Temp agencies keep busy

SYRACUSE - Job-placement agencies Upstate and across the country are having an easier time placing workers at businesses eager to hire. Experts say that trend suggests companies are testing the waters before hiring permanent employees.

"What we're seeing right now is a resurgence of the economy,"

Records kept by the U.S. Department of Labor support Nave's claims. Year-over-year comparisons show that job placements by temporary-staffing agencies were up 2.7 percent in September, 3.8 percent in October, 5.6 percent in November, and 7.7 percent in December, the most recent month for which data is available.

"Employers are using our services more, for whatever...reasons," says Jack Altdoerffer, vice president of marketing at First Choice Staffing, which has offices in Utica and Liverpool. "Businesses are using us more, calling and asking for our help, and we are better able to find the employees to assist the customers."

Luis Rodriguez, a spokesman for Manpower, Inc., which serves 400,000 clients worldwide, says that news is bittersweet.

"If a company hires an employee, that is a very permanent decision," Rodriguez says. "Companies aren't quite willing to commit to that yet. Instead, they want to try things out and see how it works."

Businesses save money, too, because temporary-employment contracts sometimes don't call for benefits, nor is the employer obligated to extend the contract, Rodriguez adds.

And while that's bad news for employees eager for permanent job placement, there is a silver lining. "As more companies regain their footing, expansions will continue and thrive into [the opening of] permanent positions," Rodriguez says.

Altdoerffer says First Choice has had an easier time placing workers in jobs on both the temp-to-hire and permanent-hiring sides.

"Both sides of the business have seen an increase," he says. "The staffing industry's main focus is the temp or temp-to-hire aspect, but yes, there have been direct-hire opportunities as well."

On a regional level, Manpower also has had an easier time placing its clients in jobs.

"From about the end of the last quarter for-ward, we have definitely seen an increase" in businesses interested in Manpower's services, says Shelley Ketchum, branch manager of the company's Cortland, DeWitt, Oneida, and North Syracuse offices.

Upstate, like the rest of the country, has "an abundance of workers out there right now," Ketchum adds, making jobplacement services even more valuable to employers.

"They find that using staffing services are a way to kind of clean up the final people they want to look at," she says. "We're able to provide that service and do the assessments before having people [placed permanently at a job]."

And that placement of people in permanent positions is the end goal, says Angela Ramp, branch manager at Adecco North America's Lomond Court office in Utica. "Our clilents are looking for permanent positions.

"We have a lot of skilled talent out here in our office," she continues. "But some of the companies in the area are not willing to acknowledge the skills the individuals bring to the table, and therefore, individuals are not able to accept jobs below their skill level, and that obviously relates to pay."

In the Mohawk Valley, the types of companies most eager for Adecco's services are insurance providers and customerservice companies with labor-intensive call centers.

"Insurance companies are a big one, although we service every industry retail, manufacturing, food service," Ramp says. "But insurance is definitely a leader in this area. For customer service, it's call centers, such as APAC [Customer Service in downtown Utica]. We're seeing steady growth in those areas."

Nave says the Central New York market is similar.

"We have seen a large demand for additional personnel from insurance companies," she says, adding that her office also places a lot of its customers in clerical and professional positions.

Garry Smith, marketing manager at Columbia Place Associates in Utica, says he's seen an abundance of anecdotal evidence supporting those assertions.

"We've had three manufacturers that we've placed people with since October," Smith says. "They've all stated the same thing: Their orders have started to pick up, and so they've added people. And two of them, in particular, were basically on a layoff mode since the recession started in 2001, and this is the first hiring they've had in that time frame."

Despite the changes, the industry hasn't changed the way it does business, Ramp notes.

"Our job is twofold," she says. "It's a matter of educating the community and the clients out there to let them know what their individual skills are worth. Our job always is to find and match the right candidate with the right skills every time. We lose credibility as an agency and organization if we place someone that does not have the right skills to do the work they're hired to do."