Quite often, temp work can be a "job audition" because it puts temps in front of hiring managers and decision makers for days, weeks, or even months at a time while on job assignments. The Temp Factor for Job Seekers: The Job Seeker's Guide to Temporary Employment presents how this job search strategy may get you back to work faster.
If you are looking for work, consider temporary employment a valuable source of job opportunities. As a temp, you can increase job skills and work experience, expand business networks, strengthen your resume, and avoid gaps in employment, all while being paid. Becoming a temp guarantees what a resume cannot: face time inside the doors of potential employers. With over 20 years of experience working with staffing service firms and temps, Cathy A. Reilly teaches you about the advantages, challenges, pay, and benefits of being a temp. She explains what clients and staffing services look for in effective temps, how to find and apply to a high quality staffing service, and how to distinguish yourself from the crowd. Corporate culture, job performance issues, temp assessment tools, interview questions (and answers that have impact), real-world insights and "must knows" are included in this comprehensive manual.
Excerpt
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the American Staffing Association (ASA), millions of people go to work each business day in the U.S. as temporary employees. This activity, combined with direct hire fees brings in revenues in the billions, yes billions of dollars to the staffing industry. The majority of these earnings are generated from temporary employment. It is no wonder that the BLS considers the staffing industry, a “super sector”.
When you think about temporary employment, you must consider each of the three essential segments required in this work arrangement:
1 The Staffing Service
2 The Client Company
3 The Temporary Employee (Temp)
Each member of this trio relies on the other two. Without both these business partners, the other cannot exist or be successful.
Here’s how:
The Staffing Service needs:
Temps to perform client work
Client Companies to provide service to
The Client Company needs:
Temps to perform client work
Staffing Service to secure temps
The Temp needs:
Staffing Service to secure work
Client Companies to provide service to
While each segment boasts expertise in its own area of interest, having a full understanding of how each of the others functions and achieves success, creates an important new level of business intelligence. This new level of business intelligence ultimately leads to better results and an ability to compete with innovation and skill outside what others are doing. Possessing a higher knowledge of temporary employment must include an adequate understanding about all three vital segments of this working arrangement, regardless of which space within it you occupy.
To illustrate a bit further, when a job seeker or current temp knows where to find work, what company clients and staffing services are looking for, understands what corporate culture is and why it is important, or what will make a client company take notice of a temp, they can compete, perform and achieve with more skill and success.
Temps and job seekers need every advantage they can arm themselves with in today’s job market to secure and maintain gainful employment. That is what “The Temp Factor for Job Seekers: The Job Seeker’s Guide to Temporary Employment is all about.
Whether you are just setting out looking for a job and thinking about trying temporary employment, or have any level of experience as a temp, there are better ways to go to improve your chances of success with a staffing service and the client companies where you will be placed.
Remember, staffing services and client companies need you. This is three-sided working relationship where all three segments depend on each other. Knowing what your role is and how you can leverage it will lead you to quicker results and greater employment success. In a challenging employment environment, know how to make yourself someone that is in demand and the temp everyone
