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Question about temping agencies
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in Work & Study
I wonder if anybody could help me with this query.
I have been doing secretarial temping for a long time, mainly during university holidays and have recently changed agencies to one that does shorter assignment based work.
The thing is, I keep getting rung up by my agency who tell me about a really wonderful position where I'll get more money, and might be closer to where I live but then I'll never hear about it again and end up getting something not so good. I am well qualified for most secretarial work, so my question is this - when the agency is notified about a possible vacancy for its temps - do they put several people forward to the external company or do the agency choose from the temps themselves.
I know that having little choice about what you do is a pitfall of temping, but I would just like to know how the system works.
I have been doing secretarial temping for a long time, mainly during university holidays and have recently changed agencies to one that does shorter assignment based work.
The thing is, I keep getting rung up by my agency who tell me about a really wonderful position where I'll get more money, and might be closer to where I live but then I'll never hear about it again and end up getting something not so good. I am well qualified for most secretarial work, so my question is this - when the agency is notified about a possible vacancy for its temps - do they put several people forward to the external company or do the agency choose from the temps themselves.
I know that having little choice about what you do is a pitfall of temping, but I would just like to know how the system works.
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Comments
And sometimes agencies just bullshit to keep you on their books.
Hmmm that is what i was worried about.
What are other's experiences?
The guys are so cocky and the women have fat arses from sitting at their desk all day eating and showing off their new cheap designer crap that they got on their lunchbreak.
They arnt worth the money they earn, I hate them - you really have to push them to get work from these lazy f**ckers
You don't have to "push" them to get work, but you do have to get off your arse and do something yourself. The bigger national agencies have that many temps you need to apply for their vacancies, though the smaller ones will offer decent and real jobs to temps they like.
I was a bit unfair when I said "bullshit", but they put forward more people for work than necessary to make it look like they are doing work for you.
If you only try through one temping agency then you're being silly, IMHO. It's always good to play them off against each other, it tends to concentrate the mind a bit.
The worst I worked for was Kelly Services. I had a position working 8:30am til 6pm at BT and it was awful. They wouldn't move me to a different job and I ended up jacking it in.
I went back a year later to the agency to see if they had any more work available and they'd blacklisted me! Psh.
I tend to avoid agency work. It's good if you can get it (usually higher wages than permanent AND you can generally pick and choose once you've become established which jobs you take on), it's terrible if you can't or end up in a bad job.
I hate it when they advertise positions on their windows.. none of them *actually* exist.
Was harder when I was new to the lists and I did call them up 2 or 3 times a week, so my name was remembered and they couldn't really ignore me for that long. I've had some good jobs and some bad jobs, but generally the bad ones have just been for a week or so and I've been warned before accepting them. But beggars can't be choosers when your in a small town and need to pay uni debts off as much as possible during the holidays.
Have to say I do prefer the little local agencies rather than the national ones, just find they're friendlier and care a little more about what they do.
The best for me was a smaller independent agency in Newcastle called Solutions. They were really helpful, and, speaking as an admirer of nature, the staff were quite nice;)