Temping Your Way to a Career

Applet code: Deciding what to do with your life after graduation can be downright frightening. These days, however, it needn’t be. Today’s economy provides the opportunity for almost everyone to try before they buy - buy into a career, that is.

Many companies today deliberately maintain their full-time employee staff at as low a level as possible and rely heavily on temps to carry a major part of the required day-to-day workload. Temporary agencies have expanded from the clerical support office to include industrial, financial, technical, design, medical, dental and most other career fields. You can sign up with as many agencies as you want, try as many jobs as you are capable of handling, and be kept as busy as you want to be. The largest employer in the United States happens to be a temporary agency.

The advantages are many:

1. You will learn how to interview. If you do it often enough, you’ll become comfortable with the process and will figure out what works for you and - more importantly - what doesn’t.

2. You will earn while you learn. The starting salaries are not lavish to say the least but, if you live modestly, you can get by. It’s not likely that you’ll be able to pay off your car or your college loan during your early temp days, but you’re not facing a 5+ year commitment with an unknown employer. You’re not facing ANY commitment beyond what you agree to when you accept an assignment - whether it’s three days, three weeks or three months.

3. You will have the flexibility to schedule your own hours to allow you to take the time needed to tend to your personal affairs without having the weight of a department or a company on your shoulders. Just make sure the company you are temping with knows you might have such a need.

4. You will accept responsibility and gain confidence in your abilities and capabilities at your own pace.

5. You will quickly find those tasks and/or career fields that you are neither interested in nor suited for. Agencies have training available and tests to determine your skills (or lack thereof!) and will not knowingly place you in an environment where you are not going to be happy and productive. If they do, you have the option to move on to another agency and other companies.

6. Temp-to-perm is always possible. If the client company likes you and you think you’ve found your niche, they can always arrange to buy your contract from the agency that sent you there.

7. If you mess up, you can move on to something else without a dismal record following you throughout your organization. :)

The disadvantages - not so many:

1. You are an employee of the agency, not the client company. In some companies, it doesn’t matter; in others, you are set apart somewhat from their employees; and in a few, you are simply an outsider.

2. There is very little advancement in a temp job. You’re hired for a specific length of time or a special project - and that’s generally where you’ll stay. There are “ongoing” assignments, but these also tend to keep you in a holding pattern.

3. An assignment may end abruptly. Management changes, contracts are canceled, sales are down, or any number of reasons.

4. The benefits for temps are not usually as good as those given to permanent employees.

So, congratulate yourself if you’ve just finished school; take a day or two off to recharge your batteries, and then don’t think too much about it. Just go and sign up with an agency in your neighborhood or one in any area where you’d like to work.

An important thing to remember is that permanent jobs are not always that permanent. If you should suddenly find yourself unemployed, your world will not come crashing down around you. You will be able to pick yourself up, put your ego away, go back to your agency, and find something new and someplace new. Hopefully, it will be something better.

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Carol Feltman is the author of "TEMP.tation: A Guide to Busyness Management" and you can meet her at http://www.kahrol.com/