Tips on Working with Temporary Agencies

When was the last time you had more than a five-minute conversation with your temporary staffing agency? If you are tired of being sent temporary bookkeepers who don´t know how to run numbers in Microsoft Excel, it´s time to give your favorite -- or least favorite -- temporary staffing agency a call

Before you pick up the phone or shoot off an email, check out the following tips for working well with a temporary agency:

• Treat the agency as a valued business partner. You value your relationship with your accountant, you value the advice your lawyer gives you, why not value the help of your temporary staffing agency? The temporary agency is going to be working as an extension of your company, so explain your business to them. Spend at least as much time talking about your company to a temp agency as you would a prospective full-time job candidate. If you pick a good temporary staffing agency and treat its staffers as professionals, you´ll be pleasantly surprised at the quality of the temps sent to your company.
  
  
• Don´t wait until the day before you need someone to call the temp agency. If you call the temp agency at 4:30 p.m. to get a temp at your office at 8:00 a.m. the next day, that doesn´t leave much time for the agency to track down a temp, much less the right temp for the job. If all the other companies that use your temp agency call a few days in advance of their assignment and you wait until the day before or the day that you need someone, chances are all the best temps will be taken. Don´t make the temp agency´s job harder than it has to be.
  
  
• Specify what skills the temp needs to have. If you´ve got a lot of database entry that needs to be done, tell the temp agency that you must have someone who knows Filemaker Pro. If you need someone to make cold calls for you all day or to help your vice president of marketing work a tradeshow booth, tell the temp agency that you need someone with pleasant phone manners or someone with a vibrant personality. And, if you want your temporary receptionist to wear a suit and not a nose ring, let the agency know. Your temporary agency will appreciate the guidance and you´ll appreciate the results. If you need someone with highly specialized skills, consider working with more than one agency.
  
  
• Think about how long you might need a temp´s service. If you think that you´ll need a software programmer for more than two or three days, let the agency know from the beginning. They´ll send you someone who can work for the duration of the job, not someone who has to leave after a few days. There´s nothing more inefficient than having to switch temps in the middle of a project.
  
  
• Offer the agency feedback. Tell the agency if one of their temps needs more training. Let them know what you did and didn´t like about the person they sent to you. Constructive feedback will ensure they send you a better temp next time. And definitely let the agency know if you want to work with one of their temps again.
  
  
• Have realistic expectations. Don´t expect a temp to come in and do the same quality of work as the staffer they are filling in for. Don´t expect the temp to be a disaster either. How helpful a temp is partially depends on how well you set up the job for them. Sometimes temps can offer great insight into how a current job could be done better. Give them good instructions and they could excel.