The Temptation of Temping
Several years ago New Yorker Diana Bloom logged on to Craigslist, an online network that posts free classified ads, and offered her services as a tutor, editor, and translator. She’s been making a living on the short-term jobs that come her way from the website ever since. A former English professor who couldn’t find secure long-term employment, Bloom works out of her home in order to take care of a 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 openings 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 grants 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 jobs—gigs that usually include no health benefits, sick days, or paid vacations. If you’re employed short term or part-time for economic 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 professional 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 Wi-Fi hotspots all over the country. She has several years of managerial experience but is also been willing to put it 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.”
It may be small compensation (so to speak), but because of the recent economic situation, although many companies 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 a lot of 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 light-industrial 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, for example, provide income during career transitions, and it’s a good way to exercise a little control over the balance between your work and the rest of your life. In 1995, for example, when she was 7 months pregnant with her first child, veteran retail manager Stacey Schick accepted a two-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 is called “temp-to-perm,” and it 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 paying 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.
The Temptation of Temping
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Then there’s the economy. While many employers have laid off full-time workers, many have tried to compensate by turning over some of the work to temp staff. Ironically, of course, many of those who’ve been laid off are highly qualified, and as they hit the job market willing to accept lower-level positions, the ranks of job hunters are being joined by a substantial number of highly qualified (which is to say, 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 2015, according to the BLS, the average cost of a full-time worker in private industry was $24.19 per hour in wages plus $10.95 in benefits, for a total of $35.14 in compensation. By contrast, the average wages for a temp were $14.59 and the average benefits were $4.31, for total compensation of $18.90. One of the results of this cost differential has been a long-term increase in the number of temp workers, which, over the past 25 years, has far outstripped the increase in jobs occupied by full-time workers. 61
Case Questions
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 of the disadvantages?
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?
What sort of challenges are likely to confront a manager who supervises 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?
Chapter Review 7
Learning Objectives/Key Terms/Key Legislation
7-1
Describe the recruiting process, including internal and external recruiting and the importance of realistic job previews.
Recruiting is the process of developing a pool of qualified applicants who are interested in working for the organization and from which the organization might reasonably select the best individual or individuals to hire for employment. Organizational goals in recruiting are to optimize, in various ways, the size of the pool of qualified applicants and to offer an honest and candid assessment to prospective applicants of what kinds of jobs and what kinds of opportunities the organization can potentially make available to them. Internal recruiting is the process of looking inside the organization for existing qualified employees who might be promoted to higher-level positions. The two most common methods used for internal recruiting are job posting and supervisory recommendations. External recruiting involves looking to sources outside the organization for prospective employees. Different methods are likely to be used by an organization engaged in external recruiting. These include the general labor pool, direct applicants, referrals, advertisements, employment agencies, and colleges and universities. Many organizations today are finding that it is increasingly important to provide prospective employees with what is called a realistic job preview. Realistic job previews might involve providing job applicants with an opportunity to actually observe others performing the work.
Recruiting
Internal recruiting
Job posting
supervisory recommendations
External recruiting
word-of-mouth recruiting
headhunter
realistic job preview (RJP)
Selection
7-2
Discuss the steps in the selection process and the basic selection criteria used by most organizations.
The selection process involves three clear, distinct steps: gathering information about the members of the pool of qualified recruits, evaluating the qualifications of each applicant from among the recruiting pool, and making the actual decision about which candidate or candidates will be offered employment with the organization. The basic selection criteria that most organizations use in deciding whom to hire are education and experience, skills and abilities, and personal characteristics. Firms must also decide whether to focus on fit or skills.
Education
Experience
big five personality traits
7-3
Identify and discuss popular selection techniques that organizations use to hire new employees.
Organizations use various techniques for gathering information about job candidates. The most common are employment applications and background checks, employment tests, work simulations, and employment interviews. Each technique has its unique strengths and weaknesses but also can play an important role in selection.
employment application
weighted application blank
Biodata application blanks
employment test
Cognitive ability tests
Psychomotor ability tests
Personality tests
self-report inventory
projective technique
Integrity tests
Work simulations
In-basket exercises
structured employment interview
semistructured employment interview
unstructured employment interview
situational interview
first-impression error
contrast error
similarity error
Nonrelevancy
7-4
Describe the selection decision, including potential selection errors and reliability and validity.
After subjecting the pool of qualified applicants to the organization’s selection process, it is then necessary to make a final selection decision. Most organizations choose to rely on several selection techniques and, in fact, may use all or most of the selection techniques discussed in this chapter. Managers also strive to avoid various selection errors. The organization needs to understand the legal context in which it can recruit and select new employees and evaluate its selection and placement activities periodically.
False positives
False negatives
Reliability
validity
Criterion-related validity
7-5
Discuss how organizations train and develop new employees to better enable them to perform effectively.
After the new employees are hired, it is common for organizations to submit them to training and development activities, deigned to improve their performance on the job. Training is more concerned with short-term and specific job skills, while development activities focus on less specific and long-term managerial skills. Organizational development is aimed at improving the functioning of the entire organization, so we can discuss organizational learning as a process where these developmental activities become part of the entire organization.
Utility analysis
Training
Development
Work-based programs
Apprenticeships
On-the-job training
Vestibule training
Organizational development
Organizational learning
Key Legislation
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII, is the most significant single piece of legislation specifically affecting the legal context for HRM to date. Court cases based on this law have helped to define how and why organizations should develop and validate their selection systems.
Key Points for Future Managers
The goal of recruiting is to generate qualified applicants for jobs.
Recruiting can be either internal or external, and each has advantages and disadvantages.
Decisions about the best methods for external (or internal) recruiting should be based on the kind of applicants the firm wants to attract.
Electronic recruiting is revolutionizing the recruiting field. It is cost-effective and allows the firm to reach a broad range of applicants, but it can increase administrative costs.
Realistic job previews involve telling applicants both the positive and negative aspects of the job. Some applicants may be frightened by this information, but these are people who would not have been successful anyway. The use of realistic job previews has been linked to more positive attitudes about the job, higher performance, and lower turnover rates for a wide variety of jobs.
Applicants decide which jobs to apply for and to accept based on the extent to which they feel they will fit with the company (in addition to considering basic issues such as compensation, benefits, and terms of employment).
Selection is one of the most important functions carried out by the HR department.
No selection system is perfect, and decisions have to be made about which types of errors are the most and the least costly.
Selection systems should be based on careful job-analysis information.
Decisions must be made about the basis for selection decisions. It is especially important to decide the extent to which people should be selected on the basis of their fit with the organization.
Many techniques are available for selecting individuals. Each has advantages and drawbacks. An ideal system combines several of these techniques into a single system, but there is no one best way to select people. When any technique is used for making a selection decision, including interviews, it is treated as a “test” for legal purposes and must be validated.
Using tests that are not valid (and not reliable) is irrational and can lead to serious legal problems.
Methods are available, all falling under the general category of utility analysis, that can allow an assessment of whether the costs of a selection system are justified by increased productivity or decreased costs.
Training activities are aimed at improving specific job skills of employees so they can perform their jobs more effectively.
Development activities usually involve managers and are focused on more broadly defined managerial skills that will help the manager in the long run.
Organizational learning refers to the process by which these developmental activities are spread throughout the company and everyone learns new ways of doing their jobs. some basic notions of HRM.
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