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Comment by nawitus | Hacker News Reader

How is this good for the employee? So I quit my job and make a contract for few months, what should I do if they don't decide to hire me full-time? There's lots of risk to me, as companies at GroupTalent probably choose to not hire the employees as often as companies doing 'normal' recruitment.

In addition, I'm not sure how contract-to-hire for 4 months is different from hiring someone for 'full time' and then firing after the few first months if they don't perform well.

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Hi - this is Manny, CEO of GT. If you a try a company and then FT it may be a great outcome for you too. As you may in the long term not be a good fit for that job. Plus in the process of discovery you made a ton of money (contractor payouts are 70% to 100% higher than regular FT salaries even when it includes benefits!) Your point is right in that try-before-you-buy is not a new construct but rather a corollary of being an at-will employment society. So yes, GroupTalent is just a hiring platform that allows tryouts as a perfectly reasonable alternative.

I hope it works out for you. I do like the model, particularly if you allow some rotation between clients for the developers (negative impact on short-term productivity, positive impact on long-term fit).

To extend the dating analogy a bit further: rather than putting all your eggs into a single basket, you can date multiple companies and find the best fit for you.

In this market, if you are a good developer, the company will most likely want to hire you. In my experience, it is the company that needs to court the developer.

So do these companies using GroupTalent accept part time contracts? That would be a decent strategy to minimize risk. Even good developers may not be hired after the initial contract.

some of them do. We have had developers moonlight at other companies while keeping their day job to try out a new company before making a jump. It is less risk indeed

The ugly side of contract to hire is when offers aren't made. That is why it is difficult to convince perm salaried employees to take contract to hire jobs (I'm a recruiter) based on that risk alone. Unless the person was considering a contracting career anyway, the likelihood of accepting C-H employment is much lower than the basic perm job.

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