In today’s skills-driven market, it’s become increasingly more difficult to be certain you are hiring the right person for your team, who can execute on your given initiatives and help drive revenue for your organization.
Pair that with the costly risk associated with making the wrong permanent hire and you can quickly begin to see why so many top organizations are turning to staffing companies like Onward Search that offer temp-to-hire staffing models.
In today’s talent-driven market, it’s become exceedingly difficult for organizations to make quality hires quickly and efficiently, as top candidates now have more opportunities than ever, when the skills gap is considered. Pair that with the costly risk associated with making the wrong permanent hire and you can quickly begin to see why so many top organizations are turning to staffing companies like Onward Search that offer temp-to-hire staffing models.
Temp-to-hire is a bit like “try before you buy,” in the staffing world. It allows organizations to hire a candidate for a full-time, permanent role, first as a temporary worker. After the length of their temp contract, a company can decide whether or not the candidate is the right fit for their organization, or begin looking for a new candidate moving forward.
For many companies, temp-to-hire is the perfect fit because of limited budget resources in a current quarter, or when the company culture isn’t easily adaptable for new talent.
But to highlight the true return of this staffing model, we tapped into our VP of HR to detail the following 3 great benefits to consider with temp-to-hire:
- Vetting soft skills: When it comes to finding the right match for your organization, the story told on paper isn’t always predictive of future performance or behavior. In collaborative and team environments, hiring managers want to make sure that their employees have good communication skills, work well with others, and are adaptive to changes in the industry (and the workplace). As one can imagine, it can be difficult to gauge these soft skills in an hour long interview, even if you meet with the candidate a number of times before the decision is made. Temp-to-hire allows hiring companies to gauge soft skills of candidates by bringing them onto their team on a temp basis, observing how they adapt and work in their new environment and position.
- Determining the right fit within a team: As stated above, soft skills are important to finding the right fit for your organization, and one of the most important soft skills is teamwork and collaboration. While you might feel comfortable about a candidate’s collaborative abilities after a few meetings, it’s hard to tell how exactly they’ll fit with your current team. Will they be a natural leader? If so, will that create conflict with other leaders? Are they comfortable leading a team they didn’t help pick or, vice versa, are they comfortable being lead by someone they’ve never met before? These are all important questions that need to be answered for a hiring manager to feel confident in their new hire, which is why temp-to-hire is such a great option. It allows hiring companies to see exactly how a candidate performs within a team, before they make that hire permanent.
- Gauging problem solving ability: The one problem with hiring for creative, digital or marketing roles is the speed at which these spaces evolve. For instance, the languages a UX Designer uses may change from one month to the next. When skills change that rapidly, it’s hard to gauge problem solving ability because what the hire encounters on the job will most likely be different than the formulated scenarios you prepared for the interview. Temp-to-hire allows staffing organizations the ability to test a hires metal, so to speak, when faced with real world problems with solutions that aren’t always textbook, and allows the hiring company to avoid the risk of a periment hire if the candidate turns out to be not as capable as they appeared in their interview.
For hiring managers who feel as if they can’t afford to “test” a new hire over the duration of a temp contract, Onward Search also offers “working interviews.” In this employment model, a creative talent is given the chance to work a full eight-hour shift before a hiring manager makes a decision. If the candidate is hired, the company will be billed accordingly, if not, Onward will assume the cost for that day (pay the talent for their time) and identify a new potential hire.
When it comes to hiring for creative teams and initiatives, hiring managers and executives know that every option needs to be carefully weighed. At Onward Search, we make sure every candidate is vetted before they meet for their interview, and offer you flexibility when you’re stuck on the fence. Contact us today to learn about how temp-to-hire can work for you.
