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Often there are few competitors who are hiring directly as many have found it more cost effective to hire through temp agencies.
So the cream of the crop can sit home and wait to be tapped by those outfits that are still hiring directly, or they can include temp agencies in their job search strategy.
And for cream of the crop skilled enough to be poached, talented enough that recruiters will reach out, they still need to be working to get poached. Nephew gets calls all the time to interview with tech firms. He did not get these calls before he was employed.
The cream of the crop have a decision. Do I work for a company that has competitive pay and standard benefits or work via a staffing agency which offers no or substandard/benefits and poor pay in addition to being easy to fire with one phone call. Which do you think they will choose?
The same reason Microsoft got sued. They had a situation where they created an army of second class workers doing the same work but paid less, not given benefits, excluded from participation in stock options etc and the courts were about to rule (and have ruled in other cases) that was unacceptable behavior and MS settled to avoid setting a court precedent.
Imagine if the company hired a group of (insert protected racial/ethnic/religious/gender group) and gave all their employees benefits but excluded workers from that group. Or in another example look at all the hoopla going on right now about companies low-balling women in terms of pay. It is the same situation with the permatemps.
Staffing agencies aren't exclusively for bad employers.
Some good employers, and many bad employers bring in non-direct-workers through staffing agencies.
Fortune-1000 firms often have legitimate reasons to use a staffing agency, when a small firm uses a staffing agency or outside recruiter it should send up a red flag.
In general, expect the staffing agent to lie to you -- ultimately the person you are talking to is paid based on putting warm bodies at the client site, most will say whatever it takes to make the sale. If the position is temp-to-hire, ask them for statistics on the conversion rate.
I worked for about a year at a Fortune-100 via a staffing agency, it was actually a pretty good experience. After the initial interview, my contact with the agency was limited to me faxing over my timesheets and them depositing my paycheck.
I worked for a Fortune 50 and they were bad. Like Microsoft they had an army of permatemp workers who they did not want to pay fair wages and benefits to like they do for their employees. They just filled the place with temps and hired a few managers to supervise them.
Last edited by MSchemist80; 04-28-2016 at 11:43 AM..
The cream of the crop have a decision. Do I work for a company that has competitive pay and standard benefits or work via a staffing agency which offers no or substandard/benefits and poor pay in addition to being easy to fire with one phone call. Which do you think they will choose?
The cream of the crop are the ones with a rare set of skills that not too many people have and companies cannot screw them over. For instance, an analytical chemist with only HPLC, and GC experience will be lucky to get $20 per hour and no benefits through a staffing agency. A cream of the crop analytical chemist knows how to operate GC-MS, ICP-MS, NMR, and LC-MS. They also know how to validate analytical methods on theses instruments and have experience running their own project. These analytical chemists are the ones companies cannot screw over and must pay them a decent salary ($60-80k).
Recent grads unfortunately have to go through these slime ball staffing agencies so they can act like that have experience in their professor and then they can fluff their responsibilities as if there job there was more involved to get the direct hire position with appropriate pay and benefits.
The cream of the crop are the ones with a rare set of skills that not too many people have and companies cannot screw them over. For instance, an analytical chemist with only HPLC, and GC experience will be lucky to get $20 per hour and no benefits through a staffing agency. A cream of the crop analytical chemist knows how to operate GC-MS, ICP-MS, NMR, and LC-MS. They also know how to validate analytical methods on theses instruments and have experience running their own project. These analytical chemists are the ones companies cannot screw over and must pay them a decent salary ($60-80k).
Recent grads unfortunately have to go through these slime ball staffing agencies so they can act like that have experience in their professor and then they can fluff their responsibilities as if there job there was more involved to get the direct hire position with appropriate pay and benefits.
1. You keep saying staffing agencies don't offer "benefits." We'll assume you mean 'health' care insurance plans or something. It's simply not true to say they don't offer those things.
2. Extraneous "benefits" were originally offered to employees to compensate for they wage increases they were disallowed to give to compete for workers in a labor shortage in the mid-century as they were frozen by the National War Labor Board. That doesn't exist now, so why do you still insist on treats and goodies, trying to coerce largesse above and beyond your remuneration?
3. In this day and age is not your very job a benefit?
Pretty much take what most "recruiters" say at staffing companies with a fine grain of salt. A high percentage pull you in via the bait and switch tactic. They often will advertise fake positions with almost zero intent of actually finding you an opportunity that fits your career goal or interest. For example, let's say your background is in finance and accounting. You might apply to a "junior financial analyst" position on their webpage to which you may be more than qualified for. When you come into their office for an interview they may tell you that they have financial analyst opportunities coming through fairly often. However, as the weeks go by and you follow up with the recruiter they tell you week in and week out that nothing has come available as of yet. Yet, on their career page, financial analyst positions still continue to be posted on a regular basis.
Your recruiter may also elude to the fact that they work with several high profile companies in your area. And while that may be true, that too is mostly a farce. In fact, by the third time you contact the recruiter to let them know you are still interested in any possible opportunity that may come through, they will usually tell you by that time that they will contact you if anything comes through - which of course never happens.
All the while, the weeks go by and nothing transpires even though the staffing companies job board continues to update with new opportunities to which you would be a perfect fit for. In the end, you struggle to get by, while the 23 year old recruiter gets wasted every night with the rest of her 23 year old staffing buddies.
Pretty much take what most "recruiters" say at staffing companies with a fine grain of salt. A high percentage pull you in via the bait and switch tactic. They often will advertise fake positions with almost zero intent of actually finding you an opportunity that fits your career goal or interest. For example, let's say your background is in finance and accounting. You might apply to a "junior financial analyst" position on their webpage to which you may be more than qualified for. When you come into their office for an interview they may tell you that they have financial analyst opportunities coming through fairly often. However, as the weeks go by and you follow up with the recruiter they tell you week in and week out that nothing has come available as of yet. Yet, on their career page, financial analyst positions still continue to be posted on a regular basis.
Your recruiter may also elude to the fact that they work with several high profile companies in your area. And while that may be true, that too is mostly a farce. In fact, by the third time you contact the recruiter to let them know you are still interested in any possible opportunity that may come through, they will usually tell you by that time that they will contact you if anything comes through - which of course never happens.
All the while, the weeks go by and nothing transpires even though the staffing companies job board continues to update with new opportunities to which you would be a perfect fit for. In the end, you struggle to get by, while the 23 year old recruiter gets wasted every night with the rest of her 23 year old staffing buddies.
All of this is so true. I was going through a lot of staffing agencies back when I graduated in 2014. Some agencies were offering me trash jobs as a lab tech paying in the range of $12-14 per hour. I told them if the job title isn't "chemist" I am not interested. I don't want a job as a lab tech or some silly lab personnel job a high school graduate can do with little to no training.
One staffing agency got me an interview at Georgia-Pacific for an associate chemist position thermosetting resins and preparing phenolic formaldehyde resins for testing and stability and I thought hey it's Georgia-Pacific one of the largest employers in the Atlanta area but after I was offered the job the company offered me $17 per hour and the recruiter told me that is what the company wanted to start me out at because I didn't have a lot of experience. I told them my salary requirements were $25 per hour or $50k a year because according to pay scale that is what the typical entry level chemist makes.
I worked at that company for 9 months and realized that there were other temps that were there for almost 2 years and haven't been hired or no intentions of becoming a full time employee for the company. I was sold a bunch of lies from the R&D manager and the bimbo working for the staffing agency that this is a "try before you buy" opportunity and don't be disappointed that the starting wage is only $17 per hour because when you get hired your salary will be much higher. The Company just did restructuring of nearly all of the research departments so I wasn't going to be hired any time soon.
I did a nationwide job search for a new job opportunity and landed a full time analytical chemist position for a medium sized pharmacetuicals company in West Virginia with great bennies. The company offered me my salary requirements at $50k a year and provided great training.
Don't get me wrong a temp job is better than no job at all but don't believe the temp to perm statement for one second. Take the job and keep looking for a permanent job as if you are unemployed. If you are temping for a large company it's very unlikely that you will be converted to a full time employee. If you are temping for a small company or a start up company it's more likely that you will be converted to a full time employee but a large company is just going to make you a permatemp.
1. You keep saying staffing agencies don't offer "benefits." We'll assume you mean 'health' care insurance plans or something. It's simply not true to say they don't offer those things.
2. Extraneous "benefits" were originally offered to employees to compensate for they wage increases they were disallowed to give to compete for workers in a labor shortage in the mid-century as they were frozen by the National War Labor Board. That doesn't exist now, so why do you still insist on treats and goodies, trying to coerce largesse above and beyond your remuneration?
3. In this day and age is not your very job a benefit?
All I can say is
How dare chemists working with toxic carcinogenic chemicals expect healthcare benefits, sick leave, and paid time off like most workers in first world nations. What an entitlement mentality.
The first one was a nationally known agency and I used them to gain a broad spectrum of work experience out of college. They were ok but there was no clear path to full time employment at the company they had placed me at.
From there, I hooked up with a smaller, locally-based agency who put me in a t-to-p position at an employer who really liked me. The agency let me out of my contract early to allow me to be hired as a full time employee and I stuck around for two years.
I then moved on as a full time employee to a different company. After 5.5 years, I contacted the local agency to put feelers out that I was switching the scope of my career (I went back to school while employed) and that I was interested in temping in my new field. They got me an interview and job as a full Time direct hire with the new company in my new field at 27% higher pay.
Some agencies are good. Some are completely self-serving. I was in a position where I could be picky.
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Staffing agencies aren't exclusively for bad employers.
