Referrals Ask Your Friends Who Temp
Ask a lot of questions when choosing a service. If you have friends who have worked temp, ask them what staffing service they work for and how they have been treated by the staffing service. How you are treated should be a leading factor when choosing a staffing service. Many services that work with professional technical temps recruit a majority of their employees by referrals. They may even offer a cash bonus to temps who refer other professional temps to them.
In addition to recruits who have used the Internet, Kelly Services' staffing service also finds candidates through two other ways. Referrals from other candidates are the second biggest source, after the Internet. Someone who is working for Kelly Services who has a good experience will send, or refer, someone else to Kelly Services. It is similar to going out on a blind date you are more receptive to going out with someone a friend has set you up with or referred you to because you value and trust that friend's judgment. The same thing applies working for a staffing service you feel better about signing up with a service a friend has had a good experience with rather than trying to find a service on your own.
The third way Kelly Services finds professional technical temps is through advertising. Kelly Services places ads for jobs to be filled in newspapers and in professional journals. If you read Kelly Services' ads you will see they are recruiting for lawyers (the company is one of the largest employers of temporary lawyers in the world), engineers, accountants, information technology professionals, and, as mentioned earlier, scientists.
When asked why so many professional technical people are working through Kelly Services rather than finding a traditional full time job, Carl Camden, Executive Vice President in charge of Sales and Marketing, said that more people prefer the Kelly Services style of working. That means, according to Camden, more professionals would rather have the flexibility of interim work. When surveyed, over 40% of Kelly Services' professional technical temps said they would not take a permanent job if offered one.
Camden said another reason the professional technical industry has grown so much is because companies turn to Kelly Services to complete project work. For example, a company needs a project requiring a specific information technology skill. If the company trains one of its permanent people to do the job, that requires time and capital. If it recruits someone on its own with the skill, that again requires the time and cost to recruit the person (place the ad, screen the resume, test the person, etc.) or have the in house human resource department find the person.
Camden says if the company calls Kelly Services, then Kelly Services can find the appropriate professional to do the work. After the Kelly Services person finishes the job at the company, then Kelly Services will place that same information technology person somewhere else. If the company did not use a service like Kelly Services to source this skill, at the end of the project the company would have to fire or keep the information technology person on the permanent staff. So, this saves money for the company, because the company does not have the information technology person on its payroll after the job is over. The company does not have to train the information technology person for the job, because Kelly Services sends someone in who knows the job and can start doing the job right away without extensive training. The project people provided by Kelly Services go away from the companies where they have done the work and on to other Kelly Services jobs at other companies.
The fringe benefits that Kelly Services offers its temps are like those of many other big staffing services. There is a wide variety or menu of benefits available. For more information, contact the nearest Kelly Services staffing service.
Convenience
How important is convenience to you? Does the staffing service need to be close to you geographically or just online? Are their help desks actually helpful? In other words, if you need help away about a job you are on or a problem you are having, is there someone readily available to help or give you an answer? Can you easily reach someone on the phone? Does the service make you feel like you are the most important customer they have? Or, does it take forever to get an answer? The good services will go out of their way to make you feel important. They should be smart enough to know if they do not help you, you will go work for another service and therefore make another staffing service money.
Will you work with several people from one staffing service at the same time, or will you be assigned one person who is responsible for keeping you busy? Do you like working with more than one person at a service, or do you prefer a service where you will be given a lot of individual attention? In other words, do you prefer impersonal, infrequent attention, or does your personality style enjoy a lot of attention? What geographic area do you want to work in? Are you limited as to where you can work, or can you go anywhere? If you are limited, make sure you find a staffing service that places temps in the area where you must work.
