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Several years ago, New Yorker Diana Bloom logged on to Craigslist, an online
network that posts free classified ads, and offered her ser- vices as a tutor, editor, and
translator. She’s been making a living on the short-term jobs that come her way from
the Web site ever since. A former English professor who couldn’t find secure, longterm employment, Bloom works out of her home in order to care for her young son.
Temp work is also appealing, she says, because “I’m not very outgoing, and getting
my foot in the door to companies would have been hard.”
Craigslist works in the other direction, too, with employers posting open- ings for
jobs both permanent and temporary. Another New Yorker, Simone Sneed, scours the
Craigslist “Gigs” section for jobs that last for perhaps a day, often for just a few hours.
Whether as a backup singer or a grant writer, she’s turned the strategy of patching
together “gigs” into a convenient way to supplement the income from her full-time
job. “I’ll use the extra money to pay off my school loan,” she says. “Every little bit
helps.” In the current economic climate, unfortunately, overall job postings are down
on Craigslist—and everywhere else—except for short-term gigs that usually include
no health benefits, sick days, or paid vacations. If you’re employed short term or part
time for eco- nomic reasons (probably because you got laid off), the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS) classifies you as “underemployed.” Naturally, most people who are
“underemployed” are, by definition, “overqualified.” In fact, they often have years of
profes- sional experience but are willing to take jobs that don’t call for their levels of
training or experience. Take the case of Gloria Christ. As national project manager for
an information-technology company in the Chicago area, Christ used to coordinate the
installation of WiFi hotspots all over the country. She has several years of managerial experience that she is willing to put to use as a temporary office manager. Of
course, she’d like something with a little more long-term promise: “At this point in
time,” she says, “I think even if there was something that was temporary it could
become full time later on. . . . Sometimes,” she explains, “you can go in at a low level
to interview just to get your foot in the door.”
tion (so to speak), but because of the recent economic situa- tion, although many
compa- nies are reluctant to add costly, permanent jobs, they are increasingly willing
to open up temporary positions to tide them over. Often, of course, you’ll have to take
a job that isn’t exactly what you’ve trained for or set your sights on, but as one
employment- services manager observes, job seekers today “are more than willing to
try new occupations—much more willing than they were even a year ago.”
Interestingly, for many people, the adjustment to current labor- market conditions isn’t
necessarily as traumatic as you might think. A recent survey conducted by the
temporary-staffing agency Kelly Services found that as many as 26 percent of
employed American adults regard themselves as “free agents” when it comes to the
type of job that they’re willing to take (up from 19 percent in 2006). Of all those
polled, only 10 percent said that they’re doing temporary work because they’ve been
laid off from permanent jobs; 90 percent said that they’re doing it because they like
the variety and flexibility that temping afford them.
Kelly client Jaime Gacharna’s first assignment was packaging products for a lightindustrial wholesaler—“putting doorknobs into little bags,” he recalls. Since then,
he’s worked for eight different employers, working at a job for a few days, a few
weeks, or a few months. He doesn’t mind the constant adjustments because the variety
in his work-life compensates for the drawbacks. “If I want to try something out, and I
like it,” says Gacharna, “I can stay with [the company]. If I don’t, I can always just
call up Kelly and say I want something different.” In fact, temping offers several
advantages. It can provide income during career transitions and it’s a good way to exercise a little con- trol over the balance between your work and the rest of your life.
In 1995, for example, when she was seven months pregnant with her first child,
veteran retail manager Stacey Schick accepted a 2-week- data-entry job with the
Orange County (New York) Association of Realtors. “I didn’t know how to turn on a
computer,” she remembers, but “they needed bodies.” Now the mother of two, Schick
is still with the Association as its education coordinator. “I would never have
considered it,” she says, if a job in her field had come up, but the job she landed in has
turned out to be a much better fit with her lifestyle: “It’s afforded me the opportunity
to have a family and be able to have time with them.”
The path taken by Schick, called “temp-to-perm,” offers employers several
advantages as well. Companies that are hesitant to make commitments to untested
employees can try before they buy—they get a chance to see employees in action
before finalizing hiring decisions. Because there are no fees to pay when an employee
goes from temp to perm, trying out temps is also cheaper than pay- ing an agency
outright to find a hire. The big savings, of course, come from benefits, which can
amount to one-third of the total cost of compensating a permanent position.
And then there’s the economy. While many employers have laid off full-time workers,
others have tried to compensate by turningover some work to temp staff. Ironically, of
course, many of those who’ve been laid off are highly qualified, and as they hit the
job mar- ket willing to accept lower-level positions, the ranks of job hunters are being
joined by a substantial number of overqualified workers. “The quality of candidates,”
says Laura Long of Banner Personnel, a Chicago-area staffing agency, “is
tremendous. . . . As an employer, you can get great employees for a great price.” As a
matter of fact, if you’re a U.S. employer, you’ve always been able to get temp
workers at a relatively good price. As of December 2013, according to the BLS, the
average cost of a full-time worker in private industry was $23.38 per hour in wages
plus $10.52 in ben- efits, for a total of $33.90 in compensation. By contrast, the
average wages for a temp were $12.09 and average benefits were $3.25, for total
compensation of $15.35. One result of this cost differential has been a long-term
increase in the number of temp workers, which over the last 25 years has far
outstripped the increase in jobs occu- pied by full-time workers. 59
1. You’re a senior manager at a growing business and you’re ready to add
employees. Your HR manager has recommended a temp- to-perm policy.
You know the advantages of this approach, but what might be some
disadvantages?
2. Assume that you’re a prospective job seeker (which you may very well be).
What do you personally see as the advantages and disadvantages of
taking a temp-to-perm position? Under what circumstances are you most
likely to take a temp-to-perm position?
3. What challenges are likely to confront a manager who super- vises a mix of
temporary and permanent employees? In what ways might these challenges
differ if the temporary workers have been hired on a temp-to-perm basis rather
than on a strictly temporary basis?
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