I think that the magic of a comedian is his ability to step out of reality and look at everything going on in the wold from the outside looking in.  I am sure that if there is alien life out there, they have visited Earth, laughed and left.

The point I am getting to is that it is a lot easier to see how things really are when you are on the outside looking in.  When you are involved and completely engrossed in a situation, you can never get the whole picture.  That may be why the grass is always greener on the other side and why you can see your neighbour’s faults but not your own.

I recently spent some time in Edmonton, Alberta and was amazed at the job market.  On one hand, I walked around the West Edmonton Mall and noticed that of the 800 plus stores in the mall, close to half of them had signs that they are hiring.  I also had the chance to speak to dozens of teenagers and young adults who were unemployed and looking for work.  Assuming that these teenagers and young adults would be interested in working retail, there are plenty of jobs available to get them working.

When you walk through the mall, you see one store at a time and even if they are hiring, what are the chances of that one hire being you?  On the other hand, if you look at the mall from the outside, you will see over 400 help wanted signs and if you start applying, how can one of them not be you.

I suggest that no matter where you are in life, what you are doing or what type of job you are interested in, take a couple of steps back and look at the big picture.  There are tons of opportunities right out there in front of your face but some of them are too close and can only be seen when you take a couple of steps back.

If you are looking for jobs in Edmonton, Alberta, sign up as a Temp on Temphunt.

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Just for the fun of it, here are some more help wanted signs from the West Edmonton Mall.

Although going from one extreme of poverty to the other extreme of having more money than you can possibly know what to do with, is still a rare event, it is getting easier to move from one class of wealth to the next.

I know, the media has been telling you otherwise for quite some time now.  How the American dream is dying and that if you are born in one class, chances are you will stay there for the rest of your life.  After all, it is our parents who raise us and teach us what we need to know to get ahead in life.   The media has been drilling it into our heads that it is no longer possible or if it is at all possible, very difficult to move up in the world.  Unemployment is through the roof and underemployment is just as bad.  In the “olden days”, parents who didn’t go to college, sent their kids to college so that their children will be able to build a better life for themselves.  Now that the average college graduate has trouble finding a job, never mind a decent job, the system just doesn’t really work anymore.

Guess what?  The system is changing just as the times are changing.

Enter the Millenials

Millenials, Generation Y or whatever you want to call the generation of people born between 1980 and the present (2012 for now), are the first generation that is teaching their parents.  Traditionally, parents teach their children as they grow up and continue to teach them throughout their lives.  No matter how old you are, you can always count on your parents for advice.  This generation, there is somewhat of a role reversal.  With the advances of technology and the tools that we use every single day, the older generation is learning a second language (modern technology) at an older age.  Millenials were born into it and are learning it all as a first language.  Children are now teaching their parents how to use their phones, how to use their computers to watch tv and movies and how to communicate with the world through social networks.  This is unprecedented.

The world is changing and the Millenials are the best equipped to deal with it.  Every company can benefit from the younger generation to bring some fresh perspective into the workplace.  The problem won’t be getting a Millenial into an office though.  The problem will be keeping them.

Millenials Love Change

Millenials are growing up in a world that is constantly changing.  They are going through life craving change.  To ask them to join a company and perform the same task over and over for years just won’t do.  They would prefer to work on a project and then move on to another project.  They want to build things and see them come to life.  They want to change the world.

Many Millenials are choosing work that offers the change that they crave and the ability to do it on their own schedule.  Freelancing, consulting, contracting and temp work are all common ways for Millenials to fit their careers into their lives as opposed to the other way around.

Rags To Riches: The Millenial Tale

The “rags to riches” is only figurative.  The goal of most Millenials is a different kind of riches, it is to be happy, to be fulfilled and to make the world a better place.  We have been seeing and will continue to see many technology startups aimed at making the world a better place.  Along the way, we may even see a whole bunch of Mark Zuckerbergs.

Temp Work Can Be a Form of Entrepreneurship

I don’t believe that being an entrepreneur and being a temp worker are all that different. In both fields you get to meet and work with many different people in different places and do different jobs.  An entrepreneur starting a business has to wear every hat in his business until he can afford to hire people to take over those roles.  So far, I temped at Temphunt as an administrator, manager, marketer, accountant, bookkeeper, developer, content writer, janitor, IT department and many other roles.  In my temping days and even in my years working for a company, things weren’t that different.  I did many different jobs for different companies and clients and I loved being able to jump around, try new things and learn new skills.  As a temp I have done a whole bunch of the roles mentioned above as well as some other jobs such as valet, bar tender, waiter, salesman, recruiter and fundraiser.   The difference between temp work and entrepreneurship in my opinion is that temp work you are doing for someone else and entrepreneurship you are doing for yourself.  The reason I started Temphunt is because it shouldn’t be that way.

The Problem With Temp Work

The problem with temp work is that you are working for somebody else.  I’m not talking about the company that you work for, I am talking about the agency that sends you there.  Any job in the world and any role of entrepreneurship involves working for someone else.  You could be doing physical or mental work for a company or building a product for someone else to use but at the end of the day, to be successful, someone has to be happy with your work.  You can do that as a temp worker and make your manager or supervisor happy but when your job is over, you start right back at the beginning.  As an entrepreneur you can find more clients and customers.  You can build your reputation and get referrals.  Why can’t temp workers function the same way?

Temp Workers Can Be Entrepreneurs

Whether you are working as an temporary administrative assistant or a temp CEO, you can and should be building your reputation as well by doing the best work you can possibly produce.  Meet new people, make new contacts and learn how other companies function from the inside.  Each of these new experiences can help you at your next job, even if your next job is doing something completely different.  Build your career through different types of work, different projects and different places.  You will learn new skills at each job and skills are transferable.  Skills that you learn and build in one role can often help you in your next role in one way or another.  Just keep learning and building on your foundation and you can have an amazing career as a temp worker and/or an entrepreneur.

Career 2.0

Now that you’ve seen the similarities between temp work and entrepreneurship you can understand why I love temp work and what it has to do with building Temphunt.com.  As a traditional temp worker, you can build your skills and use them for your next temp job but they won’t necessarily help you get your next temp job.  Getting hired for a job, temp or otherwise is half that battle.  That is where Temphunt and my passion for it come in.  Temphunt allows you to not only find temp work but to promote yourself as a temp worker and build your reputation so that each job will help you get your next job.  As you build your career on Temphunt, companies will start seeking you out as opposed to you seeking out the jobs.

I am passionate about temp work, entrepreneurship and helping others become entrepreneurs through temp work and that is why I started Temphunt and am dedicated to making it and you as a temp, a success.

In today’s day and age,  that is the question on everybody’s mind.  Last week, Apple announced their new iPhone 5 along with a whole bunch of other upgrades including iOS 6.  You may be one of the millions of people think about upgrading to the new iPhone or you may be considering keeping your current phone and waiting for the next upgrade.  Today, iOS 6 is coming out and there is sure to be a rush to download the new operating system and take advantage of the 200 new features.  Even if you are not a fan of Apple, you are still constantly upgrading.  You exchange your old obsolete phone for a new one every couple of years.  You buy new computers with new software to keep up with the times.  You probably even have a few upgrades waiting to take place on your desktop.  Yesterday’s tools may be good enough for today but will definitely not be good enough for tomorrow.

With old technology, you will slow yourself down and deprive yourself of tools that can help you be more productive.

Besides technology, you are probably thinking about upgrading other parts of your life such as your mattress which isn’t giving you the sleep that it used to, your car which doesn’t drive the way it used to or even your living space that needs to expand to fit your growing family or collection of “stuff”.

Not often given the thought it deserves, is something else that needs upgrading more than anything else in your life, your skills.

Upgrade Your Skills

In the past, acquiring skills was extremely top heavy.  You would go to college for four years to acquire all the skills that you need for your career and then jump into the work force whether you were ready or not.  You were able to coast for years or even decades on the skills that you learned at the beginning of your career.  Not so anymore though.  Today, you need to keep your skills up to date and continue acquiring skills all the way through your career.

There are small upgrades such as moving from Windows XP to Windows Vista to Windows 7 and shortly to Windows 8.  It takes a little learning curve but you can get the hang of the new system and figure out where the star button is in less than a day or two.  There are bigger upgrades though that take a lot more than just a day or two of messing around on your desk top.  The economy is changing, industries are changing and the way that many companies work is changing.  To keep up with the times, you need to adapt, learn new skills and sometimes even change tracks altogether.  Just because you went to school for one type of work, doesn’t mean that you are stuck there forever and just because the skills you have are obsolete, doesn’t mean that you are obsolete.

Upgrade Yourself by Learning

Learning should be a life long process.  If you ever feel that your learning has come to a halt, stop and think about how you can get back on track and start learning again.  You don’t even have to go back to school.  Pretty much everything that you need to learn anything can be found in a few Google searches.   Make time every day or at least once a week to learn something new.  It could be work related or just something you are interested in.  Learning gets things to start bouncing around in your head and gives you ideas that can lead to many new opportunities.

One of the best ways to keep learning is to move around to different environments and see how other people and companies work.  Anybody who has started a new job will tell you that you will learn more during your first week or two on the job than you will learn sticking around for a year or more.  The amount of learning at any job slows down the longer that you stay there.  A great way to keep learning and take advantage of many “first week” learning experiences is through temp work.  Temp work allows you to take the skills that you have, merge them with your experience and take on new learning opportunities at a tremendous speed.  By the time that your temp job is complete, you will have more upgraded skills to take on your next temp project.

Upgrade to Career 2.0 by signing up as a Temp and building your new career.

Well, Forbes got at least one thing right.  Times are changing and temp work is on the rise.  What they are mistaken about is that temp work is changing as well.  It’s not only companies who think they have it good by being able to use temp workers to beef up their staff during busy times and let them go when things slow down.  Workers in general are getting fed up of the 9-5 and working their entire careers for someone else, just hoping that if they keep pushing, that they’ll be able to take another step up the ladder.

Careers are NOT Dead!

Careers are not dead.  Careers as we know them might be dead, maybe on their deathbed but more likely in a nursing home waiting for their children to visit.  Just like everything else has changed in the last 30 years, careers are no different.  A career is basically “a course of progress through life” says the Oxford English Dictionary (thanks Wikipedia).  Nowhere in the definition does it say that you have to get a job, work as many hours as possible for the same employer and then retire when all of your working years have been sucked out of you.

Think about the advances in technology over the last decade alone and what it has done to the world as we knew it.  Newspapers are struggling to stay alive because you can now get better news instantly from your smartphone, tablet or laptop.  The better or stronger newspapers are finding ways to stay alive by adapting to the times.  The music industry was being killed by Napster and other file sharing tools that made things easier for people who wanted to listen to music now and not have to pay $17 for the one song that they wanted to listen to.  The music industry is alive today thanks to some adapting to the times (and Apple) which makes it super easy to buy one song at a time or listen on demand.

Can You Spot the Trend?

In case you haven’t noticed, there is a trend that can be seen by just about anyone.  People are moving away from broken systems for the convenience and ease that technology has given us.  Careers are no different.   In the past, just like you bought your compact discs or cassette tapes and read the news from your local newspaper, you built your career by taking full time jobs that would advance your rank, skill and wage.  Just like the breakfast table is no longer where you get all of your news, your career does not have to be at the expense of your life (or at least social and family life) anymore.

Temp Work is on the Rise

Yes, temp work is on the rise but temp work is no longer just menial work for high school dropouts.  Companies are hiring temps for every type of job from entry level to executives.  There are temp CEOs, CTO, CMOs and every other C_O you can think of.  Top accountants are choosing to take it easy during the year and make their money during tax season (for a higher wage).  Many lawyers are choosing to exchange their climb to partner for an easier life, taking cases on their own terms.  Temp work is now the new career.  Imagine, building your career around your life instead of the other way around.

Right now, we are at the turning point.  We know that companies are hiring temps, heck, the temp industry has been growing by over 10% per year for over a decade.  We know that unemployment has exploded and underemployment is just as bad.  What we are missing, solely because we are hanging on to the past, is that temp work is thriving and that you can build a career as a temp (get that negative connotation out of your head), greater than a traditional career.

Careers Are Alive! Long Live the Temp!

Very often Temps are treated differently to put it nicely. Everybody knows that the temp is there short term to perform a specific task and therefore are not included in the company culture. This behavior hurts the companies, it hurts the temps and it hurts the quality of work that the temp is there to do. Over here at Temphunt, we are trying to change that and leave it to Zappos to be the standout example that leads the way.

Brandis is a recruiting supervisor at Zappos.com who is responsible for hiring quite a few temps and she has great advice for others in Human Resourses about working with temps.

Zappos.com is known for their customer service and they hire many of their temps to work as part of their customer loyalty team in the call center. In a normal company, you may think that putting temps in the most important function of a company is a bad move but not if you are Zappos. Zappos treats their temps so well that the temps feel like part of a family and work hard not to disapoint.

At Zappos, culture is everything, employees are a family that makes up the culture and temps are treated like employees. As Brandis said, if everyone gets a free t-shirt, the temps are included. Lunch is free for all employees and as long as you are a temp, it’s free for you too. I never worked or temped at Zappos but when I visited, I did have a free smoothie and it was good!

When the temps are treated well, they want to give it their all and continue working for the company.  As a recruiter, you couldn’t ask for more.

Do you have any tips for temps or tips for hr hunters of your own?  Leave them in the comments.

Besides Temphunt, Lavie shares some other great blogs in the post, that are worth looking into.  Lavie’s contact information is at the top of his blog and I am sure that he’d love to hear from you.

“Right now, when companies are hiring, 30% of them are temps.” Says Brian Hamilton, CEO of Sageworks – a company that brands itself as the “Leader in the Financial Analysis of Privately Held Companies.” In his recent interview with Fox Business, he discusses the newly acquired statistics for June in terms of employment.  The numbers say that out of 80,000 people hired last month, 25,000 of them were temporary workers.

What is the reason behind these figures?

As the economy is unpredictable these days, companies are building strategies and plans on a shorter leash.  Instead of creating 2-year plans, forecasting has now been decreased to where they will be 6 to 12 months from now. They are uncertain of the stability of their establishment, and this anxiety has translated in a high demand for temporary workers.  Even if they are more expensive (they don’t have to be) to contract, the addition of temps does not create a dent in their permanent overhead rate – which is a bigger concern for most companies.

Another factor is evolution.  With the ever – changing effects that technological breakthroughs produce, a lot of companies are struggling to innovate to keep up.  Their trial goods and services create vacancies that most entrepreneurs feel safer to fill with temporary workers. A good example of this would be tech companies who risk launching new products into the market, retail lines who are now trying to fulfill orders worldwide, and service companies who are expanding their L.O.B.s.  By opting for temps, they have a better grasp at what their trial phase will cost them, and would have less apprehension should the attempt go sour.

Should Temps be Weary that These Companies are in Danger of Closing Down?

There is no cause for alarm. As Brian states, majority of their clients are still showing positive growth despite the economic trend.  It may be that companies are opting to play it safe.  And even if the case is such, there are 27 million business owners out there who have seats to fill in at one time or the other.

Temporary Workers Should Be Looking Ahead.

As the demand is clearly there, temps should be optimistic about the future.  This means that there will be temp jobs available should the current jobs they have end.

The Difference Between a Permanent Position and a Temp Position is Just a State of Mind.  Temps have the upper hand when it comes to planning out their career path.  As temp jobs have set ending dates upon signing, workers have the ability to seek employment in anticipation of the loss.  It makes it highly possible then for the individual to have no episodes of unemployment.  This is one of the more evident advantages temps have over permanent hires who worry about job security each time their employer’s growth figures take a dive.  They snoop around and secretly attend interviews elsewhere, while temps can openly seek other job opportunities.  Temp workers are also often rehired after their job expires, either as a full time employee or as a consultant.

The only question you have to ask yourself is, “why aren’t you temping yet?”

Image from FreeDigitalPhotos.net