Temporary Positions

March 6, 2005 9:22 AM

What is the reasoning behind temporary positions, and is "Temp to Hire "usually a line of bullshit to get you excited about a job?

I'd always assumed that temporary positions were more for having an easy way to let someone who isn't working out for a position go with a minimum of confrontation, but after thinking about it some more, I was unsure.

posted by angry modem to work & money (15 comments total)

At least here in Oregon, companies are not allowed to discriminate against specific individuals, races, ages, sexualities, etc when it comes to providing benefits. They can however discriminate aginst "classes" of employees as described in an employee handbook or something like that. A "temp" employee isn't given the same rights until they become a "perm" employee. In addition to allow the employer to "try out" the new hire, it saves a BUNCH of paper work (401k, medical insurance, pension plan, etc.) and saves a BUNCH of money (vacation time, sick leave, employer contribution to 401k, medical insurance premium, etc.) until they know they are going to keep you around and want to invest all those benefits in to you.
posted by pwb503 at 9:38 AM on March 6, 2005

I'd think that's about it, although the flip side presumably happens, too, which would be something like, "we have a temporary need for another worker, but if the person turns out to be a keeper, that pesky Human Resources would impede our making her permanent, so let's keep our options open."
posted by kimota at 9:42 AM on March 6, 2005

There are several reasons why a company might have a temporary position, depending on its circumstances:

1. The company really only needs the job to be filled for a short period of time. For instance, a lot of accountants' offices probably need a lot of help right now, but after April 15th they won't need nearly as much.

2. The company wants to fill the job permanently, but wants to play it safe. It costs a lot of money to bring on a new employee--setting up taxes, paying unemployment insurance and benefits, etc. A lot of companies would rather wait to pay that kind of money until they're sure the person is going to work out, and temp-to-hire lets them do that. They can't afford to hire people and let them go in two months on a regular basis, but they can afford to hire temps until one works out.

3. The company isn't sure exactly what the long-term duties of the job will be. If the company's recently expanded, they may have a lot of paperwork that needs doing, but they may not be sure what the parameters of the job will be in the future. They may therefore rather wait to hire a permanent employee until things settle down a bit and they can hire someone whose skills fit the position.
posted by cerebus19 at 9:44 AM on March 6, 2005

The place I work for uses temps a lot, and new employees are frequently "temp-to-hire". They'll bring in a temp if somebody is going to be out of the office for more than a couple weeks (for whatever reason); if the temp is unusually good, some effort is made to find some way of making them permanent.

Temp-to-hire positions are used (at my place of work, anyway) as a way of giving somebody a trial period; it's not guaranteed that the person will stay. In fact there have been "duds" who weren't doing the work properly, who were let go without hassle via their temp-to-hire status.

I guess some companies might use temp-to-hire as a motivational tactic, but I think at most places it really is what it purports to be.
posted by Mark Doner at 9:56 AM on March 6, 2005

What everybody else said. For a more personal anecdote, I recently hired a buddy of mine as a temporary sysadmin.

I'm in charge of a small research lab, and a full-time systems administrator would be overkill for us. Normally, I can handle simple day-to-day admin duties without disrupting my "real" work (writing code and keeping undergrads in line). However, I wanted to make a few changes to our network that would have consumed too much of my time.

So by bringing him in, my time is better spent, and he gets money 'till he leaves town for grad school in a few months. Thanks to temporary positions, we both win!
posted by Eamon at 10:14 AM on March 6, 2005

As a programmer, I've seen it both ways. My first temp-to-hire position was simply that. I started as a contractor with a provision in my contract that after 90 days the company would convert me to full-time employee (upon satisfactory performance, of course.) As I saw it, they needed another hand, but didn't have the budget for a full time employee. There was nothing shady about it. After 90 days, I was made permanent. P.S. the company tanked after 7 months, "Scoured clean from the face of the earth," as one ex-coworker called it.

My second temp-to-hire position was the opposite. I was contracting through an agency for a large networking company (+35k employees.) When I started, they made it clear that my contract could not exceed a year due to corporate policy (policy apparently in place to satisfy various legal restrictions on temporary employees.)

I quickly learned the policy was B.S. After your contract was up, you had the option to go "underground" for 6 months and then return. Underground basically meant working from home or at the offices of your contracting agency. Some temps, mostly foreigners, had worked there for years without permanent status. It was a crumby deal clearly in place to exploit non-native workers. Thankfully, I had other options, so I left the soonest I had a chance.

On preview: after my experiences, I judge any company that's overly cautious about its hiring as wishy-washy. It's a huge red flag, since it says they're willing to hedge their bets on future growth on your back. If being a permanent employee is important to you, get the details of your conversion in writing.
posted by Loser at 10:19 AM on March 6, 2005

When I hire temps, it's on a project basis (ie, "I need you to move these 50,000 books from Point A to Point B.") and after some fufaraw with the union, we have some pretty strict rules regarding temps becoming full time (so if the books will need to be moved again, or more book need to go to Point B in the future, we'll likely have to make the temp perm).

We also use the project staff to vet new hires and bring back good folks who have left other projects.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:32 AM on March 6, 2005

The flip side of what pwb503 mentions is that, for a lot of jobs, experience in the position makes you a better worker (duh); the company would rather have someone who's been there for years and knows what's going on, rather than a stream of temps each of which has to be brought up to speed. So it's not a foregone conclusion whether the company would really rather have permatemps or real employees. So as everyone else has said, some temp and temp-to-hire positions are perfectly legit and some are just attempts to avoid paying benefits, or to make the company look leaner to investors, or whatever.
posted by hattifattener at 10:41 AM on March 6, 2005

I've always thought that temp-to-hire positions were paid out of different budget line items -- more along the lines of buying a printer or other lump-sum expenses -- and as a result were much easier to get cash for. Employees, on the other hand, are a very specific recurring cost and are taken on with much more forethought and planning [and money and paperwork as pwb503 says] and the company has many more legal obligations to them than they have to a temporary worker, even if they are [or may be] "temp to hire"
posted by jessamyn at 10:54 AM on March 6, 2005

I had a temp-to-hire entry level admin job once.

Because it was entry level, requiring a degree but virtually no experience, the employer used "temp-to-perm" as a way to weed people out who couldn't cut it.

It was definitely not much of a short-term money saver -- my employer paid a staffing agency a fee of about 80% of my salary each week for my first three months. However, they could terminate my employment for no reason at any time if they decided they didn't want to keep me, whereas there were a lot of hoops they'd have had to jump through to fire me after becoming a permanent employee.

I wound up getting the job and staying for about a year. When I left, my replacement was also temp-to-hire.

As a worker, you can also think of temp-to-hire jobs as your way of testing employers without developing a really ugly resume. In my experience, I was actually being paid by the staffing agency until I went permanent. They made it clear to me that if the job was not a good fit, I could tell them and they'd help me find another job. I could have tried three or four jobs, and just put one employer on my resume -- the staffing agency -- if that's how things had worked out.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 11:03 AM on March 6, 2005

The degree of bullshit involved varies. Sometimes it's used as a method of screening new employees. If the person is temporary and doesn't work out it's easy to terminate them or just not extend their contract or extend an offer for full time employment. On the other hand firing an employee is a difficult process that involves lots of documentation and opportunities to improve.

Some companies, and at least in the past Microsoft was one of them, would hire lots of contractors and hint that if they worked out they'd become full time employees. This was obviously a huge draw when Microsoft's stock was doubling every 3 years. I have friends who've retired on Microsoft stock options. There were, and maybe still are, contractors at Microsoft that had worked for several years but were never actually hired by the company. Obviously to some extent they were working out or they'd tell the contracting agency that they wanted somebody else.

I started working at my present company as a temporary worker, I turned it into a full time position. People who started contracting with me weren't made that offer and in at least a couple of cases the contracting agency was told not to send these people back here.
posted by substrate at 11:17 AM on March 6, 2005

Thanks, guys. This is basically what I was expecting, but it confirmed it (I'm starting a new job through a temp place, that hopefully I can get hired full time eventually at) and has been extremely helpful.
posted by angry modem at 2:46 PM on March 6, 2005

At my place of employment, the chief reason temps are brought in is because they are paid for from a separate budget line than payroll employees are. In order to make departmental budgets look good to executives, temps and contractors are brought in to do a lot of the critical work, while department heads can crow about doing so much with so few employees.

Only a small handful of contractors are offered positions -- usually our company prefers to keep them on as "perma-temps," often for years at a stretch, otherwise indistinguishable from employees apart from (a) their higher rate of pay, and (b) the fact that they fill out timecards and occasionally go through a contract renewal process.

Having said that, I was a temp-to-hire, got hired, and have been an employee of the company for over a decade. So obviously it's not all hokum.
posted by majick at 6:23 PM on March 6, 2005

Sometimes perma-temps can sue the company for whom they perform work. Microsoft got caught this way. Its not a situation I would get in because I prefer the steady change provided by temping. In all my temping, I only worked at two places with whom I would have enjoyed a permanent position. The first I actually asked HR. I had never seen a place with such congenial employees. The second time they asked me, and I had to decline because I was moving over seas in a matter of months (and they still tried to persuade me, they liked me so much, and, frankly, 8 years latter, I still miss them).
posted by Goofyy at 8:23 PM on March 6, 2005

I've been a temp with the same massive technology company since June. Today is, coincidentally, my first day as a full-time "permanent" employee (health insurance and 401K woohoo!)
IME, it seems like hiring temps is a good way to test people out. You can find out about someone from an interview, but it's easier to see how they'll actually work by putting them to work. That way you can tell if they're habitually late, easily confused, unable to think on their feet, impossible to work with, etc, and if they don't work out, it's easier to get rid of them. Plus, it saves companies on having to pay people normal wages and benefits during training.
posted by Kellydamnit at 5:44 AM on March 7, 2005