Contract to perm is the best way by far.
In the UK the contract rates are typically significantly higher, so even if the person isn't offered a job at the end they aren't bothered. Everyone wins
In the UK the contract rates are typically significantly higher, so even if the person isn't offered a job at the end they aren't bothered. Everyone wins
In my particular case, the company I did opt for ended up being a bust, to the point that I resigned without having another offer in place. It ended up working well—I'm in a job now with tons of job security, good pay, a good work environment, and interesting work—but I ended up in the exact situation I was hoping to avoid when I rejected the CtH position.
I hear this position often when people talking about contract-to-perm, and I just don't see it. If you're good at what you do, and people enjoy working with you, why wouldn't you take a contract to perm position? The only reasons I can see are that you are afraid you don't get the job (well, then you wouldn't have been a good fit if they hired you) or you end up not liking the team/company as much (same as if they had hired you.)
So, why wouldn't you? And I don't buy the 'I have a good job' line, because you wouldn't even be entertaining offers if you weren't interested in leaving your current role.
Or, you rubbed the wrong, politically-connected person the wrong way. Yes, this is always a danger, but a contract employee is more expendable and easier to get rid of.
Or, they weren't really looking for a permanent hire and this was just a means of tricking someone into a contract who wouldn't otherwise take one.
Or, the company hits a rough patch and decides to freeze hiring to avoid layoffs.
There are a whole host of things that could go wrong in a contract situation that are either tempered or nonexistent when you are permanent.
Not in my field, but perhaps the CtH position doesn't actually want quite what I am good at, and we didn't figure that out beforehand.
> Why are you interviewing if you're employed at a good company?
Because I've been there a long time and I'm bored, or because my boss isn't bad but isn't the best, or because opportunities for advancement seem slim, or because I want a shorter commute, or because the prospective company has a great reputation, or because I think I could work with better engineers somewhere else, or because...
I wouldn't take the chance at a CtH job because there's a significant probability that I end up totally out of a job, rather than employed in an OK (but not great) job.
Of course it's possible that I would accept a FT position and it would turn out just as poorly as a CtH that didn't work out; I would just expect that the probability of it not working out is much higher in a CtH scenario because the company I'm working for has invested far less in me than one that has hired me full time.
If it doesn't work out, it looks worse on your CV to be a "failed" contractor scurrying back to a permie role, than if you'd been a permie who'd quit after a few months.
Maybe some people do go down this route - but a company whose policy is to hire this way, won't be able to scale it.
However you know what you are getting so you could argue it's worth it...
For whom?
It's bad for the worker because you're going to work for a company that is admitting by its behavior that it has little confidence in its abiliity to assess talent. Where else is it weak? (My experience shows that those who can't assess talent usually can't do a whole lot of other important things, too.)
It's bad for the company because it limits its pool of candidates. Good luck recruiting desirable high achievers by telling them you can't tell if they're good enough to hire.
Assessing talent and determining long term resource requirements is like anything else in I.T.: it's fundamental and must be mastered to become any good. Contract to perm is a red flag that something is wrong.
You seem to think that willingness to admit that assessing fit for a particular job is unreliable without actually experience of the candidate working in the real conditions is correlated with the relative degree to which the company is unable to assess such skills relative other companies (rather than being driven by the degree to which the company is aware of difficulties affecting all companies hiring for similar jobs, or differences in the features of the specific job which make assessment difficult.)
There is no justification that I can see for this assumption.
I have hired hundreds of programmers and have never been disappointed. The recruitment process lasted as long as it had to to know that it was a good fit. Contract to perm was never needed.
Alternatively, its a predictable scientific process which is more accurate when actual time in seat is devoted to the assessment, and good companies know this and bad companies just delude themselves into settling with a less reliable process.
Or, more accurately, assessing fit for job is a task that varies by the specific job (including, among other things, how much room the role, size, and mission of the organization leaves for customizing the job around the individual) for which suitability is being assessed, and good companies (in this regard, at least are those that understand the mechanisms which are most appropriate for assessing fit for the jobs they actually are hiring for and choose the right methods (which may or may not include contract-to-perm for particular jobs), and bad companies are those that don't (which may include picking contract-to-perm for jobs where its not the best choice -- or not choosing it for jobs where it is.)
I do agree with you, this doesn't work, but that's because once the candidate is of the quality that they can easily grab contracts, they have no incentive to come work for you as a permie.
That said, only high end contractors are really that more expensive. You need to remember, your employees are likely getting sick days, holidays, and pensions. You need to pay employers NI and probably offer other benefits. In addition to this after a while getting rid of them becomes difficult.
When you think of it like that, a often contractor isn't a bad deal. It's a shame a lot of companies feel like they need ownership of their staff.
Typically here in London these people are already contracting, so all you need to do is convert the best ones.
Normally you need some experience, ideally in a specific skill, but shorter contracts may be available for people with less experience. If you are interested, it's best to find a decent recruiter who knows what they are talking about (easy to tell from a quick phone call).