Talk to me about temp agencies! Especially for tech/data jobs.

[diygoddess]

Son is in 1st year uni studying statistics and applying for summer work experience. He is interested in data science or analytics. Most relevant internships are aimed at penultimate year students, so anything for first years is very competitive. I'm wondering about suggesting he tries temping agencies. A temp job manipulating data, using R, Excel, Python or similar would be ideal. They are sought after skills, so plenty of jobs out there but not sure if it's the sort of thing a temping agency would offer? Also, I have no experience of temp agencies, so would want to know more before making the suggestion. Questions are:

• Which companies are the big name (i.e. hopefully reliable) temp agencies to focus on?
• Is it usual to just join one agency or several?
• Anyone know of a temping agency that specialises in tech skills?
• Who is the employer - the hiring company, the agency, or are temps self employed?
• Can you tell them agency what type of work you want and hold out for something suitable, or are you obliged to take whatever they offer?
• Any pitfalls we should be aware of?

Hopeful bump.

Interested in this too for dc. Anyone out there with advice for them and for the OP?

I work as a Data Scientist, did a statistics degree and data science Masters. Is there a particular reason you/he/they are looking for an internship? Is it just to learn the required technical skills?

Mostly for experience @DataScientist . Skills would obviously be a bonus. My DS is gradually learning relevant data science skills like R on his course, and has GCSE-level Python which he'll also do more of on his degree course. He's only part way through the journey though, near the end of year 1. If possible, he wants opportunities to apply his emerging skills in a real world setting during the summer.

• Which companies are the big name (i.e. hopefully reliable) temp agencies to focus on?
• Hays and Michael Page are very big and have a lot of specialities
• Is it usual to just join one agency or several?
• You have to be quite organised to be with more than one, I've temped in the past and used one big agency because they came up with the jobs and the decent rates
• Anyone know of a temping agency that specialises in tech skills?
• See above
• Who is the employer - the hiring company, the agency, or are temps self employed?
• The temp agency is. They will bill the client for their services and pay the temp after deduction of tax, NI and pension
• Can you tell them agency what type of work you want and hold out for something suitable, or are you obliged to take whatever they offer?
• YOur son will need an up to date CV and an interview with the agency in which he lays out what he's looking for in as much detail as possible and what they can offer. You don't have to take what they offer; I've turned down jobs that were ridiculous in terms of commute
• Any pitfalls we should be aware of?
• Make sure your son knows the going rate for his speciality so he doesn't get stiffed on rates.
• Keep in contact with his agency so they know when his assignment is ending and can look for another one.
• Bear in mind the agency wants their fees and don't accept something he isn't happy with, whether that's rates, commute or anything else.
• Keep in contact with the agency about any problems. A good one will treasure a reliable temp and back them up. As a last resort they'll pull him out if he's unhappy or the job isn't what the company said it is.
• He might be unemployed for days, weeks or months depending on the work flow coming into the agency; which is why big ones like Page and Hays are worth looking at. There might be others but they are the big ones. Try Robert Half, as well.

https://blog.imocha.io/best-tech-recruitment-agencies-london

That makes sense, I think one of the main issues with an internship is how much value he’ll get out of it. If you get a good one they’re great, however looking after, mentoring and teaching interns isn’t always that straightforward in the real world. Generally time isn’t accounted for in the analyst or coders workload, which is most likely why they’re being offered to final year students as they (generally) require less handholding. I’m probably explaining things you already know though 😁

If he worked for a temp agency (I’m taking this as a temp in a ‘real’ workplace), does he think he has the required level of skill to provide an adequate level of work? From experience, while University courses teach well within a controlled environment, applying those skills over real world data is completely different. The skills I learnt on my course were a good base for clean data, but in no way enough for a temp job as my thinking around code structure and writing wasn’t developed enough. If his only learning of code is through his course I’d recommend extending it and teaching himself. There are so many resources freely available on line that are excellent, it’s how I taught myself the skills that got me my job. It might not be what he wants to hear but really the skills on the course are not enough.

Hopefully that isn’t too negative! Sounds like he is on the right track, and it’s a great job. I love going to work every day and the self teaching was worth every second.

Thanks. Yes, that all makes sense. Though I'm sure there are temp jobs with "data" in the title that he could do with the skills and analytical nous he has, even if just data entry, data cleansing, and basic data manipulation and reporting in Excel - it's all good experience for the cv. He has other types of work experience from casual jobs, but nothing office based yet.