Lucy had been out of the workforce for 24 years, raising her family. When her youngest left for college, Lucy’s friends urged her to return to work to fill her days with meaningful activities. She had done well in college, and although her training in occupational therapy was out-of-date, there were a variety of clerical positions in which she knew she could succeed. At one of those friends’ recommendations, she met with a recruiter at Abel Personnel to begin her job search. Lucy was amazed at how much the job market had changed since she graduated college! She recalled permanent positions for long term employment, and temp jobs for short term assignments; now there were so many options:
| 1 | Direct Hire No longer called a “permanent” placement (is anything permanent?), this is the traditional job hire. A recruiter will help facilitate the interview process. When hired, the candidate becomes an employee of the hiring company. |
| 2 | Temp-to-Hire This position is intended to be long-term. For a specified period the new hire is actually the employee of the staffing firm. The temp period can range from 3 to 6 months, typically. Once the term has been successfully completed, the employee then transitions to the company as their employee. |
| 3 | Long-Term Contract Temp For a variety of reasons, it is advantageous for the hiring company to want the new hire to be the employee of the staffing and recruiting firm. There may not be any difference in the experience of this new hire than the direct hires, except for performance reviews and any personnel actions. Others in the company may not even know this colleague is actually not a direct employee. |
| 4 | Short-Term Temp These are short-term assignments with an identified end date. Sometimes as short as a day, to fill in for someone who is out, or a few months to perhaps cover workload upticks due to seasonal demand. The status can become long-term temp or temp-to-hire as circumstances change (depending on the temporary worker’s performance). |
Any of these positions can also be full time, part time or on call. Full time suggests 35-40 hours per week, but that may be 5 days or 4 days. On call is as needed, think substitute teacher or being available during identified workload peaks. In some cases the work hours are entirely flexible; an agreed number of hours over the pay period as long as work responsibilities are completed on time.
What did not surprise Lucy was the variety of positions and that some could be either onsite, remote or hybrid; she had been following these trends in the news. What surprised Lucy was that all of the recruiting services and placements were free of charge to every candidate working with Abel Personnel. After discussing all these options with the Abel recruiter, Lucy indicated which scenario would work best for her new work-life balance while meeting her employment goals. With that, the recruiter set in motion inquiries to find the right job for Lucy.
