Hiring Temporary Staff
Have a temporary hiring need? Our Temporary Staffing Service supported by our Talent Acquisition Department assists hiring managers in filling temporary long- and short-term vacancies. Whether it’s vacation coverage, a special project, or interim assistance while you conduct a search for a regular employee, a temporary employee can be a valuable resource in helping you meet business demands. For further questions, you may reach out to your Talent Acquisition Partner.
Temporary worker and contractor hiring
*IMPORTANT UPDATES: NUIT shared recent changes for 2021 Microsoft Office licensing for non-student temporary and contractor employees. Effective July 1, 2021 Northwestern will no longer provide non-student temporary and contractor employees with a license for the desktop version of Office products. Please scroll down for more information.
* New Minimum wage rates went into effect January 1, 2024. Please review prior to submitting a temporary request.
Sourced Temp Staffing Service
This service offers sourcing and placement assistance to help you find the best temporary employee to meet your needs. This service is offered via our Talent Acquisition Department.
- For assistance in recruiting a temporary employee for your department, please forward your approved Temporary Staffing Request Form to HRTA@northwestern.edu.
Please note: Effective the first full pay period in October 2022, the standard fee for sourced temporary placements will increase from $4.00 per hour to $4.50 per hour. This change will apply to any incoming or current temporary employees sourced with the assistance from your Talent Acquisition Partner. Stay tuned for more details on other fee structure changes in the coming weeks.
Please review our Sourced Temp Service Level Agreement for more information.
Non-Student Direct Temps and Student Temps
If you have identified a temporary candidate on your own, and would like to hire them, please follow the steps outlined below:
- Hiring Manager (or department representative) sends the Non-Student Direct Temp or Student Temp onboarding checklist to their candidate of choice.
- Following the instructions on the onboarding checklist, candidate of choice completes all required steps and returns the completed paperwork to the Hiring Manager.
- Hiring Manager completes the following steps:
- Ensures I-9 Section 1 & 2 are completed for the candidate of choice
- I-9 Part 1 & 2 MUST be completed prior to submitting request via Onbase
- Submits all completed paperwork via the HR Online Request Form.
- Non-Student Direct Temps will be routed to Talent Acquisition to initiate a background check before processing.
- After candidate enters background check information (required for Non-Student Temps only), the request will be automatically routed to HR Operations for processing.
- Student Temps will be routed to HR Operations directly for processing.
- Non-Student Direct Temps will be routed to Talent Acquisition to initiate a background check before processing.
- Ensures I-9 Section 1 & 2 are completed for the candidate of choice
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PLEASE NOTE: Do not upload Adobe Portfolios via the HR Online Request Form. The system (Onbase) is unable to open these versions. Documents must be regular PDF files.
****Effective as of August 1, 2019, HR Talent Acquisition no longer accepts direct temp submissions with an incomplete personal data form and I-9 Section 1 & 2. If you submit an incomplete request, it will be returned with an explanation of the missing information. To be processed, requests must be resubmitted with all missing information.
*IMPORTANT UPDATE Regarding Temporary Hire Microsoft Office Licenses 2021*
After June 30, 2021, Northwestern will no longer provide non-student temporary or contract employees with a license for the desktop version of Office products (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.).
- Departments that employ these individuals will either need to purchase the licenses outright, or will need to transition to the online version of Office for these employees. While the online versions will remain available for temps and contractors, there are some limitations:
- The individual must have an active internet connection to access Word, Excel, and PowerPoint; they cannot work offline.
- These versions are a little slower than the desktop clients.
- The user cannot open an existing file directly from their hard drive or shared network drive; they will need to upload the document into their Microsoft OneDrive account first, and make edits from there.
- If needed, they must copy the updated file back into their network drive to share it.
A full list of limitations can be found here.
If the department wishes to purchase a desktop license for their temporary/contractor employees, it would be their responsibility to locate a seller, purchase the licenses, and track their accounts. Microsoft offers either one-time purchases or monthly subscriptions, and costs can be found on Microsoft's website.
*Please note this affects only non-student temps and contractors. Regular employees, graduate students, and undergraduate students with a temporary job are not impacted.
Temp Worker Terminations
It is the responsibility of departments to manage their own temp worker terminations. Temporary employees should be terminated the pay period after their job ends, and any temporary employee who will not be working in a job for at least 60 days should be terminated.
- How? See detailed Managing Temporary Employees Guide.
Summer exception: Excluding Work-Study jobs, student employees who are leaving for the summer, but expected to return to the same job the following fall, do not need to be terminated. (If a temp does not return in fall, terminate the job ASAP at that time.) If not terminated, however, sick time earned before summer will carry over into fall quarter.
Quarterly automated terminations: HR Operations runs a termination process quarterly – in February, May, August and November – to terminate temp records of those who have not been paid in 90 days or more.
- “Run 90 day temp termination process” on the February, May, August and November Department Payroll Calendar shows the date that the Quarterly Termination process is run.
- Administrators: The public query “All Active Temps,” available in the myHR Reporting Dashboard, provides the last paycheck date for all temporary employees. Check this report close to the quarterly termination in February, May, August and November to see who has not been paid for 90 days. These temps will be automatically terminated in the system.
- If your temp’s record is part of this termination, a new request must be submitted if the temp will be working again.