Before you start filling out an actual application form, you may be asked to complete a form via the Internet. This information may be set up so that you will be filling in the blanks of what is actually a resume format. You could be asked whether you are an independent contractor, or a temporary employee about whom the staffing service you sign up with will be keeping W 2 information.
Kelly Services' Internet site has a Resume Maker that will allow you to fill in the blanks and send your resume to Kelly Services. This format for resumes is an excellent guide to use for many professional technical jobs. The site allows you to submit or send the resume to Kelly Services.
When you actually talk to or meet with a staffing service representative, you may be asked to fill out an application so that the service will have information about you in a standard form that the service can easily computerize. If the staffing service has not entered your resume in a computerized system that can quickly be searched, the service will enter the application into such a system, which will allow your information to be pulled up by your name and by your skill. The service may also assign a number to your file, which could be your Social Security number.
The application for employment with a staffing service can consist of anywhere from 2 to 10 pages. In today's world you will be asked many things that your parents probably were not asked. For example, it is standard practice for most employers to ask a temp to consent to a background check and to take a drug test.
Testing
Services can test people for both general and specific skills. The service wants to impress the businesses that order temps from them, so they test the people who want to temp for them. That way the service has proof that a temp is qualified to do what the businesses request the temp to do. The better the temp does, the better the service does, and the more business it will get. Staffing services are in the employment business to make money, and they want to send out a product, or temp, who will make them the most money and who will do the best job.
Specific tests should cover your area of professional or technical expertise and might include accounting, engineering, medical, or legal terminology and computer skills. When a hospital calls a staffing service and requests someone to supervise a medical practice, the hospital wants a temp who knows medical terminology. The staffing service will often want to test someone who claims to have this knowledge. By testing the temp, the service will find out whether the person is really qualified to do the job.
Most specific testing by staffing services today involves the computer. When engineer John applied with a staffing service, he described on his application the various computer programs and software packages with which he was experienced. By testing John on the specific software he had worked on, the service was able to qualify him for various types of temp positions.
John had also checked on his application that he could use financial spreadsheets on Lotus, so he was tested for that as well. That meant John was able to work more temp jobs with accounting firms and healthcare companies and make more money.
Rebecca was a temp that Service XYZ sent to a bank in Seattle to help organize and supervise the c program. Rebecca had a college degree in counseling and had developed strong organizational skills raising her children and coordinating all the activities in her home. She had also organized several events for her favorite charity. Rebecca used this knowledge and experience plus her people skills to get the bank's training program functioning smoothly. She developed a system that the bank was able to continue to use after she finished her assignment.
