Contract-to-hire still exists, but you should talk to the recruiter to try to gauge the possibility of that up-front if it's important to you. An honest recruiter will give you a sense. And yes, there are plenty of companies that abuse the contract worker system as pseudo-permanent employees with less benefits, pay and leverage. But that is actually illegal and there have been a number of successful co-employment lawsuits. Many companies have policies that contracts can never be extended more than 1 or 2 years in order to mitigate this risk.