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Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Temp to Perm

Dear Evil HR Lady,

I was just offered a permanent position at a company that I have been temping at for the past 14 months. I am earning $20 per hour as a temp and I do get overtime pay.

The salary I was offered is $40,000 per year—which is less per hour than I am making as a temp. The position is non-exempt so I would get overtime pay but I feel disappointed (to say the least) that $40,000 is all they are offering. I was told by the recruiter that I interviewed with that $40,000 is as high as they will go. Is this type of this a common practice when going from temp to perm?


Yes and no. How come you don't get overtime as a temp? If you are doing the same job as a temp that you will be doing as a regular (note I didn't say permanent--you are undoubtedly still an at will employee and can be terminated at any time) employee, you should have been overtime eligible as a temp as well.

But, that is neither here nor there. As a regular employee you will probably be eligible for benefits that you would not be eligible for as a temp. Health insurance is a big item. This is worth more than the small amount ($1600 a year for 40 hrs/week) you would drop in salary. Plus your new salary ($19.23) means that instead of the $800 you get now, you'll get $769. With one hour of overtime a week ($19.23x1.5)you'll be up to $797, hardly worth quibbling over.

If you aren't getting any benefits, then it's probably not worth it. But if you are--it's a great deal. And health insurance isn't the only benefit.

Evil Marketing Man's company sends out a statement of total compensation ever year. We just got his yesterday. In addition to salary, they give the value of health insurance, life insurance, 401k matching, disability insurance, etc so that you know how much you really benefit from working for them. I think it's a brilliant thing to do. Plus, now I know that his benefits are over $30,000 a year. (Although some of which we'll be unlikely to use, but they are there for us if we want them.)

Benefits are a wonderful thing. Hopefully, you are being offered some fabulous one. Congratulations on the job offer.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Hi. I'm currently working as a contractor in California. The agency I'm working for say I don't get overtime pay rate of 1.5x even when I worked pass 40 hours in a week. Just wondering if you know if they can do this to me or not since I'm on contract.

Evil HR Lady said...

If you are in IS there is a good chance that your job isn't overtime eligible. It also depends on if you are a 1099 contractor or if you are employed by a company who then contracts you out.

Basically, there are too many variables to answer your question.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the answer. I'm sorry what is IS?

I doubt I'm a independent contractor. There's not really a set amount of time for me to complete the job. I'm getting paid hourly just doing HTML making $20/hour just helping out with a section of the project. The place I'm working at just calls me in to work when there is stuff to do and tells me to go home when there is not much work to do. I'm suppose to help speed up the pace of the work because this company I'm working at was behind schedule.