<story><title>Trial week: Our hiring secret</title><url>http://www.sequoiacap.com/grove/posts/akzj/trial-week-our-hiring-secret</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gfodor</author><text>The point, I think, is that by the time you get to &amp;quot;trial week&amp;quot; phase you are pretty much set on joining, and it&amp;#x27;s just to avoid complete disasters. So the odds of you burning through two of these is incredibly low, and it&amp;#x27;s worth it anyway, since if you actually ended up not getting through trial week you are avoiding what could have been several years of a dysfunctional work environment, not to mention all the other opportunity costs of moving, etc.</text></item><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;I tell people that the worst case scenario is that they use a week of vacation, but because of the extra pay they can take a nicer vacation later on.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know about you guys, but if you&amp;#x27;re only getting 2 or 3 weeks of vacation a year, I think it&amp;#x27;s pretty insane to waste up to &lt;i&gt;half&lt;/i&gt; of it on testing out a job. You need your vacation days for, you know, &lt;i&gt;vacation&lt;/i&gt;, for your long-term mental sanity.&lt;p&gt;For a candidate who&amp;#x27;s already employed, that comes across as a completely unreasonable request. I mean, imagine if you interviewed at &lt;i&gt;two&lt;/i&gt; companies like this -- you get no vacation that year! Ugh.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tptacek</author><text>If that&amp;#x27;s true, the companies running &amp;quot;trial weeks&amp;quot; and other temp-to-perm arrangements should be able to quote the retention rate they have from these programs. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be surprised to hear that they hover around 95%, or in some cases even 100%.&lt;p&gt;But then, I&amp;#x27;d respond to that by asking what temp-to-perm is actually buying you, in exchange for the expense of filtering your candidate pool down to people willing to do you a favor in the hottest seller&amp;#x27;s market for talent in 10 years.</text></comment>
<story><title>Trial week: Our hiring secret</title><url>http://www.sequoiacap.com/grove/posts/akzj/trial-week-our-hiring-secret</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gfodor</author><text>The point, I think, is that by the time you get to &amp;quot;trial week&amp;quot; phase you are pretty much set on joining, and it&amp;#x27;s just to avoid complete disasters. So the odds of you burning through two of these is incredibly low, and it&amp;#x27;s worth it anyway, since if you actually ended up not getting through trial week you are avoiding what could have been several years of a dysfunctional work environment, not to mention all the other opportunity costs of moving, etc.</text></item><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;I tell people that the worst case scenario is that they use a week of vacation, but because of the extra pay they can take a nicer vacation later on.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know about you guys, but if you&amp;#x27;re only getting 2 or 3 weeks of vacation a year, I think it&amp;#x27;s pretty insane to waste up to &lt;i&gt;half&lt;/i&gt; of it on testing out a job. You need your vacation days for, you know, &lt;i&gt;vacation&lt;/i&gt;, for your long-term mental sanity.&lt;p&gt;For a candidate who&amp;#x27;s already employed, that comes across as a completely unreasonable request. I mean, imagine if you interviewed at &lt;i&gt;two&lt;/i&gt; companies like this -- you get no vacation that year! Ugh.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>austinl</author><text>&amp;quot;Our hire rate out of trial week is around 66%, which feels like the right level.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;66% seems quite low for that kind of arrangement, enough to be discouraged from applying in the first place unless you&amp;#x27;re currently jobless. I can definitely understand the 90-100% temp-permanent programs though.</text></comment>