Employed through agency

BArra

Does anybody have some knowledge on the potential pitfalls or indeed benefits of getting a job through an agency would mean for a candidate?

I have only ever been employed directly via the company I applied for in the past so am a little curious

The agency has advised me that if successful I would be employed by them (the agency), for a contract with the actual company

TeaBagMania

Went down this road, not once did i ever get paid on-time. Agency always had an excuse.
Would have walked off the job but i really liked the company so i stuck out the contract.

I would never use an agency again unless it was a direct hire

BArra

interesting to hear that, the company the job is for is a rather large multinational who definitely has their own HR dept and hiring processes nailed down so its curious that they are using an agency to hire

if you or anybody else has some valuable information on questions I could be asking the agency I would appreciate it

I assume your employee rights are somewhat impacted also since you are not hired directly by the company you are working for day to day

Mrs OBumble

BArra wrote: »

I assume your employee rights are somewhat impacted also since you are not hired directly by the company you are working for day to day

Provided youre an employee of the agency, not a contractor, then rights are no different. Prrks may be less though.

With some MNCs it can be safer to be an agency worker: if a direct hire gets laid off they cannot go to work for another team within the company's stand-down period, which may be 6-12 months or longer. Whereas an agency worker can be re-hired almost immediately if the company desire arises. (Yes I'm speaking from personal experience of this. )

mikemac2

I was a direct hire in a US multinational and the agency staff were paid more than us. We all did the same work and tbh you wouldn't always even know who was agency or not because it didn't matter to us.

The reason for their higher rate is not as many advantages like training course reimbursement and various other stuff in the handbook.

Day to day on the teams it mattered little. We would ask the agency staff to buy us tea and cakes because they got paid weekly and us monthly