I disagree and having gone through such systems I would again. Here's why.
Right out of college I applied for and got a temporary job at Google in their Adwords program. Going in I new it was a trial by fire. I interview well, and frankly the bar wasn't very high to get in. However I washed out after a few weeks because the job sucked. I hated it, it was boring and repetitive, and so I did a poor job. Most of what I was doing has since been automated.
I thought I wanted the job going in. They thought I had the potential to be a good employee. We were both wrong, but it took just over a month to figure that out.
For my last two jobs I really wanted to work for the company but, on paper, I wasn't qualified. Instead I offered to do an unpaid internship. I worked my ass off for both, learned a lot, and was offered fulltime positions. If I hadn't created a work-to-hire situation for myself I would never be where I am today.
In both situations the key factor was that I knew, going in, that I could wash out at any time. It was a tryout.
As I'm sure you'd agree, if I had the expectation of a guaranteed position, only to have to taken away one month in that would have been devastating.
I would encourage more people to expand their hiring pools with these kinds of programs. I feel it is more realistic (and honest) that it will take at least a month to get to know a person and for them to get to know a job to see if there is a reasonable fit.
The parent post said that "all new team members" were subject to this. It's fine if you're willing to bring on candidates you aren't sure about on a temporary basis, but you're just going to send a lot of good candidates elsewhere if your blanket policy is "you will be terminated after a month by default". In particular, as other commenters have pointed out, you will be filtering out lots of good candidates who currently have stable jobs, but might be interested in your organization if not for the (justified or not) perceived risk of being fired for no reason.
Right out of college I applied for and got a temporary job at Google in their Adwords program. Going in I new it was a trial by fire. I interview well, and frankly the bar wasn't very high to get in. However I washed out after a few weeks because the job sucked. I hated it, it was boring and repetitive, and so I did a poor job. Most of what I was doing has since been automated.
I thought I wanted the job going in. They thought I had the potential to be a good employee. We were both wrong, but it took just over a month to figure that out.
For my last two jobs I really wanted to work for the company but, on paper, I wasn't qualified. Instead I offered to do an unpaid internship. I worked my ass off for both, learned a lot, and was offered fulltime positions. If I hadn't created a work-to-hire situation for myself I would never be where I am today.
In both situations the key factor was that I knew, going in, that I could wash out at any time. It was a tryout.
As I'm sure you'd agree, if I had the expectation of a guaranteed position, only to have to taken away one month in that would have been devastating.
I would encourage more people to expand their hiring pools with these kinds of programs. I feel it is more realistic (and honest) that it will take at least a month to get to know a person and for them to get to know a job to see if there is a reasonable fit.