When Execs Go Temp

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Fluent in Russian and trained as a doctor's assistant, George Borayev, 23, of Asheville, N.C., was initially thrilled with his temp job as a real-life "interpreter of maladies" for immigrants seeking medical help from the county health department. "I was excited to get this job," Borayev says. "It uses my language, and it's in the same field as my degree." He worked happily as a contract employee for almost two years until this spring, when a tax bill close to $2,000 and a $1,000 emergency root canal pushed the drawbacks of perma-temping right in his face. "Of course I'd really rather have all the benefits I hear people talking about, since I work pretty much full time here," Borayev says. "I'll keep working at this, and hopefully they might take me as a full-time employee. But I don't know if it will ever happen." The vast majority of temporary employees work close to 40 hours a week, as Borayev does. But as long as they stay under that limit, they are not considered full time and therefore not entitled to federally mandated overtime pay or health benefits available to permanent workers.

For most companies, temps represent a chance to control costs: while hourly wages are usually higher for temps, employers can save the 20% to 35% of salary they pay for permanent employees in taxes and benefits. Georgetown University expanded its internal temporary-staffing service two years ago to include such professionals as grant administrators, researchers and auditors. These nonclerical workers account for about a third of the hundreds of temporary spots Georgetown fills each year. "I think it's a result of the university's trying to make the most of its resources," says Diane Charness, manager of Georgetown's temporary service. "Part of it is economics; part of it is wanting to be flexible."

Some longer-term temps enjoy the best of both worlds: they get the same benefits as full-time employees without feeling the need to give face time or flatter the boss. Steve Israeli, 33, of Brooklyn, N.Y., has been working since July 2002 through the New York City agency TemPositions, most recently as an IT manager for a state agency. Laid off by Lucent in 2002, he says he is making more than he was at his last full-time job and, after years of waiting, got his first chance to be a manager. "This is my career, absolutely," Israeli says. James Essey, CEO of TemPositions, says that by moving his best employees to more responsible positions at different client firms, "I actually can provide these folks with career paths, much as it used to be in the old days." At many firms, IT departments have been "downsized so much that there really is not a lot of career advancement."

But as this army of high-skilled temps gathers strength, there are costs to the companies that tap their talent. Jeff Wittman, 41, of Indianapolis, Ind., is about to start his third auditing assignment in six months. "I'm having fun," he says, but he misses the relationships that can be built over time by staying with one company. That sense of detachment can run deep. "When I first went into nursing, employers felt responsibility for their employees," says Chris Springer, 41, a temp in Omaha. "But you don't see that anymore in the U.S. So now I say, 'Show me the money.'"