A guide for experienced and new promotional staff

Promotional work offers a varied pattern of work, as well as a great way of challenging yourself to try something new. From traveling to meeting amazing clients, you may also want to work with a promotional staffing agency who looks after every member of its staff and gives them great opportunities to grow. But just how do you find a premier promotional staffing agency?

 START by understanding how a promotional staffing agency work

Firstly, you need to be confident about how this kind of agency and employment works. In most cases, you are not employed by the agency but offer your services on a self-employed basis through them. This provides protection against not being paid by clients, as well as taking advantage of them doing all the promo and marketing work to get clients.

Clients contact the promotional staffing agency telling them how many staff they need, the location, skills, and abilities they want promo staff to have and so on. The agency then matches the client requests against their database of staff and skills. You may be offered the assignment direct or you may need to agree to a phone interview with the client – it varies from one client and one assignment to another.

CHECK their assessment process

A promotional staffing agency with an excellent track record is one that has a robust assessment process. For example, at Envisage, we interview staff, usually over the phone unless we feel a face-to-face interview is appropriate. We want to know about you, your skills and abilities, as well as the ambitions you have for being promotional or marketing staff with our agency.

Other agencies may not interview but ‘keep your details on file’ possibly contacting you in the future when an assignment becomes available.

VALIDATE the promotional staffing agency’s reputation

In terms of promotional staffing, reputation is everything. Whether a client is a small business or large global corporation, they want a promotional staffing agency that can provide the right people in the right place at the right time.

Reliability and professionalism are key and again, this stems from how the agency organises itself. Ask questions such as what training and development opportunities would the agency support? Assess how successful they are at finding work for their staff and consider whether they have a certain specialism or not.

MAKE SURE you ask about payment

You want to know how much you’ll be paid per assignment and how payment works, as well as when you can expect to receive payment after completing an assignment.

Most agencies will pay their staff quickly – usually after receiving feedback from both the client and promotional staff team members. You may find that a premier agency will pay a retainer fee so that you only work for them and not their competitors.

TAKE A LOOK AT…

• Website – read through their website to see what kind of information is on there and the kind of clients they work with. Most agencies also have an online portal for staff to access and to register to work with them.
• Incentives – from ‘promo staff member of the month’ to discounts, a successful promotional staffing agency will understand that looking after their staff means keeping hold of the talent that drives their business forward.
• How to apply – this should be more than simply filling in your name and address. In other words, it should be the same standard as applying for any other vacant position.

Find out more about working for Envisage Promotions

We are currently recruiting promotional staff to continue to fulfill a range of exhibition, trade show and conference assignments from our clients. As well as the UK exhibition circuit, we are also active on an international basis with promotional staff attending events in Europe, the Middle East, and America.

To find out more, call us on 0844 800 0071 or upload your CV and two headshot photos via our website here.