It can be disconcerting taking a contract-to-hire position when you know you have long-term obligations you’ve already committed to. You want to make sure you’re providing for your family and your future without taking on too much unnecessary risk. At the same time, you want to be confident that you’re stepping into a position which provides the correct level of challenge, satisfaction, and reward.
We often hear about the downsides of working contract-to-hire because negative experiences tend to be vocalized by disgruntled contractors more than positive ones. You may be surprised to hear that contract-to-hire roles often have quite a positive impact on the contractors working them.
Familiarize Yourself with a Company or Industry Before Committing Long-Term
If you’ve worked in an industry for many, many years, you likely know the in’s and out’s of the job marketplace (especially, if you’ve laterally moved between many different organizations). What we often see and hear from seasoned industry pro’s, however, is a desire to branch out and taste what opportunities may exist in other niches or industries just outside their accumulated experience.
Contract-to-hire roles are ideal for contractors looking to test the waters in a new organization or industry before making a full-on long-term commitment. Contract-to-hire allows you to get inside an organization and learn how they operate, what their processes are, why they do things the way they do, their corporate philosophy, and how they reward and grow employees. This can be an incredibly valuable context for contractors seeking new experiences within their existing talent stack.
Gain Leverage That Can Be Used in Full-Time Negotiations
Working a contract-to-hire position is not just about gaining a new experience, however, it’s about data-collection. Whether you’re in a contract-to-hire position for 90 days for 12 months, you’re being given a truly unique opportunity to collect information about how the company’s hiring process works and operates, ways other employees and contractors have negotiated for the salaries, positions, and benefits they desired, and the best way to present yourself when it comes down to negotiating a full-time position.
Companies love to hire from within and if you’ve successfully completed KPIs and properly networked yourself within your group of peers and the relevant leadership circles, you can easily parlay a contract-to-hire position into a full-time role, using your internal experience with the team as a leverage point to request a larger salary, benefits, etc.
Open Tech Doors Which Tend to Be Shut Tight
Depending on your skill and experience, it can be incredibly difficult to land a lucrative and satisfying job in a Google, Facebook, or other top titans of tech. Often, full-time positions only go to candidates who have been referred by internal sources or trusted external sources (like Providence Partners).
Contract-to-hire positions can be your Trojan Horse for gaining access to an organization which otherwise would be off-limits to your level of experience. We’ve worked with plenty of engineers who wanted to play at a bigger level but didn’t have the experience or connections required to land an interview in a big tech firm. However, they jumped at the opportunity to prove themselves via a contract-to-hire position and many of them were able to convert those CTH roles into lucrative full-time careers.
Let Providence Partners Find You Unique Opportunities in Tech
If you’re seeking an entry point into a specific organization or want the opportunity to show off your talent, then a contract-to-hire role might be the right next move for you. Perhaps you just want to see what a company is all about or make sure it’s the right cultural fit. Maybe you’re just interested in a short-term opportunity while you line up some of your more long-term options. Contract-to-hire can also be great work for tech entrepreneurs looking for a way to fund and bootstrap their own tech startup. Many entrepreneurs have used moonlighting at contract-to-hire positions as a way to keep the lights on while they grow their own startup in the wee hours of the night.
Whatever your situation, we’d love to showcase to you some of the amazing contract-to-hire opportunities in the Texas technology marketplace.
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