It’s fairly common these days for temporary positions which come open in a company to go unfilled for quite a while and to remain open for a longer period of time than a company would want. While it’s certainly in the best interest of the company to be thorough about the hiring process, and to choose the right candidate, leaving a position open can cause other problems. A temporary position may be necessary.
While a person is missing in the workplace, everyone else around that particular job will be required to pitch in and take up the slack created by the open position. If this goes on for an extended period of time, it can increase the pressure on some employees, and lower the morale of those people affected.
As soon as it becomes apparent that a quick solution cannot be reached, and that a quick hire is not on the horizon, a company should take steps to temporarily fill the position, so that it doesn’t create a strain on other employees, and so it doesn’t develop into a severe loss of productivity. Here are some ways to bridge the gap left by the open position, and to avoid some of the problems caused by being one person short in the workforce.
Temporary Replacements
If you have a good relationship with a recruiting agency, you can generally find a temporary replacement to fill the position until a permanent hire can be made. The big advantage of a recruiting agency is that at any given time, it will always have a number of qualified candidates on hand, which it maintains contact with.
When the opportunity arises, any of these available candidates can quickly be put in touch with your company to supply short-term talent which is compatible with the skillset needed for the open position. Because the recruiting agency has done all the background work in filtering out qualified candidates, a quick solution can generally be found for the temporary replacement of an open position.
Part-time Employees
You might find yourself in a situation where you recognize that you need a full-time professional to fill an open position, but you’re a little cautious about pulling the trigger on making such a serious commitment for a salaried individual. Rather than plunge into hiring a full-time employee, you can engage the services of a temporary professional, with the understanding that it could develop into a full-time position.
This will fill the immediate need to get you over the crisis, and if it turns out that the individual really works out well, you can make a decision later on retaining them permanently. On the other hand, if your temporary person is not really an outstanding worker and doesn’t impress anyone else in the company, you’ll have the option of simply terminating the arrangement. This can be a great way of finding out whether someone will actually fit in with the rest of the employees, and with the culture, you’ve created at your workplace.
If this individual has been supplied by your favorite recruiting agency, you’ll also be able to simply replace one worker with another fairly quickly, since the agency will generally have several qualified candidates available. This whole process bypasses the need for you to go through hiring and terminating procedures while you are simply trying to determine the suitability of candidates for the position.
Short-term Openings
There are also occasions which come up that call for a skillset which no one on your staff currently has, and which would take too long to train someone in, given the brevity of the project itself. Clearly, it would be a bit of overkill to go through a full hiring process to try and find a suitable candidate with the skillset you’re looking for, especially since at the end of the project, there would be no further need for that skill set, or for that individual.
What you could do instead, is to bring in a project specialist who has the requisite skills and experience, and who would be willing to work on a short-term basis. There are a number of independent workers who are willing to accept contract work of this type, with the understanding that the duration of the project is not to exceed three months, six months, or whatever the duration might be.
If you don’t have the resources yourself to search for such talented individuals, you can always have a conversation with people at your favored recruiting agency, and enlist their aid in searching for the project specialist you need.
Other Scenarios
There are undoubtedly even more scenarios than this where it makes a great deal of sense to hire a temporary skilled person to fill in a position of need, rather than hiring a full-time employee. Sometimes it is either unnecessary to hire someone full-time, or the search has simply gone on for too long already, and some other action must be taken.
In truth, there are a great many scenarios today which call for temporary solutions rather than full-time permanent solutions, with regard to hiring practices. When you’re faced with situations like these, you’ll probably find that the fastest and most effective answer to your problem is to engage the services of a staffing agency, to help you find candidates that will provide the temporary skills you need.