Oftentimes businesses use temp workers to fill an immediate and temporary need. This could be for a project or to cover an immediate staffing gap.

Once the temporary staff are on-site and hitting the ground running, this is when you should consider whether or not to convert them to full-time.

Determine the Need

Oftentimes you might think a full-time role is required, but is it really? Consider Susan, her design company needs someone to take care of the company’s social media content and to follow up with potential clients. She has posted the job but hasn’t had the time to go through the hiring process, resulting in a glaring gap in her company’s day to day operations.

Through Workholler, the next generation hiring platform, she was able to source a pre-vetted temporary worker Joyce. Joyce joined Susan’s company under Workholler’s Try’n’Hire program, where a business can “trial” a candidate on a temporary basis typically between 1 to 3 months, in order to fill an immediate need, while providing management with time to decide on a permanent solution.

Within a week of the job posting, Joyce joined Susan’s company, and immediately started to update its social media presence, and clearing the backlog of follow-ups.

Susan is now considering to make Joyce a permanent member of her small team. She considers the following.

1. Her company needs a social media expert.
2. Client follow-ups used to be done by the sales team but they are too busy getting more sales, and Susan doesn’t want to disrupt the flow.
3. Joyce is doing a good job with the social media. However, while she is doing her best to follow up with clients, she just doesn’t have the design knowledge or training required to answer detailed questions.

Is the Candidate a Right Fit?

Susan sees Joyce’s performance and positive attitude and thinks she is a good fit for the company. She makes the following decision.

1. Susan offers Joyce a part-time job working 2 days a week with the company’s social media content. Joyce is able to work from home one day and participate in the company’s activities the other.
2. Susan decides to create a new Sales Support role, which requires a candidate with a design background and customer service experience.
3. Susan posts the Sales Support job on Workholler, and was connected with David, who has been pre-vetted by Workholler and has the necessary design experience. David started his 2 months trial period right away.

Revisit After the Trial Period

While Joyce preferred a full-time job, she was able to accept Susan’s offer of a part-time job, while Workholler found Joyce another part-time job as a social media expert within a different company. She works 3 days a week there and 2 days with Susan, providing her with a full-time income.

After David’s trial period, Susan decided not to extend a permanent offer. David was very good technically but Susan felt he was not a good fit for the company’s culture. Workholler then sent another candidate, Amit to Susan under the same Try’n’Hire program, and this time it was a home run. Amit was excellent in both design and customer support, as well as fitting into the company’s culture. After only one month, Susan quickly extended a full-time offer which Amit gladly accepted.

The Answer

There’s no right or wrong answer to the question of when to convert a temporary worker to a permanent hire. It’s entirely up to a company’s needs, which can differ drastically from one to another. Whatever your staffing needs are, be it temporary or permanent, Workholler is here to help. We aim to make the hiring process as quick and as seamless as possible, so your business won’t be interrupted by staffing shortages, and can go on running smoothly.

Taking tests are never fun, but they are a window into a person’s abilities and aptitudes. That’s why more and more employers are using them as a tool to pre-screen candidates for the right combination of Competence, Ethics, Emotional Intelligence, and Ambition/Drive.

According to Harvard Business Review, 76% of organizations with more than 100 employees use tests for external hiring. And the more senior the role, the more likely the employer is to use assessments to identify candidates with the right traits and abilities. According to HBR, it is estimated that 72% of middle management positions and up to 80% of senior positions have pre-qualification tests.

There are several reasons why pre-employment assessments are useful.

1. Resumes don’t paint the whole picture

Resumes are a great starting point to view a candidate’s summary of experiences, but it talks nothing of their other attributes like interpersonal skills, management skills, ability for defusing confrontations, nor their level of ambition, as examples. That’s when employers turn to pre-employment assessment tools to gain a better picture of whether the candidate will be a good fit to the corporate culture.

2. Specific Skill Test

Certain jobs require a specific skill set that is difficult to convey within a resume. Imagine a surgeon who must perform triple bypass surgeries, or a pilot that must fly a jumbo jet. We cannot rely on resumes to simply assure us that people who claim they can do it can actually do so. Imagine the chaos that will ensue. There needs to be a qualifying test (or in the case of the two examples above, real-life demonstrations and proof) before the person can be placed.

3. Ethics and Morals

It’s fairly easy to convey experience and ambition during interviews, but how do you measure someone’s ethics? It’s an important aspect to consider when hiring, as ethics and morals can ultimately drive a company’s corporate culture. Jack Welch said it best, “First we get the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus, then we’ll figure out how to take it someplace great.” The last thing you want is someone who doesn’t buy into your corporate culture, or even worse, will derail the bus.

Great! Let’s do it!

Let’s do it! I hear you say. But administering all these tests requires a lot of resources. You need professionals to find the relevant questions and put the tests together; technology tools to administer and grade the tests; and finally you need people to comb through the results of the tests to ultimately select the right candidate. All of this takes effort that an SME (or even a corporation) might not have the resources for. Not to worry, simply outsource the admin tasks to someone who is best at it. Workholler has the platform to not only filter and matches candidates by experience, skill-set, and availability, we also offer a wide range of aptitude tests that are used to pre-qualify candidates for a wide-variety of roles. With our six-step pre-qualifying assessments, we take vetting to the next level.

According to Statistics Canada, the number of temporary workers in Canada increased by 50 percent in the last 20 years, compared to a 33% increase in permanent employees. This trend is showing no signs of slowing as businesses and workers both seek flexibility with regards to finding work and staff. Temporary work serves a useful purpose in the following scenarios.

• Students looking for work and income while attending school.
• Seniors nearing or in retirement looking for reduced work hours while remaining active in the workplace.
• People with constrained work hours such as parents of young children or caretakers of family members.
• Those with stable jobs but are looking to supplement their income with side hustles.
• People who are investigating a new industry during career changes.

On the other hand, there are also a multitude of reasons why a business should consider hiring temporary workers.

1. Limited Resources

Small businesses or start-ups that do not have resources to hire and retain full-time staff.

2. Seasonal Demands

Seasonal Businesses or a sudden spike in demand where the staff is needed only for a short period of time. For example, after a promotional event, there is a sudden spike in inbound calls

3. Immediate Need

To cover for immediate needs such as sick leave, maternity leave, vacations, and other short-term staffing gaps.

4. No dedicated HR

Small & Medium Enterprises including Start-ups that do not necessarily have a dedicated HR department can trial new staff on a temporary basis to test for skill and fit, as well as to see if a full-time position is necessary or if the gap can be filled by part-time or temporary staff.

Workholler’s technology platform allows businesses to connect with qualified, available, and pre-vetted local talent, who can be invited to apply for open positions. Since candidates have already passed Workholler’s 6-step validation process, the hiring process for employers is drastically shortened, and staffing gaps significantly reduced.

Have you been to an interview where you answered all the questions brilliantly, and you were about to consider the interview a success, when the person across the table throws out a gem likes this. “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Honestly what do they expect us to say? I’ll admit I had a few quips that came to my mind when faced with this question, none of which I’ve said out loud mind you.

1. In 5 years I’d like to be your boss.
2. I definitely wouldn’t want to be stuck here for 5 years.
3. Interviewing candidates to replace me as I’ve been elected President of the World.
4. The earth would have been destroyed by our supreme alien overlords, so it doesn’t really matter what I’ll be doing.

I know you’re supposed to say something that sounds meaningful like “In 5 years I would have made material contributions to take this organization to the next level”. But is this kind of canned BS response really telling you anything about the candidate? It shows she’s prepared (which is good), and full of sh*t (which is bad). At the end of the day it tells me nothing about her skills, qualifications, or personality. I would seriously question the culture of a company that bases their hiring decisions on these “soft” questions. Some other “winners” I’ve been asked during interviews were:

• Why do you want to work here? (Because playing Mario Cart while chugging Mountain Dew doesn’t pay the bills)
• Why should we hire you? (Honestly, you shouldn’t)
• What are your biggest weaknesses? (Stupid questions during interviews)
• Describe the teddy bear of the future. (It can fly, time travel, and shoot lasers out of its eyes. Am I hired yet?)

If you’re looking to flesh out more details about a candidate’s skills and experience, consider asking more relevant open-ended questions based on the candidate’s resume. For example.

1. Can you elaborate on how you were able to increase efficiency in your last role by 30%?
2. In your opinion, what is the best way to engage a team within a matrix organization, with different backgrounds and experience. How would you maximum collaboration?
3. If you were VP of Sales, what strategies or changes would you implement in the first 3 months?
4. What are the top 3 core competencies you value most for your team?
5. What was your most meaningful professional experience, and what was the take-away from that experience?

An interviewer is there to assess not just the qualifications of the candidate, but whether he or she will be a good fit to the company culture. There’s no point in hiring someone who just thinks fast on their feet, or has a canned answer prepared. Interviews should be conducted in a more open way, engaging all levels of the team, not just HR and the hiring manager.

It takes time to dig deeper and truly understand the person in front of us. What they can bring to the table, what interest them, what motivates them? We need to listen and understand, in other words, we need to treat them like a real person.