How can I become a permanent employee after being a temp without the company paying thousands to buy me out?

Question

I'm totally confused right now. I work for a temp agency here in the Dallas Metroplex (OfficeTeam) and I called yesterday, and they said that if I was paid $14 an hour, the company that I'm currently temporarily employed at would have to pay around $7,500 to OfficeTeam to hire me.

IS THERE ANY WAY AROUND THIS?

I know that everything on here is free and that no one gets paid, but if you answer this question and it's a valid answer, and I get hired, I will pay you my ENTIRE FIRST PAYCHECK when I'm with the company. I could make way more money with this, so give me feedback, people. You could get more than $700...

I will be keeping up with the user with the best answer (a.k.a. the most accurate answer) and will pay out if this is successful. Thanks for your answers so far. I will be looking into each one of these thoroughly and will contact each of you further if I need more information from you. Thanks.

Answer 1

Talk to the HR person where your currently working. Tell them you want to be a full time emp. Quit the temp agency and have the full time job hire you on as a Regular employee. Its that simple! Make sure the Regular job agrees to this first!

Answer 2

First of all, keep your money.
What the temp agency is doing, is claiming a placement fee, as a recruiting company would. This is perfectly legal. They should have explained this to you when you went to work for the agency.
Usually these 'placement' fees are paid 6-12 months after the employee has been hired. You can ask you company how long the fee is good for. (In other words if you leave the position, and apply for a job there 1 year later, will they still have to pay).
You have to realize that the temp company is already getting paid a premium for your services. (If you are being paid $14/hour by the temp co, the temp co is charging the company $18-20) . You may be able to work out an agreement with the new company to work for less money for a period of time, to make the transaction palateable to them.

Answer 3

It may depend on the contract your company has with the temp firm. Usually, after a certain period of time of you being employed as a temp, the company will have the right to take you on full time without having to pay a penalty unless they got completely screwed by the temp firm when they negotiated the deal.

Have you been with them long or did you just start? If you have a buddy inside the company who has access to the contracts (in this case you should make a friend in either the purchasing department or the HR department), you can ask them to check it out for you.

The fact that they seem to realted the $7500 penalty to the fact that you make $14/hour means they operate either on a percentage basis of your salary or on a ceratin scale with some brackets in which you fit.

$14/hour is roughly $28K/year based on 2000 hours which means the penalty is over 25% of your base annual pay. That's a large amount which leads me to believe you are at the very beginning of your term of your current assignement.

In the end it will come down to dollars and cents so you will have to either wait until it makes sens to your company to hire you full time (meaning wait until the penalty decreases or disappears) or make sure you prove that you are valuable enough to the comany that if you depart, it will definitely cost them more that $7500 to rehire, retrain, etc.

Companies are looking to stay as far away as they can from full-time employees so you definitely have your work cut out for you.

Good luck and if you do get hired and make more money, keep that first paycheck and enjoy it or if you can spare it, donate it to a worthy charity.

Answer 4

I temped for several years and took a permanent job that Ihad been doing as a temp. As the tyemp agency had already made loads of money out of the booking they were willing to take a reduced introduction fee - it's worth a try.

Answer 5

Depending on the contract you signed with the temp agency, and upon the contract that the company in question signed with the temp agency, there's usually a waiting period before they can hire you "for free". Normally, this is around 6 months to a year.