Most staffing services will pay by the hour, so be prepared to say what you need to make per hour. There are also services that pay by the project. That means you will be given an assignment to complete for a set amount of money, and you will be paid when the project is completed, no matter how many hours it takes for you to complete it. Be realistic about what you will accept, but do not undersell yourself. Talk to your friends who are working temp and find out what they make. Talk to other temps you meet while you are out on temp assignments and compare salaries. Review the salary wage surveys and see how marketable your skills are.
Jake was an engineer who was referred to Brand X Staffing Service by a friend who had skills similar to Jake's and who had temped for Brand X Staffing Service. Jake knew that his friend was making $32.15 an hour as an engineer, so he put that down as his minimum. He also knew how much he needed to make an hour to meet his goals. He could pay his bills on $32.15 an hour.
If you do not give a service any guidelines on what you need to make, they will tell you what they can pay you. Do not expect to make the same amount per hour as someone whom you met at a full-time job. Typically, temporary workers make less than their full-time counterparts. However, that could change in the future as the value of temporary workers continues to increase in the eyes of those who pay for them.
Don't expect to make $10 an hour stuffing envelopes. You may have had a $40,000 annual salary on your last job, which averages out to $19.23 an hour (to determine your hourly pay, divide your annual salary by 2080, which is 40 hours per week multiplied by 52 weeks; for example, $40,000 divided by 2080 equals $19.23). But, it will be very hard to find temp work that will pay you that $19.23 an hour unless you are placed in your specialized field that involves technical skills like engineering, accounting, or some type of computer programming. There is more and more demand for qualified professional and technical temps, so you may be paid more for the same job by a different staffing service. Pay for the skills of professional technical temps depends on what the demand is for the skills. If you possess a skill that is in great demand, you can often dictate to the staffing service what your pay will be. If your skill is not in demand, you will find yourself at the mercy of whatever the service offers you.
Typically, services know exactly what type skills they are recruiting for. They know which client companies need managers, administrators, writers, trainers, lawyers, accountants, or engineers. Services know exactly how much they can bill per hour for these services, and from that bill rate they will figure out how much they can pay you, the temp, and still make their profit. So the temp often has to be very flexible to get work.
Being flexible means being realistic about how much you can expect per hour as a temp. Each temporary job can pay a different hourly salary. For example, you will earn less as an assistant to the vice president than you will as an architect or systems analyst. You may be paid different hourly wages depending on whether the service has a contract governing what they can bill for their temps at various businesses.
Joe G. was a project engineer in Philadelphia who worked for a company that developed and sold houses. He was making $65,000 a year when the company he worked for went bankrupt. Suddenly, Joe G. found himself without a job. He did not want to relocate, even though the demand for new homes had decreased dramatically where he lived.
Joe G. could not find a job in the housing industry where his expertise was. No one was hiring engineers who worked as project managers in developing new homes. He needed an income while he continued to look for a job, so he decided to temp.
Joe G. had always liked computers, had one at home, and had trained himself on several programs. He went to a staffing service and completed the application, indicating that he had experience as a computer consultant for software for small businesses. He learned through temping what worked well in computers for many small companies and was able to use his experience as a temp to make additional money.
