[ivanstegic]

Agree. We just recently went through a failed employee hire (even though we had a mini project for the candidate) and in the retrospective we came to the conclusion that our whole team was first hired as a contractor and then later converted to an employee. So we’re going to just keep doing that from now on.

[Jach]

How do you decide whom to hire for the contract role though? ;) A bad hire should indicate that your mini project missed testing something important for your team. In my own experience with an intern who didn't live up to my hopes, I realized I wasn't testing for the ability to read code not written by them, whose whole they cannot hold all in their heads (only a contextual part at a time), and make some changes to it. I do that now.

[_ah]

You do lose some candidates this way. If I'm already leaping from one stable job, I'm not going to roll the dice on a contract position. Sure it will probably work out, but everyone should already know not to trust promises made during the recruiting process.

[citrusx]

I'm going to second that. I don't ever consider CTH, and there's a pretty strong body of programmers who feel the same way. There's too much risk in it.