Dudes Calm the Heck down

I worked for spherion for a couple of months as an internal recruiter. Just to let you know how it went, I quit after 2 months of being abused, sworn at, mistreated, lied to and had my (originally agreed to) pay cut. They didn't train me, talk to me and wanted me to do some pretty frikkin disturbing stuff.

However, I still don't think of spherion as a bad company, but I do think that my branch was one of the worst (is that even a word?) branches in the whole corporation. I hate generalizing like some of the people on here do. You have one bad experience with a company and automatically 800 branches with 50 thousand people all s__u_c_k? That's like "Corporate Racism" Lol.

Anyways, dont generalize but I will agree that spherion does have a higher percentage of BS recruiters than most I will not go as far as saying that they ALL s*_u*/c_k.
My 2 cents,

The Dude

That is their corporate culture. People keep getting looped in and not paying attention to the facts.

These staffing agencies feed off of people who are unemployed. How much lower do you have to get. They run you around, having you to use your time, money and not to mention gas for interviews with the promise of employment which most of the times are not there.

Great unemployed candidates are truly a gem to the staffing industry, but are a rare find. We certainly love to place qualified individuals who are currently unemployed, though most of our candidates are employed and are looking for better career opportunities.

I have dealt with Tamara for over 6 months and she has been wonderful. I also have nothing but good things to say regarding Spherion. I had been out of work for over a year and Tamara has placed me on 2 jobs including the permanent job that I am currently working.

Spherion is so very very very unorganized it moved me to sign up for this blog....my Goodness I have impeccable skills and they run run run me around and make promises and DO not follow thru and drop the ball and make me fill out forms with NO follow up...

Then another job comes thru that I am so very qualified for, oh yeh we cant hire you becuz you talked to another rep, but I say that rep has not followed up..so sorry she quit but we cant hire you

DO NOT DO DO NOT WORK WITH SPHERION..THEY ARE SO MISLEADING

Spherion sucks. I've worked with quite a few temp services here in London and they were by far the worst. They posted an ad last year for TNT Logistics (now known as Ceva) and they lead me to believe that it was a permanent job. It took three weeks after my interview to start the job, they kept delaying and delaying, I'm convinced that they finally put me out there because they were annoyed by me asking when I was going to start.

They made me pay for my own criminal background check, which is the first time that's ever happened,(we can't absorb the cost I was told) but when I started the job, I was told I wasn't what they were looking for after only eight days. They brought twenty of us in and were down to only two in a few weeks.

Three weeks later they posted the same ad for another twenty or so people.

If the job was nothing but a temp spot and a so-called "trial", they could've at least told me not to expect permanent employment. The reason they didn't want to front the cost of the background check is because they knew damn well what TNT would do. Spherion only cares about profit, not about their employees.

What a joke of a temp service, and TNT Logistics, considering they supply things needed for war vehicles, you think they would be a little more respectable to people they bring in and not screw them.

The reason I was let go? I wasn't properly trained and mislead on how to keep logs. If I was making a mistake, my supervisor should have told me what I was doing wrong and I would've corrected it.

i remember a time (80's and up to mid 90's) when i worked as a temp in milwaukee wisconsin. i was signed up with several agencies for non-temp to hire assignments. it's what i wanted at the time and i was VERY happy with the situation. there were times when i would get home and find a message from another agency. i'd call, they'd tell me about a job. if it paid more money, i accepted it. i'd call the the current agency i was working for and explain i had something else going on and they say "o.k. good luck to you. call us when you're available". looking back it's almost unbelievable.
nowadays the bar has been raised so high. if i turn down a job, i must not want to really work (i applied a few years ago at one place and after explaining what i was looking for which was light clerical, i was offered a job at a shoe factory. i told the young lady that that wasn't what i was interested in and she said that she would put in my file that i refused work)and because i live in a predominately white suburb, it's either assumed i'm from the wrong side of town or my hair and eyes are too dark so i must be in the wrong place. i can't prove what i'm saying but i know for a fact that i have encountered racial bias of one type or other. i have light olive skin and it's hard to place my heritage.
such a shame that the idea of helping someone get a job to pay bills isn't how it's done anymore. i suspect that the more critical the job market becomes, the more unemployed we're going to have.

So I hope someone here can help me out. I just started a placement thru Spherion with a Computer Hard Drive manufacturer monday last week. This morning a buddy of mine I just graduated with calls me and says the owner of his company just asked him if I was still available to hire and asked for my info. The position at my friends company far surpasses my current placement , to include a company car, so no real contest. My question is...can either Spherion or the Hard Drive Manufacturer financially penalize (i.e. $$$fine$$$) me? I took the placement at the H.D. mfg. as i had little other choice, i needed work immediately to feed my family and keep a roof over our heads. Now that I have an opportunity to hold a real career with real pay, & real bennies. I am afraid i might be stuck. Please, Dude in Newton or anyone else, please brief me on: Employees quitting Spherion , and or quitting spherion placement polices!

You can quit whenever you want, that's why it's referred to as a temp service. But what they don't really tell you is this. "We want you to give us complete devotion, loyalty and be available to work at the drop of a hat. But at the same time, we want to be able to pull you from a job whenever we want, and you can't ask questions.".

Best thing to do is to give them a bit of notice, at least til the end of the week to give them ample time to find a replacement. You never know when you may need them again in the future, and it's best not to burn your bridges. Even if that particular temp service blows goats.