Temporary Staffing for Executive and Office Support

By Gordon Kramer, COO, Palo Alto Staffing. Updated August 2026.

Temporary staffing puts an experienced professional in your office or on your team without adding a person to your payroll. The placement is our W-2 employee. We handle wages, payroll taxes, workers' compensation, and insurance, and you direct the work exactly as you would with anyone else on the team. Palo Alto Staffing has run this model since 1979, and because our bench is already vetted, a temporary executive assistant can often start within days rather than weeks.

When Temporary Is the Right Call

Coverage for a leave

Parental leave, medical leave, a sabbatical, a long trip. The role is not open, it is occupied by someone who is coming back. You need the desk covered by someone who can absorb a complicated calendar, hold relationships steady, and hand it all back cleanly. Hiring permanently for this creates a problem in four months. Temporary does not.

A search that is running longer than the gap

This is the most common reason clients call us. An assistant gave notice, the permanent search is underway, and the executive is drowning in the meantime. A temporary placement buys back the time so the permanent search can be run properly instead of under pressure. Hiring in a panic is how you end up hiring twice.

Event and project spikes

An annual meeting, a fundraise, an office move, a due diligence sprint, a year-end close. The workload is real but finite. You need capable hands for six weeks, not a permanent headcount line that outlives the reason you created it.

A principal who wants to work with someone first

Some executives, founders, and family office principals will not commit to a support hire based on interviews alone, and that instinct is sound. Executive support is a chemistry role, and a few weeks of working together tells you what four rounds of interviews will not.

Seasonal load

If your firm has predictable heavy months, staffing your permanent team for peak means carrying capacity you do not need the rest of the year. Staffing for baseline and adding temporary support during the crunch is usually the better economics.

How Temporary Actually Works at Palo Alto Staffing

The person is our employee

A temporary placement is on our W-2, not yours. We process payroll, remit employer payroll taxes, carry workers' compensation coverage, and maintain the insurance that goes with employing people. You receive one invoice at an agreed hourly bill rate. You do not open a payroll record, you do not onboard anyone into your benefits, and you do not carry the employment obligations.

You direct the work

Day to day, the person reports to you. You set the priorities, the hours, the tools, and the standards. We stay in contact with both sides during the assignment because problems surface faster when someone is asking. Assignments can be extended, shortened, or ended, and that flexibility is the entire point of the model.

Why we can move in days

Speed is a function of what already exists when you call. Our recruiters have interviewed and referenced the people on our bench, many of whom we have placed before and know firsthand, so we are matching against known professionals rather than opening a search. That is also why we ask specific questions up front about tools, pace, personality, and what the executive actually needs. The more precise the brief, the faster the match. Our process is built around getting that brief right in the first conversation.

Where we place

Our only office is in Palo Alto and our recruiters are concentrated in California, with team members throughout the country. We staff on-site, hybrid, and fully remote assignments across the Bay Area and nationwide, including executive assistants, senior EAs, EA/PA hybrids, administrative assistants, office managers, receptionists, operations coordinators, and HR and finance support.

Temp-to-Hire: The Risk-Managed Path

Temp-to-hire is temporary staffing with a defined route to permanent employment. The person starts on our payroll, works in the real job under real conditions, and if it works you convert them to your own employee. You are evaluating performance rather than interview skill, which are different things. Some of the strongest assistants we represent are not the strongest interviewers, and some polished interviewers do not hold up under a live calendar.

Conversion works on a sliding scale. When you convert, you pay a conversion fee that decreases as the person accumulates hours with you, so the longer the working trial, the lower the cost of hiring them permanently. If the fit is wrong, you end the assignment without a termination and without an empty desk, because we are already working on the next candidate. We put the conversion terms in writing before the assignment starts. Full detail on how we quote is on our fees page.

What Temporary Does Not Solve

If the role is permanent, well understood, and funded, direct hire is usually the better economics over time. An hourly bill rate carries the cost of employment inside it, and paid over many months for a job you know you need filled permanently, that adds up in a way a one-time placement fee does not. We will tell you this on the phone. Referrals have kept this firm running since 1979.

Temporary also does not fix an unclear role. If nobody can articulate what the person will own, who they report to, or what success looks like in ninety days, a temp will struggle for the same reasons a permanent hire would. And temporary is a poor fit where the value depends on institutional knowledge accumulated over years.

Employer of Record and Classification

One reason companies use a staffing agency for temporary work is that it removes a category of risk. Worker classification, whether someone is properly an employee or a contractor, is expensive to get wrong, and the rules in California are strict. When you engage a temporary placement through us, that person is unambiguously an employee. Ours. The employment relationship, the payroll, the tax withholding, and the workers' compensation coverage all sit with Palo Alto Staffing. That is a structural fact about the arrangement, not legal advice, and not a substitute for your own counsel.

What You Pay

Employers pay our fees. Candidates never pay, at any point, for any service. For temporary assignments you pay an hourly bill rate that includes the person's wages and the full cost of employing them. For temp-to-hire you pay that rate during the assignment and a declining conversion fee if you hire. For direct hire you pay a placement fee once, when the person starts. Every one of those numbers is quoted in writing in your first conversation, before we send candidates.

Who We Work With

Our clients are venture-funded startups, venture capital and private equity firms, family offices, and foundations. These environments share a trait that shapes how we screen: the support role sits close to confidential information and to people whose time carries real weight. A temporary assistant in a VC firm sees the deal calendar. In a family office, they see the family. We screen for discretion and judgment first.

Frequently Asked Questions

How quickly can a temp executive assistant start?

Often within a few days, and sometimes the next business day for straightforward coverage. Speed comes from the fact that we are not starting a recruiting process when you call. We maintain an active bench of executive assistants and office support professionals we have already interviewed, reference checked, and placed before, so the work is matching rather than sourcing. Roles with unusual requirements, such as heavy finance support, board exposure, or a specific software environment, take longer because the pool is smaller.

What does a temp agency charge?

For temporary work you pay a single hourly bill rate that covers the person's wages plus everything that comes with employing them: payroll processing, employer payroll taxes, workers' compensation, and insurance. There is no separate invoice for those items and no fee to the candidate, ever. We quote the rate in writing during the first conversation, before you see a single resume, so you can decide whether to proceed with complete information.

Can a temp become permanent?

Yes. That arrangement is called temp-to-hire, and it is one of the most common ways our clients hire. The person works as our W-2 employee while you evaluate them in the actual job, and when you are ready to bring them onto your payroll you pay a conversion fee. That fee decreases as the person works more hours with you, so the longer the trial period runs, the less the conversion costs. If you decide the person is not right, you end the assignment and we send other candidates. More on our service models is on the employers page.