Attracting the temporary worker

In my last article I gave tips on how to engage temporary workers to address talent mismatches within your organisation. I highlighted specific situations where you should employ temp talent, for example when responding to the demands of new business, seasonal workload peaks and troughs as well as completing one-off projects.

Now you’ve decided that you need to hire a temp, it’s time for the tricky part- going out to find them. Here’s my advice on attracting the temporary worker and how this might differ from your standard perm candidate attraction strategy.

The main benefits to the candidate

Think about how you can highlight the positive aspects of temporary work to potential candidates. Here is what I mention to them.

Become an expert – When contracting you continuously develop your expertise, increase your capabilities and ultimately become more valuable as your skills expand. You will also quickly build a large network of influential business contacts. Which project do you want to work on today? It’s up to you to decide.

Find your ideal permanent role – Taking on temporary contracts can help you gain experience with a variety of companies, helping you decide what you want from an employer. Many of the temporary roles we recruit for subsequently become permanent- so if you do land a temp role in your ideal organisation, you may be in luck.

Flexibility – Temporary contracts make it easier for you to achieve your ideal work life balance, as you have more freedom to choose where and when you work, or even take a career break.

How do I sell a temporary role in my organisation to a candidate?

Looking across Europe, the status of temporary work is different in each market. In countries like the UK and Netherlands, candidates are choosing temporary work as a way of life – valuing the greater flexibility in their work-life balance, the opportunity to gain more experience and skills and the ability to make important business contacts.

However in Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, candidates still view temporary work as a stop-gap until they can find permanent employment. As such, you will want to emphasise different benefits to candidates depending on your market. If you’re in a market where the ‘white-collar’ temp is more established, you should stress how your role will provide interesting challenges for the candidate, giving them opportunities to gain certain skills and pick up more competencies. Temp roles usually offer more money than their perm equivalent due to their relative lack of security, so it makes sense to clearly highlight the (hopefully enticing) pay package as well!

If you know your candidates are ultimately looking for perm roles you will need to be upfront from the start whether there will be a possibility of your role becoming permanent in the future. If the role definitely won’t become perm, how might it help them get a different role in future? What skills and experiences will they gain?

Also make it clear why the job you’re advertising is temporary e.g. you have a project with a defined start and end date. In some markets candidates may be happy with taking on a three month contract that may be extended but in the case of Eastern Europe (where I do business) candidates want clear timescales and long contracts.

That being said we recently had a candidate who turned down the opportunity of making a role permanent as they wanted to continue doing temporary assignments – so this could be the start of the market evolving! Aside from that, your job advert should look pretty much the same as for a perm role: clear job title, compelling company description and inspiring job specification.

Should you treat your temp candidate any differently when in the role?

The short answer is no! Not least because it would be illegal to do so under EU law. More details can be found in the relevant legislation of each country but the general framework is set by the EU Directive which can be found here. The Directive lays down the principle of non-discrimination, regarding the essential conditions of work and of employment, between temporary workers and workers who are recruited by the user company.

The general legal rules are clearly to be obeyed. Still, sometimes, we need to do even more than what we the laws tell us to be more successful in finding as well as in retaining our temporary employees. For instance, you should still train temps that join your company. Although you know you may lose them at some point- this isn’t investment lost as they will become more efficient in their role and create more value for you. You won’t want to finance expensive professional qualifications but short practical training that will improve their immediate performance in their role is logical.

In general make them feel as if they are part of the team and not different from the perm employees. This is the main complaint we receive from our temp candidates when they come back from assignment – they can sometimes feel a bit isolated from the team. This will surely have an impact on their performance as well, either consciously or not. We are social creatures after all.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/attracting-temporary-worker-marek-wr%C3%B3bel?trk=hp-feed-article-title-channel-add