By William Conroy, Business Writer

Kristine Kotoff earns just $10 an hour with no benefits as an assistant in the human resources department at the Ocean Place Conference Resort, but she's not complaining. The temporary job could lead to a permanent position with better pay plus benefits, and the 39-year-old from Freehold Township likes the work.

"The employment counselor at Barbara Davis really pinned it down and matched me well." - Kristine Kotoff

Her last temporary job in February, punching telephone cosmetics orders into a computer, "was too boring for me."

Kotoff deals with more people face-to-face at the Long Branch hotel, which suits her outgoing personality better, she said.

By the end of the month, Kotoff will learn whether this job, which she started in March, will become permanent.

"I'm interested and she's interested, so most likely that's going to happen," said Hilda Nieves, director of human resources at the Ocean Place Conference Resort.

Kotoff, to use the jargon of employment agencies, is a "temp-to-hire" or "temp-to-perm," someone working on a temporary basis with the understanding that they could be hired for the same or similar job permanently.

The demand for temporary employees has increased in recent months. Nationally, companies that supply temporary workers added 136,000 jobs from February through April, after 16 months of decline, federal Labor Department statistics show.

One of the reasons is companies have seen an increase in their business. Employers typically dip into the pool of temporary workers before they take on permanent employees, a step they will take when the economy recovery takes hold, employment agencies say.

But another reason for the upswing is more companies are opting to employ temp-to-hires, said Frank Wyckoff, owner of Snelling Personnel Services, which has offices in Eatontown, Lakewood, East Brunswick and Brunswick, Ga.

"The larger companies are doing this unless there is a unique skill (needed for the job)," Wyckoff said. "They seem to have adopted a philosophy that if you want a job, you are going to have to try out for it."

That factor, along with the recovering economy, is why temporary hires are up between 22 percent to 30 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared to the first quarter, he said.

Barbara Davis, owner of Barbara Davis Employment Services, which has offices in Red Bank and Freehold, estimated that temporary hires at her offices are up about 10 percent compared with the first quarter.

"We (employment agencies) are the first to come back from a slow economy," Davis said. Some of that increase is because of an increase in temp-to-hires, which are popular with companies because "they get a chance to know someone."

It was Davis' company that placed Kotoff in the Ocean Place Conference Resort job.

Carrie Stehle, temporary division manager at Business Staffing Inc. in Dover Township, said about 75 percent of the temporaries her company places are in temp-to-hire positions. That percentage has been stable in recent years, but the temporary in the last two months has almost doubled, compared with the previous two months.

The state Labor Department does not track temporary hires separately, said spokesman Kevin Smith. Temporary workers are included in the business services category, which as a whole added 700 jobs statewide in April, rising to 324,200. No figure was available for Monmouth and Ocean counties.

Typically, companies that hire temporary employees through an agency pay the agency more than what the employee is paid, which is how the agency earns its profits. The agency pays the employee directly.

Those payments aren't cheap, Nieves said, but because the employer is not paying benefits, temporaries are cheaper than permanent employees. The employer is also avoiding the cost of advertising the job, she added.

Like many employers at the Shore, the Ocean Place Conference Resort has a seasonal upswing in business in the summer, and currently has 350 employees, compared with about 275 in winter.

Many of those extra 75 workers the hotel hired directly-college or high school students who will work for the summer.

Another 10 to 15 employees are servers the hotel gets as needed through an agency for banquets and conferences, Nieves said.

One other person in accounting, in addition to Kotoff, is working as a temp-to-hire.

Nieves also uses temporaries to fill a short-term need, such as if a permanent employee is on maternity leave or on a long vacation.

American Hotel Register Co. currently has four temporary employees among its 28 employees in Lakewood, said Peter Brum, distribution manager.

The company, which supplies hotels and motels with a variety of products, has enjoyed an increase in business compared to last year at this time, Brum said.

Using temporaries give the company flexibility, he said. For example, one day last week, Brum needed help in distribution.

"I called Snelling and got someone from 1 to 6p.m., just loading trailers," he said.

For Kotoff, working as a temporary gave her a chance to explore her career options and find something she liked better than retail. Her last permanent job was a co-manager of the Victoria's Secret store at the Freehold Raceway Mall in Freehold Township.

"It was just too much standing on my feet and sometimes the hours were 50 a week", she said.

Kotoff quit last year and took a course at Brookdale Community College to improve her computer skills. She went to employment agencies to try temporary jobs because she was not sure what job would be the best fit for her, she said.

"The employment counselor at Barbara Davis really sort of pinned it down and matched me well, I think," Kotoff said.

Bloomberg News Service Contributed to this report.