Many staffing services request everyone who completes an application to sign a contract with them. Read the contract carefully. Many of them say you will not accept a permanent job that you found as a result of being a temporary without notifying the staffing service. This means whoever offers you a job may have to pay the staffing service a fee to hire you. This fee probably will be paid up front by the business to the staffing service.
Or, the business and the staffing service may agree to work you through the payroll of the staffing service for so many hours until the business has paid the service for you. For example, you may have been on a temp assignment at a company for two weeks when the company offers you a permanent job. You consult with the staffing service that sent you there. The company and staffing service agree that you will work as a temp through the staffing service for eight more weeks and the business will be in effect paying a fee for you by the hour instead of in one lump sum. At the end of the eight weeks the staffing service will have made a profit and the company will be free to hire you.
Staffing services are in business to make money. Most will charge the business where they place you an hourly fee for using them. If the contract of the staffing service ever charges you, the temp, do not work with that service.
Again, be sure to read the contract carefully. Ask for a copy if you need to, and understand what you are signing. If a staffing service is smart, it will work with you if you are ever offered a full time job as a result of being a temp for the service. Temps who are placed or hired by customers of the staffing service are walking testimonials about what a good job the staffing service does in recruiting qualified people to temp for it.
Don started temping for Shady Staffing Service when his division was downsized. He'd been surprised to find himself among the downsized as he had always been a loyal employee, and when starting work at his former employer, a bank, right out of college, he thought he would be there for several years. The bank was one of the largest banks in his state and did so well that it was acquired by a large regional bank.
The large regional bank that acquired Don's bank already had many accountants, so they let Don go. Don panicked, did no research, and signed up with Shady Staffing Service, the first staffing service he could find that placed experienced accountants on temp to hire jobs.
Don did not read the contract Shady Staffing Service required all of its professional technical temps to sign. Shady Staffing Service sent Don out on a job that was temp to perm, meaning Don would work as a temp for three months, then become a full time employee of the business where he temped. Don did not interview or preview the job; he just started work there one day.
It turned out that Don was working in an office that was a front for people who ran the numbers or gambled illegally in his city. He did not like the job, and told Shady Staffing Service he did not want to stay. Shady told him he would have to work there a year or pay Shady Staffing, as required by the contract, 10% of his first year's salary as a penalty for not staying on the job. Don paid Shady the 10% penalty because he was afraid not to.
The moral of this story is never to work for a staffing service that will charge you any money either finder's fee or penalty. There are too many services that will not charge you money, so why bother with the ones who do?
Don made two mistakes. First, he did not research the staffing service where he wanted to work. No one Don knew had ever worked for Shady Staffing Service, and he made no attempt to investigate it. The second mistake was that he did not read carefully what he signed. If you, as a professional technical temp, ever feel that a staffing service is pressuring you into signing something you do not understand, leave. Or, if you still want to work for this service, it's worth the time and expense to have an attorney read the contract and advise you about what you are to sign.
Don, hopefully, learned his lesson and in the future will only work for those staffing services that have a good reputation. Stay away from the ones like Shady!
