent basis. This is a true win/win situation, which is an unusual find in modern business.
Beyond the opportunity to “try before you buy” and commit to a new employee or a new job situation, there are plenty of other advantages in using temp-to-perm employment.
Hiring Temp-to-Perm Minimizes Headaches
Hiring anyone involves a lot of paperwork. So does firing someone. Even if you’re in a right-to-work state, there are still hoops you have to jump through when you have an employee who just doesn’t work out.
When an employee is terminated for cause, you may still be at risk legally. You’ll be responsible for responding to any unemployment claims and possibly discrimination claims, even if the employee was clearly in the wrong. But this isn’t the case with a temp-to-perm employee.
When you have someone working for your company on a temp-to-perm basis, they’re actually employed by the recruiting firm who supplied them to your company. The company that pays a temp-to-perm employee directly is their employer of record. You don’t have to worry about adding a temp-to-perm employee to payroll or paying their overhead charges, like unemployment and worker’s compensation insurance unless you hire them. You also don’t have to worry about what will happen if it doesn’t work out – you can simply let the recruiting firm know what’s going on and let them handle the headache.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that you can treat a temporary employee unfairly. You’re still required to treat them with the same respect and dignity that you give any other employee, especially if you’re hoping to have them come work for your company on a full-time basis. But before they come to work for your company directly, their administrative costs and legal requirements are the responsibility of their employer of record, which eases your burden.
Using temp-to-perm employees shortens the time to hire
By using an outside firm, you’ll have someone who can source, screen, conduct skills testing, and perform reference and background checks on a potential employee more quickly and efficiently than your company. In fact, they’re likely to already have someone on their roster who will be a good fit for your position and your company. And odds are, you won’t have to wait for the temp-to-perm employee to give a two-week notice to their current employer, unlike a direct hire. When you’re selecting a temp-to-perm employee you should only be concerned about cultural fit – everything else will have already been reviewed.
Hiring Temp-to-Perm Lowers your Employee Turnover
Having someone work for your company on a temp-to-perm basis gives you the chance to really evaluate their skills and abilities. It also gives the employee the chance to evaluate your company as an employer. The temp-to-perm employee can confirm that they’ll be able to handle the commute on a daily basis. They’ll also know if actually enjoy the job and if they like working for your company and with your team.
Employers often think of temp-to-perm as a chance to evaluate potential employees, and it is. But temp-to-perm also gives potential employees the chance to evaluate what it really is like to work for your company. If everything works out during this extended evaluation period, then your new employee will already be aware of what’s expected of them in their job and what they should expect as an employee. This means that they’re more likely to stay with your company in the long-term, because they’ve already been with your company for awhile.
Temp-to-Perm Employees Work Harder
Someone who is brought into your company as a temp-to-perm employee has a huge incentive to work hard and perform well – they’re trying to impress you so that you might make them an employment offer. Frankly, this means that you’ll get often get better work out of a temp-to-hire employee because they have a goal in mind. Ideally, the energy and drive they put towards this goal can inspire your current employees as well.
How to Have a Successful Temp-to-Perm Engagement
The most important key to a successful temp-to-perm engagement is to have a strong relationship with your talent acquisition partner. Your talent acquisition partner will help you find the right temp-to-perm employee more quickly and efficiently than another firm that doesn’t know your company. They’ll also be able to present your company and your opening to potential employees in the most accurate light, making sure that no one’s time is wasted.
Your company will be responsible for the day-to-day work of the temp-to-perm employee, but everything else will be handled by the temp-to-perm employee’s employer of record. When you use your talent acquisition partner to provide your temp-to-perm employees, you can be sure that the employee will be treated well with minimal stress making for a smoother engagement and transition to a permanent job.
Finding a temp is easy. The world is full of temporary employment agencies. What’s not so easy is finding a temp that you might want to make a permanent employee. Use your talent acquisition specialist to help you find the right person and give that person the chance to show themselves to be a good employee. This way, you can be sure that you’re truly hiring the best person for the job.
