Staffing services were established to fill a need for many companies. Businesses have to get the work done, but do not always know how many people it will take to accomplish objectives. Some companies that use temps use them for special seasonal projects. They do not want these people listed in their head count or permanent employee count all year long, so they hire temps for a few days, weeks, or months at a time.
Some businesses do not have a personnel or human resources office and use staffing services to do all of their recruiting, interviewing, screening, and reference checking. Services then send candidates for the final selection to businesses who may conduct the concluding interview and select personnel for their companies through these pools of people. A staffing service does all the work a regular personnel department would do and takes the initial risk by screening and selecting the most qualified applicants for a job.
Who Hires Temps?
Businesses like Silicon Valley computer companies, general Motors, Citibank, Federal Express, NYNEX, AT&T, Microsoft, Netscape, and Opryland USA have called staffing services for special projects, for short term jobs, or to fill very specialized jobs when they haven't been able to find the people themselves. Many of these people have only been there for a short period of time as a temp. Others happened to be at the right place at the right time and were hired as full time employees of the businesses where they started work as a temp.
Other companies use staffing services to covertly find people they do not want to openly advertise and recruit for. This type of recruitment can be done for all types of jobs, including engineers, accountants, and chief financial officers (CFOs).
Headhunters
Staffing services that specialize in executive recruitment or highly paid positions are often called headhunters. These people recruit and place candidates all over the world and operate from a who you know format. For example, if a headhunter or executive placement company is hired by XYZ Corporation to find an industrial engineer, the headhunter will search through the resumes on file for an industrial engineer.
If the headhunter company does not have any qualified industrial engineers on file, they will call companies that have industrial engineers working for them, and ask engineers there if they know anyone who would be interested in the job the headhunter is trying to fill.
What the headhunter wants is for the person who takes the call to be interested or to refer the headhunter to other industrial engineers who are interested.
Outplacement Firms or Career Transition Services
In the past, outplacement firms had the reputation of helping those who did not fit in their jobs. People who were sent to outplacement firms might have been unfairly viewed as losers because they did not fit in one environment and were let go. Companies who fired or let people go sent them to these outplacement firms to be improved so that other companies would hire these people. That has changed.
These companies now call themselves career transition services. They now try to help people who have changed jobs. They may have changed jobs because they were fired, were downsized, or simply walked away from a job they no longer liked. Now firms that were called outplacement firms in the past try to help these people make a transition to jobs where they will be a better fit. The world of temping can be a productive avenue for such people.
Jerry L. Thomas is CEO/senior consultant for The Strickland Group, a career transition service, and has many years of experience working with people in transition. The Strickland Group works with high level executives and helps them with transitions and coaching for future employment. Thomas said The Strickland Group tries to help people with an effective job service campaign. This campaign helps people in terms of "skills, values, and interests." The Strickland Group examines clients' technical and human skills, and then people decide what they should do next. Is it retirement or another job? The next job can now be found through executive temping! Outplacement firms and career transition services are looking for success stories from staffing services that are placing the professional technical temp on jobs.
In the past, people like Thomas have not viewed temping as an option for the people with white collar executive skills who come to The Strickland Group for guidance. That is because companies like The Strickland Group saw temping as being for those who had secretarial skills or wanted to work in a factory. Since the fastest growing segment of the temp or staffing industry is now the professional technical area, companies like The Strickland Group could now refer their candidates to staffing services.
