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I don't either but apparently lots of people do or they wouldn't exist.
They exist because they are of benefit to the companies and to those in the labor pool looking for a job.
In IT, for software contracting, I've always been paid more than the direct employees working at the client company. Contractors are also paid time and half for over-time, while the direct employees were expected to put in additional hours each week for free, I got paid. Even when offered to go direct (become a regular employee of the client company) I turned them down because it would be a drop in salary. I would also be subjected to their nonsense of employee annual reviews. Bonuses, stock options, etc., aren't guaranteed, but my W2 rate had always been guaranteed for the length of the contract. So while the regular employees would be subjected to pleasing a huge group of people who evaluated them, only the guy who signed my time sheet was my concern. I also got raises, and they were based on my working relationship with the client supervisor, and it had nothing to do with how anyone else's performance.
Contracting is good for the client company, because they don't have to go through HR and their stupid policies for hiring an employee. The loaded cost for head count of the employee is lower using a contractor because resources of the company are committed to that employee. If the company gets into financial trouble or has a budget crunch, if they can't afford to keep the contractor they can end that immediately without any problem and requires no other approval than the client supervisor.
Contracting also allows people to move around more easily between companies gaining very useful experience without having to be subjected to those stupid questions of who you changed jobs every 6-18 months. The answer is always, the contract ended or you saw an opportunity to advance your career so you took it. All of which are perfectly legitimate answers to those questions.
And before anyone says you don't get benefits as a W2 contractor, that simply isn't true. Sometimes I was paying less for health insurance compared to the direct employees, and although some contract houses offer vacation I prefer to be paid more and take unpaid vacation when I wish. For example, when one contract ended, you take off a month or two, before starting another contract.
The problem with being a direct employee at the same company for years, is that you loose the edge to keep your skills sharp. From my experience, those employees were only good at office politics while contractors did the real work.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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I would have been a lot worse off. Staffing services like Ranstad helped me change fields, get my foot in the door leading to permanent employment, and helped me pay bills after being laid off, multiple times.
Seems nobody wants to hire an older SOB like me for a permanent position, so if the staffing agencies went away I'd have to go on welfare and you could work more and dig more money out of *your* pocket to keep me eating. How d'ya like *them* apples?
Staffing agencies are generally hit and miss, mostly dependent on the recruiters working in a particular office. Sure there are some agencies that are really horrible no matter what just due to their policies on how things are run, but I have found that it's more reliant on who works in the office you go through. Take Manpower for instance, I worked for one office in Ohio that was horrible to the point that I had to fight for overtime pay that I was owed. I worked for another office here in Pennsylvania that the people in the office just didn't give a damn about anyone who walked through the door and it was horrible trying to get work that lasted more than a week. I also worked for a second office here in PA where the recruiter I went through bent over backwards to try to get us work that actually matched with what we said we were looking for on the initial forms we filled out. It wasn't perfect, but it definitely felt like she was looking out for the employees as well as the companies they hired for.
Why do some of the agencies sound like regulated day labor? Some of the posts make it sound like you show up at an office instead of home depot and stand in line for work. If it is like day labor, what's with this high expectation of them to be anything but what it is?
Agencies I worked for treated me as a full time employee while on contract (insurance/pto/401k/housing/etc through agency instead of company was only difference). I just got a end date but got assigned a new one before it ended so I was not "out of work" unless I took time between contracts off
Why do some of the agencies sound like regulated day labor? Some of the posts make it sound like you show up at an office instead of home depot and stand in line for work
Agencies I worked for treated me as a full time employee while on contract. I just got a end date but got assigned a new one before it ended so I was not "out of work" unless I took time between contracts off
Actually there are some that are like this. Labor Ready is one of these, and it is one of the ones that I refused to work at. Show up at 5am, wait in line until potentially noon for a job that would last 1 day, if that (I had a friend who did a couple jobs through them, said one of them lasted 4 hours,) go home, and do it all over the next day. Not any good reason to work like this, being that each job lasted at most 10 hours, you couldn't really say you got experience with that job, the pay was usually just over minimum wage, and of course the gas to get not only to the temp office, but to the job as well could get really expensive being that you could potentially have to double back on yourself to get to the job.
Temping is for the dogs. It's a bad industry and going downhill all the time in terms of pay. I'm glad I can do something else and don't need to temp or rely on these agencies.
Very bad for the market, most obviously in the lost jobs of recruiters, sales staff and clerical staff. It would take longer to find a job after a layoff. Perhaps I am biased, as my field of expertise (Engineering) is a big user of such agencies.
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