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Hello all and Welcome to today’s episode of Warehouse and Operations as a Career. I’m Marty and I’ve gotten a number of questions about Temporary Staffing and are they a good place to get started in warehousing. That’s actually a very good question and I do have a few thoughts, probably more like opinions on the subject! I also reached out to a very good friend for his thoughts and expertise in the fields and he’ll be sharing his opinions with us today as well!
I feel that Temporary Staffing Agencies can be a good avenue for that quick job or income. When I think of Temporary Agencies I think of three different situations.
Day Labor – I know of several agencies where you show up, fill out a short application & are given Day assignment or short term assignments that are strictly G/L or general labor tasks, maybe where a number of bodies are needed to make something happen. Again, a great avenue for a check but I don’t feel you should use such for a long term need as typically you’ll not be using any equipment or be exposed to any machine or production usage or training.
Temporary Placement – These may be longer lasting positions or placements, typically of a G/L nature requiring minimum training. I feel these placements can, or at least we could have an opportunity to be taught some skills and an opportunity to be involved in Warehouse operations to a greater degree than a day labor or just some needed bodies of a day labor placement.
Then there’s more of a Temp to Perm placement, or a placement that may offer more skills training or machine or equipment usage. Simply put a company could need several associates to get caught up on projects or a backlog of work and may hire on or bring onboard a number of new boots and increase the company’s headcount. Let’s be honest with our selves here, the workers that show up on time, ready to work every day and excel through any training and following direction and can bring productivity to the shift are of course the ones that could be offered full time work with the company. I’ve heard of transitions occurring as quickly as 30 days and as long as 11 months or more. Think of it being a probation period, is the employee a good fit for the company and even is the company a good fit for us?
I believe there’s quite a few companies using temporary workers today due to the ease of finding people and the opportunity to take the worker for a test drive, if you will, before being out the expense of going through the whole on-boarding process, the training and even risk of an actual employee.
Now that we’ve discussed my thoughts on what a Staffing company is let’s look at how we can use them to our advantage & get something out of them.
We’ve talked about how to use the Resume and the Interview to get our desires across to the recruiter or hiring agent & I can’t help but feel there even more important when dealing with an agency. We need to be sure and get our wants across to whomever will be working on our placement that we get the type of position we’re interested in and something we will do well at.
In today’s world it’s so easy to check out reviews of any business or industry, now we need to keep in mind that not all reviews or comments are written with the best intentions or even will be factual but we should be able to ascertain the overall spirit of the agency. Remember, one thing I hope we’re learning is that it’s our responsibility to research or educate ourselves to be a great employee right?
A couple of questions I might ask or look into could be:
What kind of assignments/jobs do they offer?
What kind of training are they offering or willing to do?
Do they offer any certifications?
Is this a Short term, long term or temp to perm opportunity?
You know it may be worth our time to accept a short term position if it affords us the opportunity to show our wiliness to work and prove our interest in a position. Kind of answering their test drive question!
To sum up my thoughts I’d say yes, a temporary or Staffing Agency can be a great place to get started in the industry but I feel it’s still our responsibility to get out of it what we’re after, which is a position we can learn, master and grow within!
We want to get our foot in the door and go from there right?
Well there’s my opinions or thoughts and today we actually have John on the phone with us, John started his career as a warehouseman for a national foodservice distribution industry leader and today is a National V.P. of Operations for a Light Industrial Sourcing Company.
Our visit with John is very interesting and informational, we really enjoyed hearing his thoughts and opinions brought up in our discussions! Be sure to check out the Episode and catch his input.
And I’d like to Thank all of you, our listeners, and encourage you to ask questions or share your thoughts and participate on the Website on our Facebook or Twitter @WhseandOps as we all learn from each other. Till next week, be Safe in all you do and watch the Distractions in our work AND personal life – someone’s counting on each of us!