Top Three Tips To Maximise a Temporary Worker in an Economic Recession
Written By Aaron Wills – Senior Recruiter at Parker Bridge Auckland, New Zealand (an affiliate of Priority Placements). Aaron has over five & half years’ recruitment experience. He joined Priority Placements (originally named Parker Bridge Ireland) in Dublin and experienced in the same year the Dot Com bubble bursting, September 11 and the impact of a foot & mouth scare on the Irish Economy. Aaron is currently working in Parker Bridge Auckland. Below are some key tips he has learnt and would like to share with Line Managers for your consideration when you are recruiting financial/administrative/IT staff for long and short term temporary assignments:


With the market as it is we are focused on getting back to basics to make the recruitment process easy for you. Here are a few tips to help you get what you need from a temporary worker.

Tip 1: Identify the problem you are trying to solve. Get specific and clarify what you want your temporary worker to do. One way we can achieve this is by having a discovery meeting where we discuss the role and gain as much information as possible. For example, assessing what the temp will be doing on a typical day.

This can benefit you as it enables us to get the correct match. Identifying whether parts of the role can be downgraded or if in fact the role actually requires a more senior person with the right experience may enable you to save time and money.

Tip 2: Identify the hardest part of the role. This helps us focus on finding a candidate who has the skills to deal with this issue, which saves you training time and therefore money. Candidates are able to use skills learnt in other temp roles to become effective in your role faster.

For example, often clients what candidates with the ability to talk to non-accounting managers (sales, warehouse or engineering managers) to get information to meet accounting deadlines in a friendly and proactive way.

Tip 3: Looking at projects & system improvements. Improving a workflow process for paying an invoice or improving your financial accounting system, can add real time savings and benefits to a finance function. Looking at duplication in your current process will give you an idea of where you can make these savings.

Three ways to get the most from a temporary worker are:
· to use them as the change agent, that being they can be the outside person who can ask the ‘why is it done this way’ type of questions
· to bring in specialist skills
· to back full a role and reward a staff member by having them do the project role

Bonus Idea: Try a working interview. These work by us arranging with you for the person to work for you for a day as a working interview. This saves you having to go through the interview process and enables you to see how they can do the role. Using our temporary employment arrangements eliminates most of the risk of taking on the wrong person.

Interview Testing - do you really have the skill set?

Probably one of the worst and best things I ever did was start a career in recruitment in the recession of the early 90’s when I went to London. The 80’s boom ended and consultants were leaving the industry in droves. They had made their money in the “easy” market and found it too hard so moved on. It was very tough then and it is tough now. What I learned from that experience has stood me in good stead over the years. As there were so few jobs you had to fight hard to get the offer. When you started your job you had to make it work and you worked hard to achieve the right results. Leaving was not an option. The great thing was you appreciated the outcomes and never took them for granted.

I would consider myself to be a loyal individual and indeed have been amazed at how candidates have been happy to move jobs at such a high frequency in the last number of years in a good market. There was more choice I guess and the idea of a higher salary is always an incentive. Candidates were confident and believed they were capable of doing the job. But in moving so quickly from 1 job to another they are diluting their skill set and employers have found that now when they are recruiting their preference is to take the time out and question and potentially test individuals applying for the job. Employers are now already asking why candidates have moved from one job to the next. They want stability and they want candidates who really do understand the basics of their skills. Clients are providing testing almost from the outset. If you know your line of expertise then this should not pose a problem because the testing tends to be quite general. If you are attending an interview through an agency your consultant can advise you on what preparation you need to do in advance. If you are attending an interview directly then it is recommended that you research for similar style testing. Check in advance what kind of test it will be. The internet or a library is a good place to start and then practice. Most of us are naturally nervous when it comes to any kind of testing regardless of how well we know our area of expertise so my advice is to research and practice. So when you go in to do the test at least you feel you have made some effort to prepare and hopefully that will calm the nerves.

Some clients not only test at the outset prior to interview or any offer but also 3 months in to the job itself. If this test/assessment is not passed then the position will be terminated. So when you decide to apply for a position make sure you are confident that you can demonstrate in an interview situation by providing examples or communicating clearly that you can do the job efficiently and effectively. Whilst we all desire a challenge lets make sure we are not taking on more than we bargained for.