Regardless of your industry, there will be weeks or months’ worth of busy season and you’ll need bodies, fast. There will be times when a staffer quits with little notice, goes on vacation when you need work done, or takes maternity leave earlier than expected. There may suddenly be a need for an individual with a specialized skill set necessary to complete a project. What if the project deadline was moved up by a few weeks and your staff becomes overwhelmed and overworked? Today’s temporary employees (or “temps”) are highly skilled people, who can fill a gap at a moment’s notice and there’s no long-term commitment involved. Sounds pretty great, right? Here are some other benefits to using temps:

Flexibility
This is an obvious advantage to using temps. You can bring them on board with very little notice and stop using them as soon as your workload subsides. If you’re feeling obligated to add workers but haven’t determined whether you really need someone full time, bringing in a temp will allow you the flexibility to figure out your long-term plan. Your new temp will help you determine if there is enough work to justify adding to your permanent roster. If he or she ends up being a great fit, you have a go-to person you can call to handle the ebbs and flows of your workload.

Temp to Hire: Try Before You Buy
Bringing in a temp employee affords you a trial period to make sure the person is a fit for the job as well as your corporate culture. During these weeks or months, you can determine whether the temp professional meshes well with the team, has the right level of experience, likes your management style, and is interested in investing in the role long term. You’ll get to view these qualifications first-hand, instead of relying solely on the interview process.

Happy Employees
Do you have peak times where you need more staff? Is your existing staff feeling burnt-out and over-burdened? Today’s temporary worker is motivated to continually show they can do the job for every company they work for. Because you won’t be bringing in a disgruntled staffer to join your team, these eager-to-please temps could bring in a needed boost to staff morale. Extra help motivates permanent employees because it takes the burden off their shoulders and shows them that management understands their needs.

Networking Opportunities
A temporary employee who has a great experience with your company, is going to share that experience with their network and their staffing agency. A positive experience will spread quickly and will help promote your brand and reputation. Temporary employees bring a unique network of past professional connections – Sharing those anecdotes and contacts could introduce your company to new clients, vendors, employees, or partners.

More professionals are recognizing the advantages of the flexible nature of temporary work; the ability to work in different environments, the opportunity to build new skills, and the platform to meet new professional connections. Savvy companies are taking advantage of this growing, highly-skilled temporary workforce by implementing a temp-to-hire staffing strategy, and the benefits of hiring this type of help are many. One of them is something that every manager wants – More time.

You need to hire a manager. The stakes are high. This individual needs to be capable of balancing a budget, communicating with senior management, and leading a team – and they need to be able to do it from day one. But what if both your leading outside hire and your internal star player have never managed before? You must now rely on your ability to decipher the intangible – your candidate’s personality.

To start, it would be helpful to ask if the candidate has taken on a management or leadership role outside of the workplace – i.e. captain of a sports team, editor of a school newspaper, manager of a group of volunteers, etc. People skills, namely empathy and self-awareness, are the most important characteristics needed to transition into a position of management. Both can be acquired and practiced outside of the office in any of the former roles mentioned.

It is also beneficial to discuss the candidate’s view of the “big picture.” In other words, the candidate’s ability to see beyond the current task and immediate situation and into the future. Has the candidate ever set a long-term goal and met it? What does the candidate believe the big picture is in the role they are interviewing for? Does the candidate understand how the tasks being performed by their team help implement the big picture?

Here are some additional interview questions that can help you understand your candidate’s personal qualities as they relate to management success…

1. How have you developed your people skills?
2. How would you prepare to transition from working as an individual to leading the work of a team?
3. How would you balance big picture goals with your team’s daily responsibility?
4. Have you managed a group outside of work that helped you learn something about leading people?
5. When have you had to increase your self-awareness in order to complete a project or task?
6. What do you view as the challenges to managing this team?
7. As an employee, success is defined by your own actions, behavior, and achievements. As a manager, success is defined by your ability to help employees, act, behave, and achieve at a high level. Are you willing to change how you define success?
8. How would you feel if you had done everything you could do, but your team failed to meet expectations?

Moving into a management role requires the awareness of the nature of management. An understanding that it is an art, as well as a science. Management requires a creative sense in order to problem-solve, an instinctive perception of others, and at times an inspiring imagination to motivate a team. It is not a role for everyone and it is quite alright to acknowledge the ups and downs to becoming a great manager. Your candidate should be reminded that you want the person who accepts this role to succeed and flourish, even if that includes weekly check-in meetings or mentoring. Every manager had to take the leap into management for the first time – and someone had to take that leap of faith with them.

Top performers have achieved their success and honed their skill sets because they don’t settle for “good enough” in their professional lives. Their confidence and ambition means it is more likely they will carefully weigh any employment options and will not be attracted to those that don’t align with their career objectives. Get top talent on board with your organization by keeping in mind their main motivating factors:

To Feel Their Work is Valued

People obviously work to bring home a paycheck, but for top performers to really feel engaged at a job, they want to feel that their work is important and appreciated. They want to go home at night, knowing they haven’t wasted their time and effort. Include examples of how your company values and recognizes its workers whenever you’re branding (such as through your website or when writing job descriptions) or having in-person interactions with candidates.

To Have a Work-Life Balance

Flexibility in the workplace is a hot commodity with top performers. In fact, options for working from home occasionally or being able to have some leeway with their work schedules may be more tempting than a bigger salary from a competing company. Top performers have demonstrated they can produce optimal results without micromanaging, and having a company recognize that and give them freedom to work (within reason) in a way that benefits them professionally and personally will make them more likely to consider your place of employment.

To Grow Professionally

A company with a reputation of lacking opportunity for advancement will likely cause top performers to be wary of working there. These professionals have talent, which they don’t want to waste on a “dead end” job. Entice these top performers by showing how you help employees grow professionally, such as through consistent training to learn new and relevant skills, mentorship programs, or a preference for in-house hiring for higher positions.

Attracting the attention of top performers can be made simpler with a dedicated staffing firm like Professional Alternatives. We have been working with Texas employers since 1998 to assist them in their staffing needs, including temporary, temp-to-hire, and direct placement services. Our business units serve specific niche, so you can be assured that candidates will be the right match. Contact Professional Alternatives today to learn more about our employer services.