As a disclaimer, I’m only including my personal opinion here, your mileage may vary.
With the new glut of college graduates coming onto the job market soon, as well as the ever-increasing number of people who have been laid off, I thought that a review of the three Boston-area agencies I used in 2006 may be of use to some.
The first, and the one which I would never recommend, is AIM Personnel in Hingham, MA. Aside from some smaller issues, such as being so small an operation they did not have direct deposit, I was utterly underwhelmed by them. I was hired to work at a local company in a temp to perm position. After one week, I was terminated. While this is not AIM’s problem, the way they responded to it insulted me. The person at the company where I had been temping claimed that a large issue they had with me was that I “never looked anyone in the eye.” Not only was this claim bogus, but I barely saw said person in my one week tenure there. The owner of AIM; however, decided to take me to task for this, and suggested a practice talking with my boyfriend. I’m sorry, I forgot it was 1950. I asked them to keep an eye open for me, I never heard from them again.
I was pretty happy with KNFT. While I was doing a routine check-in call (which I highly recommend doing weekly when using staffing agencies, either by phone or e-mail) with them, the rep was able to find me a gig in my field starting the next business day. I really liked the gig, and communication with them was easy. However, they did not pay me one week as they claim they never got my timesheet (despite me having the slip from the fax indicating it was sent)-my original contact left the agency, which may have affected this problem.
Although it seemed like I never heard anything outside of horror stories about them, I would recommend Professional Staffing Group (PSG) above the other two. Yes, their office is frenetic, but they found me a great gig (with hours of me calling saying I was available). They had awesome communication, knew what was going on at my job, and paid me on time (PSG also lets you enter your hours online rather than fax them, which I think is great). I would use PSG again in a heartbeat.
My friends have had good luck with numerous other agencies, including Atrium, Adecco, and John Leonard. I have not used them so I did not include them.
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Temp agencies are largely about making a good connections. I’m surprised about some of the temp agencies’ behaviors, though; a few have been remarkably unprofessional.