Wondering if working a temporary job, or “temping,” might make sense for you? Actually, depending on your circumstances, temping can be a terrific option for keeping your career moving forward. It can be a great solution for those in the midst of career transitions or life changes, those who’ve just moved to a new community and need to build professional contacts, or those who prefer the variety of temporary or project work to the predictability of a permanent position.
Temping Can Support Your Life Circumstances
When you need to structure your work life around your personal life, temping can be just the solution you need. Among temping’s personal benefits are:
- Freedom – you can decide when you want to work, which provides an opportunity to create better work/life balance.
- Flexibility – short-term project work can provide a great solution for situations where you know you only have short-term availability, for example, you need to work for 6 months prior to moving to a new location.
- Friendships – temping for a number of companies can be an easy way to meet new friends when you’ve just moved into a new community.
Temping Can Help Build Your Career Options
In terms of career benefits, temporary work can be even more helpful. It can provide you with opportunities to:
- Try out different types of work to get a first-hand sense of pros and cons.
- Get to know potential employers, and have an opportunity to dazzle them as a temp before you approach them for a permanent position – essentially positioning yourself as a known, and valuable, commodity.
- Start building a professional network of references, contacts, and sources of potential job openings if you’re either just starting out in your career or have recently moved to a new community.
- Start building your professional reputation and brand among multiple groups of colleagues.
- Start building a portfolio of projects and accomplishments.
- Potentially position yourself for permanent employment if that’s what you seek.
In addition, temping can be a great alternative for people who work best on projects of a limited duration, for example, those who lose interest and engagement once work becomes repetitive or predictable.
How to Locate Temporary Jobs
There are four ways to approach finding temporary jobs: 1) sign up with temporary staffing/project agencies in your professional field (for example, IT or nursing), 2) sign up with general staffing/project agencies in your region, 3) search online for aggregators of temporary jobs, and/or 3) for companies of interest, scan their website job sections for announcements of project or temporary work.
To find profession-specific temp agencies, search online for “temporary agencies” or “temp agencies” plus your field of interest, for example, “accounting” or “computers” or “healthcare.” For location-specific temp agencies, search on the same agency terms and your target region. For online aggregators, search on the terms “temporary jobs,” “temp jobs,” and/or “contract jobs” and then either your professional or geographic area. And don’t forget that some of the general job sites, such as Indeed.com, CareerBuilder.com, and Jobs.com also include temporary or contract positions. Is temping for you? Very possibly so, depending on your career circumstances!
