What is a direct hire? When you’re looking to fill a permanent role in your company, making a direct hire is likely to be the best option. Keep reading to find out more about direct hires and how to offer a job directly.

What Is A Direct Hire?

A direct hire is someone that your company is hiring and therefore responsible for. This is different from when you use a staffing firm and pay the bill. In that situation, it’s either a temporary contract or the person technically works for the staff firm. For temporary or contract positions, it makes more sense to use recruiting agencies as then you don’t need to run a hiring process yourself.

For a direct hire, you will run your own hiring process. This involves putting up the job ad, interviewing, and finding qualified candidates. You would usually only do this for permanent roles as otherwise it is a lot of work for just a short period of time.

Types of Hiring

If you are unsure what type of hiring process you should undertake for an open role, here is a list of types of hires you can make. This will allow you to compare and contrast the types to make the best hiring decision for the role available.

Direct Hire

A direct hire is usually for full time, permanent positions. The recruit will be at your company permanently, or until they wish to resign. The hiring company finds the right candidate themselves. This is best for long-term roles that need to be filled.

Temporary Hire

Temporary hires are hired on an hourly, short-term basis. These are often found through recruiting agencies. A good example is seasonal workers that may work in a store over Christmas to provide extra help to staff. Then after the busy Christmas season, there is no need for these extra workers. It refers to any employee that has no contract for ongoing work and is on an hourly rate.

Contract Hiring

Contract hiring refers to when you decide to hire a freelancer or contractor to perform duties on a short-term basis. When you outsource the work, this is contract hiring. It can also include temporarily putting one of your part-time staff on a full-time contract to cover a certain business need.

Contract to Hire

Using a contract to hire is a common way that business hire workers with lower risk to them. They start a new employee on a temporary contract so they can evaluate them before offering a permanent position. The employee gets paid and gets to know your company and you can decide at the end of the temporary contract to directly hire them or not.

How to Offer A Job Directly

If you’re going for direct hire employees, you’re likely to handle the recruitment in-house. Here are the steps you will need to undertake after you have advertised the position.

Assessment

If your company doesn’t often use an in-house recruitment process, using cognitive assessments can provide some clarity on who the best person for the position is.

Hiring for permanent roles is high-risk because if the person doesn’t perform as they should, they can still be at your company for a long time.

Using a cognitive assessment based on skills relevant to the position will show which candidates have the right skills to perform well. This can give you some assurance on who the best candidates are.

Interviews

First, decide who is going to be on your interview panel. We suggest an HR representative, the hiring manager, and perhaps a 3rd person.

If you choose to use a cognitive assessment, it’s best to base your interview list on those who had the highest test scores. You already know that these candidates have the skills for the position, so use the interview as a chance to get to know them.

Add in some behavioural interview questions to get an idea of how they have reacted to difficult situations in the past. For example, a good interview question is ‘Tell us about a time when you have experienced conflict at work in the past. How did you handle this?’.

Offer

Next, you need to make the final decision about who you are going to hire. Once you’ve agreed on that, you can go ahead and let the candidate know.

A major part of the offer process is remuneration. Perhaps you have predetermined salary bands at your organization and will offer within that. If not, remember to research how much the position is worth in the job market today and make an offer in line with that.

If you can’t match other companies in terms of salary, you may still be able to nab a great candidate if you add benefits instead. For example, you may not be able to pay 5k more but maybe you can offer an additional 2 weeks’ holiday per year. Many people will value family time or a break over money.

When deciding whether to make a direct hire, the main question is how long will they be at your company? If the person is going to be permanent, then it may be worth the investment of a direct hire. Adding a cognitive assessment can provide clarity on the best candidate and make that investment worth it for you. If you’re not hiring permanently, you may be better off using a recruiting agency to find someone for a temporary contract.