Technical Staffing Services - Michigan Based with National Coverage

Many hiring and HR managers struggle to determine whether or not they should engage us for direct-hire recruiting assistance or for temporary staffing.

Here are a few high-level points that might enable someone to choose between the two:

• Temporary staffing works well when a team needs special skills for a project of finite duration.
• Temporary staffing also works well when a team needs to increase its velocity and throughput just to meet a critical deadline.

When your company’s domain or code takes a long time to learn, direct-hire recruiting makes sense. Otherwise the time invested bringing a temporary resource up to speed is wasted.

The contract-to-hire model is a hybrid approach to hiring.

Companies engage candidates as if they are on a temporary staffing service assignment.

After a defined period of time such as six months, the company has the option to extend an offer of direct-hire employment to the candidate or to end the engagement.

The contract-to-hire model works well in several circumstances:

• Some company cultures are highly sensitive to firings as they can damage the team spirit. If a contract-to-hire resource reaches the end of an assignment without being direct-hired, that is not viewed negatively by employees—and doesn’t impact the esprit de corp.
• Similarly, if there have been rounds of lay-offs in recent memory, employees are understandably nervous. If a contract-to-hire resource doesn’t work out, employee morale isn’t damaged.
• Sometimes growth is forecast—but far from certain. Augmenting staff with a goal of direct-hiring them if the growth actually occurs is a great way to ramp up with a rapid ramp down plan ready to be triggered if needed.

Read Peg Bogema's blog post on direct-hire versus contract-to-hire for an in depth discussion on this topic.