Once you drop off your resume, consider calling the agency every Friday, if you don’t have an assignment the next week. Most of my assignments started on Mondays. Friday, there always seemed to be a pile of jobs on someones desk. If I called, told them I was free the next week, and I had a record of showing up, I almost always had a job the next week.
My oddest job? - Accounts recievable for Motorola. Yep, I handled and recorded incoming personal and small business checks. Who the heck hands a temp a pile of envelopes with checks in them, and tells them to go at it?
More than once at a temp job, I ended up doing supervisory duties. I could be wrong about this, but shouldn’t you have a permanent employee supervising your temps, rather than another temp?
As a temp, I have no motivation to be a good supervisor. Do what you want, what do I care? Just don’t make more work for me. Well, I won’t do it anyway if I don’t have time or I have other duties I like better, so it really doesn’t matter.
One of the places where I temped (lab, in that case) has now gone to working with fake temps only. There’s four permanent employees. Everybody else is hired through a rotating series of agencies. When I found out, I asked which agencies did they use - those will not be getting my resume next time I’m temping! (It’s against a whole section of Spanish law)
The company where I’m working now in Switzerland and the company for which I worked just before in Spain have several things in common. One of them is that if their IT temps ever go on strike, even the hamsters will be down at the door toting placards
I’ve temped on and off for several years in a variety of jobs for different types of business. Mostly it’s been office/admin-related stuff but occasionally I’ve done warehouse work simply because it was that or nothing and I fancied a change!
Always register with more than one agency, you can’t rely on just one source for your work and it will give you a negotiating position if you get offered something you’re not sure you really want. As a temp, you often have precious little room to manoeuvre where assignments are concerned so getting a little leverage wherever you can is useful.
When you go to a new assignment, make sure you’re really clear about what you’re going to be doing and where you’ll be doing it. I had one assignment where I was working in two different sections of a university and reporting to two different people. It took a while for me to sort out with them exactly which days I worked for which section and where I was going to be based as they were on different parts of campus. For one section, I worked in the office of the person I was reporting to although she often wasn’t there, and in the other section I shared a room with some of the research students (which meant I was often on my own in there too).
I’ve never really had any bad experiences and most places I’ve been, people have always been friendly and talkative. Although you will never be as accepted as a permanent member of staff, I think you can find yourself pretty much fitting in. One of the things I used to do on my first day was to ask someone else where was good to go for lunch - that often resulted in an invitation to join them and anyone else who was going out!
Call in if you don’t have an assignment, call at 8:10 or so in the morning - “I’m dressed and ready to go, has anything come in?”
Chances are someone called two minutes ago looking for a receptionist or a data entry person because someone just called in sick - and if you call before they hit their file, they’ll send you.
This is good advice if you’re looking for the short-term stuff. Someone calls in sick and you need to be ready to jump in. For the brief time I did day-to-day assignments, I’d get up every morning and get ready for work…up to the clothing. I’d call and then it would just take me a few minutes to jump into career clothes if they had something for me.
For the long-term stuff, they’ll usually know in advance; a Big Project, maternity leave, etc. Also, some places (my last temp gig comes to mind) always use temps in order to keep the headcount within prescribed limits. I worked there for four years and wasn’t considered in the headcount. I’m not sure how that benefits them, but there ya go.
There is some very strange stuff going on in the world of business. I can see padding your staff with temps because temp salaries are expensed differently than regular salaries, but having temps doing critical jobs within your business for years at a time? Strange. And dangerous.
I also temped at a publishing company as an assistant to the editorial staff. That one lasted 1.5 years. It’s strange, but I don’t see the dangerous part except in cases where (I believe) some companies have been forced to hire people and offer benefits. I heard something about that, but since I was insured under Mr. K’s policy, I wasn’t that interested in going perm.
Also be prepared for the company’s that hire temps once a year to do filing - all of their archival filing for the past year - that was a fun four days :rolleyes:
Bring a book - your lunchtime is usually not coordinated with anyones so you will need something to do. Also, be proactive - is there any photocopying I can do, filing?
As for programs, sometimes there will be a test of your abilities, sometimes they will just ask - if you don’t know how to use a program it’s no big deal.
If it’s a problem - I was sent to one place to do some data entry (I know, I told them I didn’t like it, but they were stuck) and they gave me a little stool with no back to sit on - fine - except I was five months pregnant. Stand up for yourself - you are a temp, but not a peon.
I’ve been working as a temp since late June or so. So far, I’ve had two positions. One was at a bank, where I did filing, covered the phones while the receptionist had breaks and lunch, and did photocopying. The other one I still have, and was supposed to be a temp-to-hire position, but turned into just a temp position. (I’m still annoyed, but I’m moving in a couple of months, so I don’t care. It’s easy money.*) I’m a receptionist, but I also do data entry (nothing all that time consuming) and more personal errands than I should. Essentially, I’m doing the job that the receptionist would do if he/she were a regular employee with benefits. From my experience as a temp whose original goal was to try to get hired someplace for a year or so as buffer time to add to the resume, I’ve had an astonishing lack of variety in my jobs, but each company has treated me better than some of the other responders to your question. (All the employees like me at each job, but the hiring/not hiring issue is a bit complicated. Will explain in spoiler below.)
[sub]*Okay, so the idea was that I would be a temp for the first three months and then be hired on. Things got complicated, and another position opened up that they wanted me to go into. The owner doesn’t like me for some reason (probably because I’m efficient and good at my job, but don’t suck up to anyone) and decided that, in December, he was going to fire me. I am informed that I am fired on the last Monday before we close for the holidays, and then told that I am free to continue as a temp for as long as I want (or until I get hired) on that Tuesday. So, yeah, I’ve been a temp ever since, and am only working here because I can walk out at any point. I’ve done more personal stuff than I should, but have also dealt with it because I can pass it off on other people when absolutely needed. If there’s something that you don’t want to do as a temp, make sure the temp agency knows. When I leave this position, I’m going to make absolutely clear as to what’s been going on to the temp agency so the next person doesn’t have to put up with the owner’s crap.[/sub]
I’m trying to decide whether I’m going to temp when I relocate or not. What I’m making now is pretty good, but the work I’m doing is not related at all to what I am going to be going to grad school to eventually do. Do they even do temp jobs with libraries?
I’ve done contract work in IT - anything from a week upwards, though it’s usually 6 months at a time - and I’ll echo the comments about the feeling of liberation. You have a contract, and you live up to it. If the client asks you to do something, you say, “Yes”. And notify the agency afterwards if necessary. And everything else is generally Not Your Problem.
I don’t know about public libraries, but academic libraries do. That’s actually how I got started on my master’s–I was temping in the university library and loved it, so I went back to school! The university will probably have a contract with one or two agencies–sign up with those agencies, make it clear what your skills/interests are, and chances are good you’ll be a library temp before long. I started a two-week job and wound up staying for months, rotating through different departments. It was a fantastic way to get a feel for how things really work.
Sweet. I’m going to be doing mostly distance learning for my program, and I have an interest in academic libraries as it is. I should see whether the place I’m moving to has openings in their local university’s library.
I hired quite a few temps for a large academic library. They were hired directly by a library, not through an agency. Our budget was such that the agency markup wasn’t a option. Plus, at a university there is a ready supply of people looking for part-time and/or temporary work.
nashii-tashii - if your concern is about you doing personal errands for the owner, it sounds like you are a bit overly concerned. Maybe I misunderstood your post. But a business owner can pay his employees to do whatever, even watch his kids or remove ticks from his dog. This is different, of course, from a manager in a company owned by someone else or in a public company. This may just be something you don’t like doing, which is OK, but it’s not uncommon.
Receptionists - I’ve noticed some around here keeping post-its and a pen handy so people can write their own names and the person they are coming to visit. This is helpful with all the international names at the high-tech companies.
If you’re hired as a temp, the owner can’t change the duties from what he contracted you for without informing the temp agency and possibly re-negotiating the fees (and the pay to the temp, who may choose not to work that assignment if it is significantly different from what they thought they were signing on for).
kalhoun, the danger of having too many temps on staff is having too many valuable skills able to walk out your door with no notice and no sense of loyalty.
Based on the other replies, I don’t think the OP is looking for advice or commentary on being an industrial temp. But if there is enough interest, I will post an “Ask the Industrial Temp” thread.
I’ve done a lot of industrial temping: warehouse help, factory help, machine operator, lift truck operator, loader and unloader of trucks, assembly line guy, and so on; all done as a temp. But it’s a damn sight different than office stuff. Does anybody want to know about that kind of temping?
In my experience, no matter what you ask for, and no matter how strongly office-oriented your resume is, you’ll end up working at a factory, assuming you tell them no call centres.
Not that I’m sick of my current assignment or anything.
I see your point. However, at the time, unemployment was very low, and there was an ongoing promise that we’d be hired on (which I’ve found to be true for many of the long-term gigs I signed on for). Then they decided to outsource, but that decision and the subsequent implementation of the outsourcer were a long time coming, so they strung us along for years. I ended up being hired by the outsourcing company and have been redeployed to two accounts since. Yup…it’s a clusterfuck, alright.
I used to work for a temp placement company (as a regular employee) that placed both warehouse/manufacturing help and aircraft maintenance personnel who contracted for the government in Kuwait (among other locations). There is no comparison other than the fact that you’re a temp. The pay sucks in W/M; but in office temping, I made very good money. Also, office temps are naturally in nicer environments and have more opportunities for advancement than the temp who, say, (and I’m dead serious about this) watches a machine to make sure the toothbrushes are being made properly.
