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If staff is a disease, what does that make staffing agencies?
The Green Eyed Monster
i blame hip hopRegistered User regular
i blame hip hopRegistered User regular
For me it's terribly tempting to go down the pro-labor road and say that temp agencies are simply another way for modern America to further gouge the hard-working American professional, by providing the bloated, heartless, socially incalcitrant* corporations ruling the globe with their dark heart and iron fist just another method by which to avoid such pesky things as benefits, vacation, or perks generally provided the corn-fed, talented, beautiful young American laborer**, but then part of me does wonder if temping isn't just another piece of specialization in a highly specialized society. There are plenty of fields with middle-people*** who play an important role, and in this instance we simply have a middle-person to connect labor with capital. Where is the harm in that?
As an employee I resent temp agencies for the fact that I need to be both rather talented and qualified in order to pursue non-career placements, but at the same time I appreciate someone who is going to do the work of pursuing job openings for me.
But anyway, what do we think? Social remora or necessary piece of modern usury?
*were you aware that this isn't actually an English word? Neither was I.
**is your heart not bleeding as you read this as well?
***so PC
As an employee I resent temp agencies for the fact that I need to be both rather talented and qualified in order to pursue non-career placements, but at the same time I appreciate someone who is going to do the work of pursuing job openings for me.
But anyway, what do we think? Social remora or necessary piece of modern usury?
*were you aware that this isn't actually an English word? Neither was I.
**is your heart not bleeding as you read this as well?
***so PC
The Green Eyed Monster on
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The word you're looking for there is "recalcitrant".
I mean, if I'm worth $15/hr, I want to get paid $15/hr, not $13/hr.
I don't believe they are necessary by any means, since it'd hardly be difficult for the companies that utilize to just better publicize openings they might have.
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They could still easily do that themselves. We have that where I work...they never hire temps from agencies, we just run our own equivalent (no guaranteed long-term, no benefits), until and unless they decide they want to take you own permanently.
It seems like the most efficient way for a middle- or large-scale company to hire employees.
Would you rather do four or five interviews with staffing agencies, who then pair you with jobs you're qualified for, or fifty interviews with fifty different employers? It's an efficiency thing.
I should probably disclaim that I'm likely going to be starting a temp job tomorrow that a staffing agency hooked me up with. :P
The temp industry's great for people starting out, but I know a few older people who have been contract or temporary their entire careers. You have to walk a fine line between working your tail off for that particular employer and being flexible enough to leave for the best opportunity. One guy kept getting strung along by Johnson and Johnson and kept turning down other opportunities. He's still bouncing around from job to job.
It makes me cringe a bit to agree with you.
Not only does a company who uses a temp agency not have to have an HR department, but they don't have to worry about some workers falsifying their credentials because the temp agency checks them out.
I signed on with a temp agency when I was down in Houston because I couldn't seem to find a job on my own since I didn't speak Spanish. I went to the temp agency and they made me take all of these tests based on the skills I said I had (typing speed, Office/Corel proficiency, etc). That's very valuable to employers.
Of course, I hated the job and only stayed for a month before moving back to Indy, but that's a different story.
I went in, originally, with my resume and told Kelly's what I was familiar with, program- and protocol-wise, and then they ran me through some programs they have in-house that give quantitative assessment of my skills in Word, Excel, and Outlook, for example. Without that assessment and going through Kelly's I never would have been able to get my foot in the door or even have my resume looked at more than once instead of rejected outright due to lack of education.
I think one of the strengths of going through an agency is that you get an interview by default (and don't know about you guys, but I definitely interview better than is apparent from my work history), so the agent is able to look at prospective jobs and judge whether you'd be capable/suited for it better than can be judged from a CV and covering letter alone.
My experience is that I've worked a lot of catering and retail, to a reasonably high level. So there are things I'm good at outside those fields, like customer service, administration, etc. that can be applied to other fields. However, in my time of firing off applications for other jobs (I fancied something in Financial Services, because the pay is good, many of my skills are relevant and there are good prospects for progression) I never got a single interview.
I went to the agency (Hays), they put me forward for an interview, and I got a better position than those I'd been applying for independently on the first try.
It seems, though, that I've had an uncommonly great experience with Temp. Agencies. Which is a shame, because I found mine to be so useful and very helpful.
I've nothing but good things to say about Matchtech - though its a (primarily southern) UK based tech agency so probably of limited appeal here. They've argued my case when my CV has been rejected by the company and through some slightly bizzarre agency connections got me a fairly decently paying temp job until they found me proper work.
Kelly's were just a pain, and won't find science work for you unless you have several years experience - even though other agencies are putting me forward (and getting me interviews!) for the same damn jobs. Only problem with the agencies is that is it an utter pain if you want to use more than one at a time, not sure if its the same in the US but seems here they can't send your CV off to a company that another agency has (regardless of whether its a different job) yet also can't tell you the company that the job is based with. Given that some can be really slow, whilst others (Matchtech again) will get back to you within a day or two you can end up having successful CV applications cancelled because the slow agency never told you whether they sent your CV off whilst the quick agency who maintain contact missed out by a day or two.
I can sort of see it from the cliant company's POV, since they don't want to be inundated with multiple CVs - but it does seem to foster the idea that you should just stick with one agency regardless of what oppertunities might present themselves elsewhere. Which is even worse given that no-one really wants unsolicited CVS anymore
The only downside is knowing that while I'm getting paid $11 an hour, the company I'm working for is paying $20. I can see owing them some money for getting me the job in the first place, and the overhead of doing my paychecks and having people for the rare occasions I've needed to call them up, but they've earned thousands of dollars off me at this point and it feels like they've had their fair share.
It's partially the fault of the company I'm working for though, they just simply won't hire people on full time for the position I'm working at. Policy I guess. Best you can hope for is working for a couple years and at some point a slightly higher position will open and they'll hire you on for that one. If I was planning at temping at one place for a period of years, though, I would've been looking for something better by now.
Using multiple agencies/recruiters at once is not a good idea. From Three tips for getting a job through a recruiter (though, it applies to anybody that has a "finder's fee"):
That 11:9 ratio is fucking bullshit. Maybe for the first month or something, but after that it should be adjusted... no way does a hiring agency deserve nearly half of your paycheck.
That's odd. The temp agency I worked for just charged my employer an extra fee for placing me, and I was paid the going rate for that position. I was working public sector, though.
So a few weeks later, they find a position for me at this waste management consulting firm. "It's perfect," she tells me. "You're not making sales, you're just calling people who are already clients to update their information." Oh, I think, okay, that sounds good.
I get to the consultant's and boom! They sit me down with a phone and tell me to sell, sell, sell. "Yeah," I tell them, "I've never done this before and have zero interest in it. I don't know why they foisted me on you."
"That's funny," the dude said, "they told us you'd done this for years and made thousands of sales."
I left a choice message on the staffer girl's machine and spent the next six months unemployed. I regret nothing.
My experience with agencies is that, if you want a permanent position, do not tell them that you are willing to temp in the meantime. I've worked for an agency that I knew damn well was not trying to find me permanent work because I was far too valuable as a temp when there are a thousand temps who have little more than basic education and they have a dozen temps on their books with degrees. I ended up supervising other temps and at one point ran the council's licensing department single handed for 2 days. They took 25% of what the council were paying per hour for doing nothing other than remailing my CV. The only reason they took as little as 25% was part of a deal to get themselves preferred supplier status with the city council
I've been into another agency and said I'm in between my 2nd and 3rd year studying physics and then been sat at a computer to take their numeracy test and congratulated that I scored so highly. You're testing math at a school-leaver level and I'm studying for a physics degree - of course I scored highly! I then told the same woman that I was looking for shop/office work and watched her take out a registration marked 'Industrial' and proceed to fill out my details.
I also shits all over your CV.
I went to a recruitment agency asking about a job in the window. The girl there looked at my CV and told me that the amount of temp work there might count against me because the employer didn't count temp work as experience. WTF? You yourselves ARE a temp agency. I work harder than the permanent staff, for less pay and with zero security or benefits and that somehow works against me?
I got into the position where the well paid jobs which required my level of education wouldn't touch me because they refused to acknowledge temp work as experience, but the lower paid jobs that would get me that experience did acknowledge temp work. They took one look at my CV and said that, with all my experience and qualifications, I was a tenure risk. :x
tl;dr Fuck temping and fuck the goddamn job pimps.
A lot of businesses will hire temps who work there and do well. That's how I got my last job.
So . . . okay.
It's always fun 100 percenting the aptitude tests. Though it does make me wonder what kind of people they're actually sending out, if that's the level they're testing at (with a 50% pass mark!).
They have the capacity to take the place of unions for skilled workers, what with their ability to collectively bargain and supply pre-screened skilled employees at short notice. Hell, they could provide independent benefits with the cuts they take from paychecks, which companies would love.. But they mostly don't, I guess because it's somewhat more profitable to have an adversarial relationship with employees.
Temp agencies are great if you can find a temp-to-hire position where the company is actually willing to hire you if you do a good job. With that being said, however, I don't think I would be able to go job to job (some of the temp stuff is like 3 days) forever.
Also, the place I went through offered benefits if you had been a temp through them for X amount of time, I was hired before I qualified though.
It is staph, and it is a bacterial infection, not a disease.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staph
I took a series of these tests and got 100% and a little over 60 wpm on my typing test. Then I went to interview at the agency and the recruiter was parading me around as the Golden Child because I know how to copy and paste in Word. Then I went to interview at the insurance company they were hiring for and knew almost instantly that I would hate working there. It was across the street from a branch office of the company that fired me, I would have had to pay for parking, and they talked more about the dress code and making sure I was "available" than making sure I could actually do the job.
I mentioned that I had other companies looking at me that were actually in the field I was interested in, thanked them for their time and continued searching.