I flatly refuse to do temp work. I’ve done it in the past and while I had a couple of interesting assignments (once I got to design brochures for credit unions and once I got to disassemble a drugstore that had gone out of business) overall the work was boring, the pay was crap and the benefits were non-existent.
I did have a meeting (I refuse to call it an “interview”) with a placement agency today for a temp-to-hire-but-technically-it’s-not-temp-to-hire position and I should hear from them on Thursday. Apparently I aced the spelling and state abbreviations test so I’m hot hot hot! The job sounds tedious, the schedule is unappealing and the pay is $1 less an hour than what I had been getting at my last job but it’s not like anyone’s beating down my door to offer me anything else. Plus if I get it I’ll have two weekdays off to look for other work. And the placement person swears on a stack that the company’s growing by leaps and bounds and there will be all sorts of opportunities for advancement. I believe her too, because she would never lie about something like that the way every other employer has.
Heh, I actually just gave a bunch of people job interviews. I did tell them that the company is growing (it is - at least our site) and that there are opportunities to move up (I did myself).
I actually did have someone that I agonized over because he was so overqualified, but I decided to give him the job. Basically, the guy was a techie in networking, but was applying for customer service. He had started his own business but it hadn’t taken off, and he did work for customer service previously, so I ended up taking the chance that he is really, as he said, trying to re-enter the workplace.
However, we do hire at least 25 people a month, so it’s not as if I was rating him against other people – it was just to make sure that he was appropriate to join a training class.
My sympathies, Otto. The Madison job market has been really crappy the last several years. Just last week I had an interview with some new guy at a temp agency telling me I wasn’t qualified for the same job I had with their agency last year even though the client kept saying it was ridiculous that someone of my background was only given part time hours when the people with full time hours didn’t know what they were doing. He tried to tell me I didn’t have the skills necessary to do fill-in first level phone-based tech support, of all things, when I’ve been the guy at other jobs in charge of handling all the tough cases and training all the techs, first level and up. But evidently some arrogant prick calling up on the phone asking some bizarre questions that don’t really get asked on tech lines (but I could answer anyway if I had a PC in front of me at the time) trumps actual real experience and the stated preferences of the client. Go figure.
I personally think most of the people doing the hiring are just looking for the bare minimum and that anyone with any talent is avoided like the plague. I’ve even had someone call me up and say, “Wow, you are really qualified, but that means you’ll get another job and leave us in the lurch, so I just won’t forward your resume on to the committee, OK?” I was like, hell, look at resume, I’ve always stayed at companies for the long haul, I don’t leave people in the lurch. Of course the stupid thing is why the person even called to tell me this, because she wouldn’t let me talk her out of it, and everyone else who has (apparently) done the same thing at least was nice enough not to call me up to rub it in my face.
Grrr… Oh well. Forced me to work on my websites, books and publishing goals I never would have probably gotten around to if I’d had a fulltime job.