FAQs

FL vs. FT vs. Temp to Perm: How does each benefits a company. May 27

The question of freelance vs. full-time vs. temp-to-perm is a common issue in today’s staffing marketplace. Each option has its benefits and disadvantages.

Freelancers are most frequently used when a company has a deadline to meet and not enough internal resources to complete the project on time. Often times, there are very specific skill sets that a freelancer needs to possess in order to meet the needs of the company. The benefit of this is that the company does not have to invest thousands of dollars and hours into hiring and training this individual. They can call this person when the need arises. The downfall is that the availability for freelancers is very sporadic. Freelancers don’t like to sit idle, so they are always looking for their next project. If a company is really in a bind, they might have to either settle for sub-par talent or over-extend their full-time employees.

Full-time is becoming increasingly dominant especially in the interactive advertising community, because of the incredible demand for experienced talent. The advantages are that companies have an unlimited talent pool to target to fill their full-time opening. They have the option to head-hunt from a competitor, target out of town talent, or go the conventional route and post for jobs and interview candidates. The downfall of this is that you never know how well a candidate will fit into the office culture until they start. It takes a very large investment on the company’s behalf to interview, hire, and train a new employee. If they don’t work out, the company will have to start all over again.

Temp to perm may be the safest bet when making a full-time hire. However, the same downfall holds true for temp-to-perm roles as with freelance positions - The talent pool is limited. It is highly unlikely that a full-time candidate will leave their job for a temp to perm position that is not guaranteed. The benefit is that both the company and candidate get to ‘test each other out’ before moving into a full-time capacity. Also, this is a great way to reduce a staffing agency’s placement fee. After a certain number of hours worked in a freelance capacity, the fee that the company will have to pay to bring that employee on full-time drops significantly. However, if the company doesn’t like the candidate, they can let them go at any given time.

Ted, Sr. Creative Recruiter

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