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“It's critical to your professional identity and your career that you not allow yourself to fall for mediocre clients and mediocre projects,” says Ron Blair, managing director for CenturyResources, a financial/accounting staffing service in Glendale, California. “Don't just fill a seat for a few weeks and earn a few dollars doing work that doesn't make a difference. If you want to be successful as a project or temporary professional, you have to strive for impact.”
Sounds good, but how do you do it? You can start by not only weighing how much you’ll be paid, but also considering a company’s culture and purpose. Experts explain how this more well-rounded approach will help you decide when it’s right to accept an assignment.
A Nontoxic Culture
One of the most common factors job seekers overlook is cultural fit, says Kelly Nolan Shumaker, director of communications for Aquent Marketing Staffing in Chicago. “This is important, because research has shown that the principal reason employees choose to leave an organization is their discomfort with its culture.”
Shumaker suggests asking these questions to find out about an organization’s culture when you’re interviewing for a temporary position:
- What qualities do the most successful employees in your company possess?
- How does the team I’ll be working with handle conflict or differing opinions?
- How does the company recognize employee accomplishments?
- What is the management style of the person I’ll be reporting to?
- Describe the personalities and styles of the company leaders.
- What are the company’s values?
- Which philanthropic charities does the company support?
A Clear and Worthwhile Assignment
Determine specifically what you will be doing on the project. “You want to find out if they've developed a project plan with clear objectives, milestones and deliverables,” Blair says. “Don't settle for vague and general answers like ‘You'll be doing accounting’ or ‘You'll be doing market research.’”
If you aren’t given a detailed response, “you may find yourself making copies for the internal staff who want the glory themselves,” notes Blair. “This is your life and career we're talking about. If you want to make a good decision, you need to know what will be expected of you.”
A Vision of the Future
“Assignments should either give you experience with new skills, help solidify your expertise and focus on a particular discipline or fill in gaps where you know you don’t have enough experience,” explains James Wright, a partner at Bridge Technical Solutions, an information technology staffing firm based in East Greenwich, Connecticut.
“For example, in the tech industry, you might take an assignment using a new programming language even if it’s at a lesser rate, because you know that that language is becoming hot,” Wright says. “As a temp taking a job as an executive assistant, you might consider if this is an A-list company, or will [you] be working with a top executive –- things that will turn heads when people see it on [your] resume in the future. Someone considering a finance assignment who has never had experience with credit card-transaction processing might be interested in an assignment that will give him or her exposure to that skill.”
A More Informed Decision
Considering these elements of any offer will help you make a high-quality decision about the next period of your working life.
“People often think, ‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. I’m only going to be there for n months,’” says Joyce Gioia-Herman, coauthor of Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People and president and CEO of The Herman Group, a workforce consulting and training firm in Greensboro, North Carolina. “Then the assignment is renewed.”
