I’ve spoken about this with a lot of people but I’m finding it really interesting how companies go about staffing. I’ve decided to start off my blog series about a subject that people often don’t get right. As a tester, you’ll find I try to create context. To that end, let’s start with some terms that I’ll be using frequently. The blogs I write are generally aimed at a tech audience, but some of the ideas can be moved into other industries.

Permanent Employee

This is a person you hire that is meant to stay for an indeterminate amount of time. This is typically what you’d think of when you think of someone as ‘An Employee’. These are usually for roles that will be with the company a while and barring unforeseen redundancies, will stay until they decide to leave.

Contract Employee

This is a person that is hired on a temporary basis. They are paid hourly for their work and are meant for a specific purpose or time frame. They are used to fill in gaps, expand teams temporarily, or supplement people to get a project done quickly. They are meant to be around for a temporary amount of time. They will often be extended by projects that are lasting longer than intended or being moved to other projects.

Consultant Employee

This is a person that tends to look a lot like a contractor but with a shift in focus. These are often individuals or groups of people hired by a company from a consulting company to fulfil needs, like a contractor, but they work for the consulting company directly (this isn’t always true but we’ll discuss that in later posts). They are often hired in a ‘Statement of Work’ type of capacity and the agreement is not for a specific person, but with a specific company. This is often done to time-box the work or so hiring managers/project managers can utilise a different budget item (also something we’ll discuss in a later post).

Example 1: Company A needs a permanent Senior Tester.

They can advertise and try to fill the role themselves or they can come to a recruitment agency to do so. They go through CVs, interview candidates, find the person they want to hire, and then make them an offer. Normal process as most people think about it.

Example 2: Company A needs a temporary Senior Tester.

The company realises that they are working on a major project and they need it out the door quickly. They want a contractor to help them test faster, build an automation suite for regression, or maybe just do some specialised testing that the team doesn’t have. They want performance done but only need it for six months. They come to an agency, who find a couple candidates, then they interview who they like. An agreement is signed between us and the person in question. The contracts are between Company A, Agency A and Contractor A. If something happens and the contract needs to be terminated or extended, all three parties are involved.

Example 3: Company A needs a temporary Senior Tester and they work with a consultancy.

Generally Company A would talk with Consultancy A to get a resource. Let’s use the performance testing as above. Consultancy A looks at the people they have, generally on their bench, and offers several people. Company A will interview (sometimes) and they say who they want. Contracts are between Company A and Consultancy A for a time period and a resource. The employee isn’t always a part of that so if the employee leaves the contract is still in effect. Consultancy A will just replace someone with ‘similar skills’. 

Now that we have a good notion of these roles, if you didn’t know, future posts will be more in line with the good, bad and different issues with each type. Starting with Perm…