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The Recession and The Baby Boomers

Let’s face it. The Great Recession put quite a dent in the careers of many of us, particularly in the Baby Boomer generation. Those in the 55-and-over age group, got hit particularly hard as many employers needed to seriously cut costs in the face of drastically reduced revenues.

Older employees, while certainly highly experienced with 20+ years of OJT, often found themselves the first-to-go, as many employers saw their higher salaries as “low hanging fruit” from which to improve short term results by slashing payroll.

While we don’t aim to justify nor criticize these tactics, the fact remains that a lot of highly qualified professionals are out there looking for meaningful employment, and admittedly, it is still tough to find work in the aftermath of all these cutbacks.

Here’s a suggestion

We would like to offer a suggestion to those experienced candidates looking for employment: apply to a Temporary Staffing Company. A Temp Agency can offer a number of advantages to help you in your search:

• Applying to a Staffing Company doesn’t cost you anything: fees are included in the billing rate paid by the client-company.
• Skills evaluation: A reputable Staffing Company, will perform an assessment of your technical skills. They’ll let you know how you stack up against other candidates in your field and give you some very valuable insight as to any training gaps that you should address. They even have training modules that you can use to brush up on your skills for free.
• Identifying Potential Employers: A Temporary Staffing Company spends a lot of time on marketing and developing client relationships in order to uncover good employment opportunities. Why duplicate their efforts? You can leverage those relationships to quickly find good positions that meet your skills and experience.
• Finding good matches. Nothing is more frustrating than blindly sending out cover letters and resumes in hopes of getting past a company’s screening process and getting an interview. A reputable Temporary Staffing Company already has established contacts developed good relationships within the prospective company’s HR department or other key decision-makers. If you are a good fit for an open position, the Staffing Company can often make that interview happen a lot faster than you can on your own.

Next Steps

So why not think “outside the box” a little bit and let a Temporary Staffing Company help you find a good home for your experience and hard-won skills?

I can tell you we are always looking for good candidates and would love to hear from you.

Ellie Patterson has been in the staffing industry for twenty-seven years and is a co-founder and partner at The Temp Connection in Tucson, AZ. She can be reached via email atellie@thetempconnection.com.