Pros
Get to meet a lot of new and different people. Manpower offered some of the best training. Their benefits package was decent. Management listened to those working in the field.
Cons
Staffing Specialists had to wear a lot of hats and learn a lot of legal issues surrounding employment and hiring. In this position I did everything from interview, hire, on-board, counsel, and fire employees. I also had to handle FMLA, workers' compensation claims, and respond to unemployment cases, including handling unemployment hearings. This was on top of all of my recruiting and placement duties. There were many times when an eight hour day was not long enough. The pay that they offered was never very good, the company stated that I always could make more from commissions by converting temporary employees to hires with the client. That would be fine if the market I worked in was used to paying conversion fees but competition kept that from happening. My position was considered hourly and overtime was rarely approved, leaving days when important tasks had to wait until the next day. There are few places to advance in a branch office. They only way to see true advancement would require moving to Wisconsin. Management wanted us to contract with large companies for high-volume hiring with very low pricing. This essentially forced our office to put "all our eggs in one basket." When I started there were five Staffing Specialists in the office. After two years of working there our large client closed their facility moving it to Mexico and our office all but closed. By the time I left I was one of two Staffing Specialists that remained. Temporary staffing is a tough business, the jobs to recruit for are never very good ones and always at the bottom of the ladder. some of the people that those jobs attract are not always very nice, no matter how hard you try.