outsourcing questions

[OHRoadwarrior]

Many good companies, that pay high salaries, recruit through temp agencies to make sure they get the right fit, before they start paying top wages. Some call it exclusionary, because they are unlikely to recruit the best talent from a competitor, however, there is enough of an employee pool, it works.

 

[Chyvan]

More fool you. The two best jobs I ever had, including my current one, came about through temp agencies.

What is it with your name calling all the time? So you got a decent job. That's not always the norm. It can change the nature of what's suitable for a claimant, and many temp agencies are really good at getting claimants disqualified. I don't recommend them until the benefits run out.

 

[cbg]

And you never know what's out there if you don't look for it. There are some really good, high-paying jobs that can be gotten on a temp to hire basis. You can call it name-calling if you want to, but it remains my opinion that anyone who refuses to contact any temp agencies out of some "I'm only going to take a GOOD job" attitude is first, just plain stupid and second, cutting off his own nose to spite his face.

 

[eerelations]

I got my first HR job through a temp agency. I'd been having a hard time getting an HR job because, while I had the educational qualifications, I didn't have the work experience. Who knows how long I would have been unemployed had I not accepted that temp job? That job started off as a three-month low-paying project and within a couple of months turned into an entry-level HR Coordinator job that lasted two and half years, paid good money (for that level of work), had excellent benefits, and put a good solid chunk of marketable experience on my resume. None of which would have happened had I remained on UI.

And during the rest of my career I helped turn many many agency temps into regular employees, including 35 all in one go at my last employer.

This can't possibly have happened to just cbg and me. I take it more as an indicator that it must happen a lot, everywhere.

 

[eerelations]

It depends on your life. I was always the second income, and NEVER tried to find a job to avoid being on UI. I LOVED being on UI especially when the kids were home during summer vacation. Between the savings on childcare, commuting expenses, and the progressivity of the tax table, our quality of life was way better not working until I drew that last UI check.

And just how is firing the child care service and caring for your children full time somehow being ready and available for work?

 

[commentator]

So many companies are getting into the temp hiring only mode because of many reasons, one of which is that they are able to try and find out about the employee before they make the full commitment that is going to result (if they made it and it turned out to be not good) in costly errors, bad feelings, the necessity of terminating someone, and the possibility that they will be able to draw unemployment benefits, costing the company money.

It's much harder to draw unemployment benefits from a temp service by the nature of the way they operate. And even if the people are working or are discharged at the behest of the employer on the worksite, there's so much less exposure for the company to any sort of those reindeer games like "wrongful termination" and EEOC violations, as well as the workers qualifying for unemployment. It's not so good for the employee, perhaps, but I believe there will come a time when it's just about the only choice job seekers will have. That's an upcoming reality of the workplace of the future, when most of our past experiences with the system will be changing and it won't be like it used to anymore in MANY ways.

In the early 1980's a good person could look for six months diligently for ANY job, and they just weren't there. Eventually there were extensions to Unemployment, but that was only kicked in by the unemployment rate being extremely high. (And my place of work figured that rate, and I will give you a clue here before the unemployment rate goes to a high level, things are incredibly bad on the ground.) There are simply no jobs, good, bad or temporary to be had. This most recent recession cut at and seemed to most affect the older workers in our workforce. And one thing I have seen happen is that employers used the rareness of their jobs to gut the hiring market, pick only younger workers, and go to temps and contractors and to offer much lower starting pays, and make it much harder for a good person to find that good job than it had been in the work world before.

 

[cbg]

I've never had trouble collecting UI after a job with a temp agency ended. And in my state, they still encourage short term work. I wouldn't even have known (the first time out) that I could apply for a new claim on the basis of the short term and part time work I'd been doing to fill the gaps, until the UI office told me.

 

[commentator]

You live in a great state by the way. I am glad you had a good experience with MA claims takers, in my experience they are some of the best. And like most all of the "in the trenches" workers, they didn't really hate people and want to keep them from drawing benefits. Temp services don't like to pay unemployment taxes either, though, and they're apt to grab people who are trying to play it out and draw that last possible check and find them another temp assignment. People who are trying to work the system to the max don't enjoy that much.

 

[eerelations]

Temp services don't like to pay unemployment taxes either, though, and they're apt to grab people who are trying to play it out and draw that last possible check and find them another temp assignment. People who are trying to work the system to the max don't enjoy that much.

Just like someone we know here...

 

[Zigner]

And just how is firing the child care service and caring for your children full time somehow being ready and available for work?

It gives her plenty of time to pretty up her log...

 

[eerelations]

I know that in Canada caring for children full time is an automatic disqualifier for unemployment benefits but I don't know about the US. It makes sense though, how can you be swanning off to interviews and jobs if you don't have childcare support?

 

[commentator]

Well, the dirty little secret is that the higher the claims load, the less time they have to carefully monitor claims and make sure the job searches are genuine and that the person is fully able and available. In optimum circumstances, there are all sorts of checks and cross checks, and every one in so many claims is randomly audited (yes, that is the term they use, BAM workers quality audit claims, decisions and hearings.)

But in the past it has been pretty easy, especially in times of high unemployment to draw out your max number of weeks, with or without child care or sincere appropriate job searches if you could afford it and just wanted some subsidized time off. And of course if asked, you can always state that you have child care that you could get immediately if you did have a job interview to go on or accepted a job. But unless someone just flat out came in and announced they had no child care and therefore couldn't work, they'd probably be allowed to draw, all things otherwise okay.

During the last recession, the feds also put in place a targeting program that they now run wide open, which is called "profiling" and if you are one of the people profiled as least likely to find re-employment quickly, you must report in person to the job search activity every week and jump through all sorts of hoops to get benefits in every state. This makes it more and more difficult to become what we used to refer to as an "artist." (Their career goal was to draw and draw and draw!)