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The title is pretty straight forward. When a lack of experience doesn't set you apart from the other hundreds of thousands without a lack of experience, are temp agencies the best way to fix this?
sometimes it's a great way to get your foot in the door at a good company. That's actually how i got my first "real" job - i worked very hard and proved i was a good employee and was hired on full time after 3 months. After that it was just working my way up - so yes, in my experience it did work (and for full disclosure i wasn't even finished with college yet)
Ideally you should be networking and doing internships while in college to hopefully get a spot upon graduation. The networking and internships is probably more important than the actual coursework.
^This. Getting real work experience before graduation is critical. If I knew this beforehand I would have start looking for internships after my freshman year. Yes, you have to start that early.
There wasn't a lot of internships available in my area because big chemical companies and organizations in Atlanta made you have to jump through so many hoops for an internship that it was harder to intern there than actually obtaining a full time job.
I temped at Georgia-Pacific (large paper, plastic, and wood company that makes angel soft tissue, brawny paper towels, and Dixie plates) it's horrific how they treat their entry level R&D staff. All the bench chemists and scientists start off as temps for significantly lower pay than direct hires, receive no benefits, get no real training, get kicked out of meetings discussing projects, get kicked out the the thanksgiving dinners and pizza parties. They just treated all of the entry level staff at the R&D site like crap.
A few years ago they use to hire associate chemists and bench scientists on full time with benefits and a good salary after 6 months but after they restructured all the departments and shifted all the projects they just keep everyone as temps with 2 or 3 full time chemists and have one full time R&D manager manage them all.
I found out that they just wanted warm bodies to do their grunt and dirty work then toss everyone to the curb when they don't need the temps anymore. I applied for full time jobs like crazy and didn't care where the job was located. (At that point I didn't care if I had to move to Podunk town, North Dokota) I refused to stay at that god awful company.
I landed my current analytical chemist position for this medium sized pharmaceuticals company and the morale of the company and how they treat their employees is so much better. I discovered that big pharma and chemical companies are the worst ones to work for and the smaller companies are the better ones to work for in my industry.
OP, I hope you secure full time employment in your industry soon so you don't have to experience working as a temp for a douchebag company like I did.
I always saw temp agencies as mostly for unskilled low wage labor. It's sad to see it now includes people who invested in a college education for professional jobs.
The title is pretty straight forward. When a lack of experience doesn't set you apart from the other hundreds of thousands without a lack of experience, are temp agencies the best way to fix this?
Be careful with time spent dealing with temp agencies. In recent years and with the outsourcing of many traditional temp jobs in data processing, customer service etc., the supply of jobs in these entry level positions is far less than before.
I recall a time , say 10-15 years ago when a grad could go to a temp agency , do some tests and pretty much land a gig in hours. The hourly rate back then was actually higher than it is now. What you will find is some of the most shockingly underpaid jobs you could care to imagine.
Also bear in mind, you will be competing with many other grads like never before at these temp agencies. So time to actually get something is so much longer than in previous years.
Do not ignore a good temp agency , just do not depend on them either. Be creative and be proactive in looking beyond temp agencies.
A tip for you : Employers do not like to see too many temp gigs on the resume. So keep them as few as possible.
When I first moved to NC from Florida I had a hard time finding a job as we were living in a very small town. I got a temp job which became a long time temp job. After that I found two other temp to perm positions and in the last one I was hired as a part time temp to fill in for someone who took an Alaskan cruise. I did the job better than she did and they hired me full time and moved her to a different department.. I became the manager of my department two years later.
so don't list them? No one requires every job to be listed
But then you have a 6 month gap of employment if you don't list them. I got grilled by a HR bimbo for a 2 month gap on my resume when I was interviewing for my current job. She ask me what was you doing for those two months after you graduated. Well, I was looking for a job in my industry, I was working as a fork lift driver for a small steel company at the time.
In 2016 Temp Agencies are mainly for people who are almost finished with UC or already finished with UC.
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