To my knowledge, I'm in an unusual situation for my field (engineering). I am technically an employee of a Staffing Agency and working on a 9 month contract for them at a Consulting Firm, which I started in February.
The Consulting Firm intends to hire me at the end of the contract, which will end in October. Prior to that point, the Consulting Firm and I will need to sit down and discuss a few things, but an element I'm particularly interested in is negotiating my start date.
Technically, my start date would be in October since that is when I was actually an employee with them, but for a variety of benefit reasons based on my knowledge of the Consulting Firm's benefits package, I would like to have my start date be in February. Specifically, I would like my insurance to kick in as soon as possible, my personal leave accrual to factor that in (I am getting next to nothing with the Staffing Agency), 401k benefits, and paternity leave applicability.
Some elements of this seem like they might run afoul of legal issues (insurance) and thus be unviable, but others seem like they just require the company president to waive a wand and make it so (PTO, paternity, 401k). Is this perception accurate or is the whole thing fraught with legal issues to make it a non-starter?