Them: "Your skills are great, nice job on the coding project. You seem like a really good fit. We want to hire you, but we'd like you to work on a temporary contract with us at first to see how it goes for both of us."

Me: "Hmm, OK, this does seem like a very good fit and I'm cool with the test-drive. My off-site rate is $150/hr, I can have the contract on your desk in two days."

Them: "Er, wha ..., no, you see, we'll take the salary we talked about and just translate that to an hourly rate. It shouldn't be a big deal, this will only be for three months max."

Net of it: after killing it in the interview, I'm offered a short term C2C contract at drastically reduced rates, doing my usual best work, while getting no employee benefits and paying my own SE taxes, retirement contributions, and all business expenses.

I've encountered such propositions only a few times in the past 5 years, and walked each time obviously, but I still find the chutzpah of these companies astonishing.

On the other hand, maybe that was the last part of the interview? They may have wanted to see if I had any self-respect, any self-confidence, could do math, and understand basic business concepts like taxation and fully-loaded employment costs? A "no" to any of these things would have meant I'd be a more ignorant, cheaper and thus much more highly-valued employee as time went on.

Edit: typo

See, e.g., http://www.jobsite.co.uk/worklife/probation-periods-19677/