In the 1950s the temp industry was viewed as a service providing clerical and secretarial help on a daily or weekly basis when a regular employee was out sick or on vacation. No more. The modern economy is now service oriented; the workforce has evolved from an industrial based workforce to one that is service based. The temporary employment business has changed from just being able to send out secretaries and factory workers to being a staffing service that provides professional, executive, and administrative help on both a short term and a long term basis. The staffing service has prospered. As the postwar economy evolved, the major national temping services also evolved so much so that they formed their own professional association and renamed themselves as staffing services.
The National Association of Temporary and Staffing Services or NATSS estimates there are more than two million temporary employees working in the American economy each and every day. And more than five million people work as temporary employees at some point during an average year. Approximately one half of these temps are professional and administrative staff.
There are more than 35 million professional, executive, and managerial employees in the United States, according to National Business Employment Weekly, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 7.7% of them or 2.7 million people are working temporary staffing positions. What does this mean? It means more opportunity for you, the prospective professional technical temp, to earn more as a temp.
Professionals and executives temp for many different reasons: to achieve flexibility in their personal lives (these temps probably will never work at permanent jobs); to gain experience and network while they are hunting for permanent employment; because they are raising young children at home or caring for elderly parents and cannot work a full time schedule; because they have been "outplaced" or let go from their employment and have not yet succeeded in finding new permanent work; to supplement their income; to keep up their contacts and interest in their profession when they are retired or semiretired; and finally because they are awaiting licensing or certification by appropriate regulatory services or boards.
From the point of view of the client company who engages the assistance of a professional staffing service, there are many and varied reasons why they need or want to employ professional temps.
First, usually companies can save about 50% of their personnel costs since they do not have to pay benefits or payroll taxes.
Second, technical and professional businesses require specific expertise, and when the demand for engineers, lawyers, accountants, healthcare professionals, and computer specialists is high, it may be nearly impossible to locate and retain that expertise from an employee on a full time basis.
Third, when a company has a specific contract or work project with a fixed termination date, it may be preferable to add to professional staff through the use of temps since that overhead expense will cease on the fixed date when the contract expires.
Fourth, despite all the efforts, no one has yet succeeded in repealing the business cycle. Thus, most companies are still subject to boom and bust swings. During the peak boom years they need to staff up quickly and will resort to the use of professional temps during those times.
In an article titled "An Inside Look at Executive Temping" in the March 9, 1997, issue of National Business Employment Weekly, a poll of 416 vice presidents and human resources directors reported 36% used white collar temps for accounting, legal, marketing, human resources, information systems, and administrative functions.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' analysis of professional temps, the average hourly salary of professional temps is $24.11. That's an average of almost S1000 per week. National Business Employment Weekly also reports that "for senior executives, turnaround specialists, and top computer programmers, annual earnings typically reach six figures." Thus, a professional temp can earn $50,000 to $100,000 per year.
Another recent study of more than 400 companies conducted for Olsten Corporation, one of the world's largest staffing services, documents that more than one third of the surveyed companies regularly employ professional executives and managers on a temporary basis for legal, accounting, computer, marketing, and managerial jobs. That means a lot of opportunity for you, the professional technical temp.
In an interview, Tony Lee, editor of National Business Employment Weekly, said his biggest surprise was that so many qualified professionals who are looking for work have not discovered or considered the bonanza of available jobs and money that is out there for them in temping. Lee said people still think temping is just for secretaries, day laborers, and factory workers. His research has shown that those who are most computer literate are most at ease at being a professional temp. Other professionals must still get used to the concept. The readership of National Business Employment Weekly is made up of middle to senior level executives who are accustomed to earning $50,000 annually. In fact, his publication has used the term interim executive instead of professional technical temp to educate readers about what a temp really is and the advantage of using the staffing industry to market professional technical skills.
Lee also said there are three groups of people in the higher income temp bracket today. The first group consists of people who have had trouble finding a job. They have been looking for work and will sign up with a professional staffing service because they must have immediate income. These people view temping as a last resort and will quit temping in a minute if they are offered any full time or permanent job. They view temping as a real comedown in their professional growth and feel that any full time job is better than a temporary one.
For example, Jack worked as an information technology specialist at a company that was acquired by another company. As a result, Jack lost his job. Jack looked for work while living off his severance package.
After that ran out. Jack signed up with a staffing service who placed people with his skills on temporary jobs. The staffing service offered Jack a choice of jobs. One of these paid a lot of money and would last several months, but there was no question but that it was an interim job with no chance of being permanent. Another job was a temp to hire where a company would try out a temp and, if satisfactory, would then hire that person at the end of three months. Even though the temp to hire job paid less money than the other job, Jack took it because emotionally he needed the security of a so called permanent job.
The second group in the higher income temp bracket consists of those who are professional technical temps, according to Lee, and will use temporary work as a way to change careers. Lee gives the example of someone who has worked as an accountant for several years but really wants to be in public relations. The accountant quits a full time job at an accounting firm and signs up with an accounting staffing service, asking to be placed on jobs in PR firms that require accounting skills. The staffing service places him on a six month assignment doing financial analysis for a PR firm where he gets to demonstrate and gain income from his accounting skills and learn about public relations at the same time. That person does the job so well that by the end of six months he has become indispensable. The accountant used temping as a way to work himself into a dream job of being a part of a PR firm.
The third group of professional temps, according to Lee, are those who want the flexibility of interim work. They view themselves as a cut above the regular permanent employee. They will sign up for project work and work a 70 hour week one week, knowing when they finish the 70 hours they can have the next week off to travel or do whatever they want to do with their time.
