Over the Weekend - Connor Klosterman

When I first read over the directions for the assignment I was curious to find out what Manpower Inc. entails as I had never heard of the company before.  When I went to their website and searched around a little, I was still a little fuzzy on what they actually do.  This caused me to do my own search on the web to dig a little more into what they do.  After doing that, my understanding of what this company does is post job listings for other companies and then interviews qualified candidates to select the right one for the company who hired them.  If I was a company looking to hire someone, I do not think I would feel comfortable letting other people select who I want to work for me.  I feel as if I would have a better grasp on who would succeed at my company and who would not.  Apparently my thought is not reciprocated by many business owners as is evident by the billions of dollars this industry makes each year and by the copious amounts of job listings on Manpower’s website.   

            When I went to search for job listings, the first city I searched in was Madison.  There I found 17 different jobs that were looking to be filled.  There was about an even mix between jobs that are permanent and ones that only employed people through a contract.  The contract jobs appeared to be jobs that consisted of responsibilities that involved high levels of labor and were more blue collared jobs.  On the other hand, many of the permanent jobs were jobs that required college degrees.  Not all of them were entirely white collar jobs, but they did require more of the applicant than did most/many of the contract jobs being offered.  This find was not consistent with that of my hometown, Germantown, WI (a suburb of Milwaukee), which only had one job that was being offered.  The job was a shipping and receiving clerk that was offered under contract.  The job was intended to only last for about 2 months to help with the higher demand the company would receive around the holiday time.  The skills required for the job did not require much more than a high school degree to be successful.  I see my future career taking me somewhere in the D.C. area so I decided to look for jobs through Manpower in that area.  I was not overly surprised to find most of the jobs being offered were contract jobs which are typically more labor intensive, blue collar jobs.  Much of D.C. is professional jobs, but I feel the type of professional jobs there would not be going through an outside source to fill them.  A lot of the jobs were also in the service industry, which seems like a very typical job that would use this type of system.   

            Overall, I did not come across any job that was too important or had serious responsibilities.  All the jobs I found were ones that could be replaced by someone else easily and would not suffer losses while they were searching for someone.  I come back to my original thought after realizing this conclusion.  More important jobs do not go through such a company as Manpower to fill the position.  Important jobs need to be filled by someone close to the position and company to make sure the person being hired for the job is completely up to the standards of the company doing the hiring.  So while satellite interviewers are fine for less important jobs, they do not live up to the standards needed to hire someone of very important positions.