I am grateful for temporary employment agencies; they improved my resume, trained me in software programs, and gave me practice interviewing.
When I arrived in Los Angeles, I job hunted and sent out over one-hundred resumes, with nothing to show for it. Then while stumbling through the internet, I found an entertaining and helpful website www.ihatemylife.us . While telling his story of becoming homeless and living in his car, the author also provides food, housing, and employment information, including the use of Temp Agencies. The website recommends signing up with twenty, so over the course of a week, I signed up with five. I would have signed up with more, but the agencies were already calling me with jobs.
No Temp Agency ever pressured me into taking a job. They called me with a position, told me where it was located, how much it paid, and what it would entail. Then, based on how desperate I was for rent or food money, I decided whether or not to take it.
While many of the jobs Temp Agencies find will be mundane office/clerical work, Temp Agencies want to find you a job you’ll like and stick with. When you work, they receive a paycheck too. It’s in their best interest to find you your job of choice. Don’t discredit random temp jobs altogether either. No matter what occupation you’re pursuing, every company needs administrative assistants. Because many companies hire from within, taking a temporary assignment at a company you’re interested in working for may be the smartest thing you ever did.
Each Temp Agency I signed with helped me improve my resume. Resumes are Temp Agents specialty. They hire for multiple industries and positions and know the appropriate and necessary lingo to use in order to attract interest. They helped me because they wanted me to get a job through them. Remember, that’s how they make their money, but I also used that resume to apply to jobs on my own as well, and the responses have tripled.
Each Temp Agency also required I take computer tests to verify that I knew the programs I said I did. They also offered me tutorials to learn or brush up on any of those same programs. I learned all of Microsoft Office Suite this way, a valuable addition to my skills list and helpful for home use as well.
When I made it through that fifth Temp Agency, I realized I’d been interviewed five times. Each meeting with a Temp Agency was an interview, but less intimidating. They gave me a chance to polish what I wanted to say about myself. And when I asked, the Temp agents gave me feed back, and one (the fifth one) even set up a more intimidating mock interview for me to practice. When they did find a company who was interested in my resume, they gave me as much of a heads-up as they could about the company and about the contact-person because, remember, it’s in their best interest to get you hired.