Last updated: October 22, 2026
Judge a contract-to-hire creative on fit, pace, and how they take feedback, not the portfolio you already saw. Score it at days 30, 60, and 90. KORE1 converts 37.5% of contract-to-hire placements across all roles (207 of 552), and a KORE1 contractor can convert at no fee after 1,040 hours.
By Samantha Litman, Executive Search, Marketing, Creative & Media, KORE1
You loved the portfolio.
Of course you did. That’s why you picked this person. So here’s the question I’d ask before the first day. What are you actually testing now?
The portfolio already did its job. It got someone in front of you. What it can’t show you is how they work on a Tuesday, when the feedback is blunt, the deadline moved overnight, and the copywriter rewrote the headline again for the third time that week. Contract-to-hire creative roles let you watch that part before you commit, and 90 days is plenty of time to see it. Know where to look.
I’ve spent more than 25 years in executive search, and today I recruit marketing, creative, and media people as part of KORE1’s digital and creative staffing team. Lately I’m hearing the same thing from clients. Budgets are tighter, so they’re leaning toward contract-to-full-time and project hires instead of carrying a full salary on a hunch about someone they’ve only met in a few interviews. Sensible instinct. Fair enough. It only pays off if the trial period teaches you something.
Quick disclosure. KORE1 sells this, so weigh my enthusiasm accordingly. The checkpoints below work whether you call us or not. And this post assumes you’ve already settled on the model. If you’re still weighing contract against permanent, start with our page on contract-to-hire staffing first.
What Should I Judge Beyond the Portfolio?
Four things. Fit, pace, feedback, and judgment. None of them show up in a portfolio, and all of them show up within the first few weeks.
- Fit is whether the person makes the team easier to work with. Do the producer and the copywriter go looking for them, or quietly route around them?
- Pace. Not speed, exactly. Do they hit the date they gave you, and do they tell you early when they won’t?
- How they take feedback. Watch what happens to round two. It tells you more than round one ever will.
- Judgment is the odd one out, because the brief is never as complete as you think. When something’s missing, what does this person do? Ask, guess, or make something bold and wrong? Any of the three can be right. You’re learning which kind of person you have.
The seat changes what those look like. An art director should be setting direction without waiting to be told where to point. A designer, and I mean the people you’d find through graphic designer staffing, has to work inside somebody else’s brand system without bending it out of shape. A producer brings the schedule in without drama. Same four things, three different pictures of good.
What Should I Look For at Day 30, Day 60, and Day 90?
Score each checkpoint from 1 to 5 on those four things. Write it down. Same afternoon. By day 90 you will remember day 30 differently, I promise.
| Checkpoint | What you’re testing | A good sign | A flag |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 30 | Pace and first read on fit | First deliverable lands on the date they quoted, after a few sharp questions about the brand and the audience | Two weeks of silence, then something polished and off-brief |
| Day 60 | Feedback and judgment | Round two is visibly better than round one, and they push back once, with a reason | The same note comes back twice, or they never disagree with anything |
| Day 90 | Fit and ownership | You’d hand them the next project without writing a brief, and the team asks for them by name | You’re still carrying their work over the finish line |
This is my read from the searches I’ve run, not a KORE1 benchmark. Adjust it to your team.
Day 30 is mostly pace, and you’re grading on a curve. They’re learning your tools, your brand rules, and who actually approves what. Don’t penalize the learning. Penalize the silence. A contractor who goes quiet for two weeks and surfaces with something gorgeous and wrong has told you more about how they’ll behave in your building than the gorgeous part ever could, because the silence is the real work sample. Notice it.
By day 60 the honeymoon is over. Good. That’s the point. You’ve given real feedback at least twice, so look at what came back. Did they hear the note, or only the words in it? A good designer who hears “it feels too corporate” doesn’t just swap the font. They ask what corporate means to you. Then there’s pushback. I want some. Someone who agrees with every note either has no opinion or doesn’t trust you yet, and neither one makes your work better. Some pushback. Not every note.
Day 90 is where you stop asking “are they good?” and start asking “are they good here?” Two different questions, and the second is the one that matters for a permanent seat. Ask yourself whether you’d want this person in the room the week the work goes badly. Then ask the team. Really ask. Producers, copywriters, and account people have watched this person on a rough Thursday, which you haven’t, not really, and what they tell you at that point is worth more than another long look at the finished work.
Is the Person the Right Fit, or Just the Right Resume?
A resume gets you in the door; fit keeps you in the room.
I always say recruiting is matchmaking, not shopping. You’re not ticking boxes. You’re asking whether this person’s strengths, what drives them, and what they could grow into line up with what your team needs right now and, more to the point, what it will need a year from today. A trial is the first time you get to watch that match actually run. There’s science to it, which is the checkpoints above, and there’s instinct. The instinct is the feeling in the room when they walk in. Trust both. And when they disagree, don’t pick a winner. Ask someone on the team what they see.
A resume tells you where someone has been. It doesn’t tell you where they can go, and it certainly doesn’t tell you whether they’ll stay in the room once the novelty wears off.
I’ve had this conversation more than once. A hiring manager says the contractor’s work is great, and in the next breath says the team has stopped inviting them to meetings or copying them on the thread. Great work, wrong fit. Or at least wrong fit for that team, which for your purposes is the same thing. The reverse happens too. The portfolio is quiet and the person turns out to be the one everyone wants on the next project. If you want to dig into why this matters so much in creative teams, our piece on cultural fit versus functional fit in creative staffing goes further than I will here.
How Does Conversion Work After 1,040 Hours?
Here’s the arithmetic most people don’t run until it’s too late.
1,040 hours is 26 weeks at 40 a week. About six months. Day 90, on a full-time schedule, is roughly 13 weeks, or around 520 hours. So your day-90 review lands almost exactly at the halfway point to the no-fee conversion mark, which isn’t a problem so much as information, and it leaves you two real choices. Decide at day 90 and convert early, or let the contract run toward 1,040 hours and decide with more evidence. Either is fine.
Devin Hornick, a partner at KORE1, states the terms plainly. “If this person completes 1,040 hours, then they are eligible to convert over to full time with that particular company at no additional charge from KORE1.” Before that mark a conversion fee applies and it steps down as hours build. Get the exact terms from your recruiter before the contract starts, not on day 89.
One more thing, because I’d rather you hear it from me. There’s no replacement guarantee on a KORE1 contract. The commitments are that contractors show up on time, get paid every Friday, and can convert at no fee after 1,040 hours. If you want a guarantee, direct hire staffing carries one, at 20% of base salary with a 60-day guarantee. Our page on how contract staffing works with KORE1 walks through the weekly mechanics, from timesheets to conversion.
How Often Do Contract-to-Hire Placements Convert?
Across KORE1’s records for hires from 2019 to 2026, 552 placements started as contract-to-hire and 207 of them converted. That’s 37.5%.
Please don’t carry that number into your plan as a creative benchmark. It isn’t one. It covers every role family KORE1 staffs, and creative isn’t broken out, so treat it as a signal about the model in general rather than a promise about your particular seat. Not a promise. We have no creative-specific conversion rate to give you, and I’d rather say that than invent one.
What I will say is that a trial that doesn’t convert isn’t automatically a failure. Sometimes the person wasn’t the right fit. Sometimes the budget moved. Sometimes they took a better offer in week ten. Three very different outcomes. A single percentage lumps them together. If you want to see how different sources measure conversion, and why their numbers disagree so wildly, our guide to contract-to-hire conversion rates lays it out.
The figures above come from KORE1 engagement data for hires from 2019 to 2026, which includes 1,887 ended contract assignments, 552 contract-to-hire placements, and 1,997 offer-to-start records, all as of October 2026, with the data running through October 16.
What If They Are Great and You Are Not Ready?
Then say so early. To your recruiter, and to the contractor. And move faster than feels comfortable.
If you find someone great, move. Good people have options. Creative people have more of them than most. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that about 62% of art directors are self-employed, and for graphic designers it’s 20%, the largest single group on that page’s list of employers. Project-based work is how a lot of them already live. Their next project is a phone call away. It won’t wait for your budget meeting, and a good one rarely sits around hoping you’ll get approval before the end of the quarter.
Here’s what I’d do. Decide your conversion budget before day one, so day 90 isn’t the first time anyone asks. If the answer is “not yet,” extending the contract can buy you time. Our article on the extend-or-convert decision was written with engineering contractors in mind, but the questions carry over to a designer or a producer. And if you’re staffing a whole launch rather than one seat, my post on staffing a campaign launch with contract creatives covers who to bring in and when.
Things Hiring Managers Ask Me About Trial Periods
Some come up on nearly every call. All fair questions.
Do I really have to wait for 1,040 hours to convert?
No, but a fee applies earlier, and it steps down as the hours build. Ask your KORE1 recruiter for the exact terms before the contract starts, so day 90 doesn’t arrive with a surprise attached.
What if the trial just isn’t working?
Tell your KORE1 recruiter the week you know, not at day 90, and be specific about what isn’t working. There’s no replacement guarantee on contract, so the sooner you flag it, the sooner the search for the next person can start.
Does the contractor know it’s contract-to-hire?
They should, from the first conversation. A trial nobody told them about is just an ambush. When they know the plan, they can be honest about whether they want the permanent seat, and that’s information you need just as much as they do, because a contractor who is quietly planning to leave is a bad surprise at day 85.
Should I try a designer on contract-to-hire first, or go straight to a permanent hire?
Contract-to-hire earns its keep in two situations, when the portfolio can’t tell you whether the person fits your team and when the budget for a permanent seat isn’t approved yet. If the seat is clearly permanent and you’re sure of the match, go direct.
What should I check before converting a contract art director?
Three things, whether they set direction without being told, whether the team wants to keep working with them, and whether the budget for the permanent seat is actually approved. If any of the three is a maybe, extend before you convert.
Which Seat Are You Trying Out?
If you’ve got a designer, an art director, or a producer on your shortlist and you’re not sure a trial is the right move, I’m happy to think it through with you. Tell me the role, the start date, whether you plan to convert, and whether it’s remote or onsite, and I’ll tell you what I’d watch for.
Let’s talk about a contract-to-hire creative. If you’d rather message me first, I’m on LinkedIn. So, who’s on your shortlist?
