We all have found ourselves without a job at a certain point in our lives, and then, if we could not get a job in our area of expertise, we settled for a temporary job. Temporary jobs or temporary employment makes reference to a situation in which a person performs a certain activity only for a short period of time. People performing this kind of jobs are also known as seasonal employees, contractual employees, freelancers, temps or interims. We should clarify from the beginning that temporary employees are not to be confused with consultants.
Getting Employed Through a Temporary Work Agency
A temporary work agency is also named a temporary staffing firm or a temp agency, and has as main domain of activity to find workers and send them to various companies that look for temps. These types of agencies are not to be confused with recruitment firms, as the latter are specialized in placing permanent employees. However, sometimes a temporary worker can obtain a permanent position if he or she is skilled enough. These sorts of agencies specialize in a particular field of business or in a particular profession, like accounting, general industrial labor, and health care, secretarial, agricultural and technical. The activities a temporary work agency performs are not very different from those of a recruitment firm, in that it tests the applicants, keeps a database, contacts a certain applicant when a temporary job that requires his or her skills appears on the market and places the person inside the company.
Permatemp
Hiring temporary workers is a good deal for the companies as they avoid paying for benefits and employer taxes and keep people working for a long time on a low salary. This situation, when a person is hired as a temporary, but he or she works along with permanent employees for a long time at the same company is known as permatemp. Legal issues arise from this practice, as the temporary worker is being exploited as compared to the other employees, by being denied the benefits, the wages and the employment rights. A temporary employee can be laid off at any time, therefore he or she does not benefit from seniority or career service protection.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Temporary Jobs
Just as in any situation, there are pros and cons when considering temporary jobs. Among the advantages one has when hired as a temporary employee we indicate flexible hours (temporary workers have the possibility to take off certain days, like vacations, holidays, weekends, or they can choose to work for additional pay), easy hire (most of the temporary workers are hired without a selection process, if they meet a company's requirements), and higher pay rates, in some cases. In the disadvantages category, we introduce the following: reduced liability protection, no benefits, lack of reference and others.
Types of Temporary Jobs
Among the temporary jobs we indicate first of all seasonal and holiday jobs. These may be Christmas jobs, such as Santa Claus, Elf, customer service advisor, night cleaning supervisor, telephone fund raiser and other related jobs, Easter jobs, like Easter Bunny, Easter camp nursery leader and so on, and summer/winter jobs, such as summer camp nursery leader, summer camp head group, charity work, ski instructor, snowboarding instructor, water sports instructor and others. However, most of the temporary jobs are in the field of agriculture, therefore many agricultural workers are hired for harvesting.