Re: Temping: An alternative to agencies?

[Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM>]

Jim Purcell wrote:

> Specialist agencies offer the great benefit of being run by people who
> understand the kind of work you do and therefore, I should think, being
> better at matching the job to the individual. I have no evidence for
> this, but I suspect that clients who call a specialist agency are also a
> little more clued in and will not expect you to make coffee and answer
> the phone.

Jim -

One would think so.  I could, should I desire to burn those bridges,
give you the names and phone number of agencies who purport to
specialize in various kinds of technical help with whom I've had
personal experience but actually are as clueless about both what the
client needs and what special qualifications an individual has as an
accounting firm might be about sheet metal work.

What sometimes happens is that one person who has a long enough history
doing something technical in a particular patch of geography decides
that he/she wants to place people, rather than be placed.  This person
takes his/her substantial background and private database of names and
firms into an existing agency or opens his/her own, and then proceeds to
hire less qualified (and therefore less expensive) office help to match
resumes to job order.  Keyword-searching software (like Resumix) made
especially for temp agencies help them do this.  The former techie talks
to companies about what kind of people they need while the office help
matches the resumes to the job descriptions the techie writes.
Eventually the former techie decides he/she wants to play more golf or
something such, and negotiates a deal with one of the office help to
maintain the list of contacts and troll for job orders.

While a case could be made that the office help has picked up enough
jargon to be useful, you have to wonder whether they really understand
the needs of either the company or the person looking for contract
work.
For example, I can read C and C++ and Java well enough to write text
descriptions of what's going on, and I can code examples.  Old versions
of my resumes are apparently still floating around Silicon Valley, and I
am still getting calls from agencies asking if I am interested in a
programming job using one of those languages.  Nowhere on even those old
resumes is there *any* indication that I was a programmer (I was, a long
time ago) or that I'm interested in becoming one I'm not).  Yet Resumix
scored a hit on the languages so the office help called me at home.
<rolling eyes>

And the problem is compounded in a hot job market, such as we're in
now.  Temp agencies get more desperate, looking for *anything* that
might match an open job descriptions.  You'd be amazed at the calls I've
gotten.

As for making coffee and answering the phones - well, that's another
story.

Elna Tymes, president
Los Trancos Systems

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