Many people prize a full-time job over a temporary position or contract work, but there are numerous reasons you should seek out – and even embrace – a temporary job.

Workers should be exploring every opportunity with the uncertainty in today’s job market, and many are doing just that. During the economic recovery from 2009 to 2013, 19 percent of all new jobs created were temporary positions – an indication that temporary work isn’t a small niche in the job market.

A Temporary Position Provides Many Holistic Perks

If you’ve been without a job for some time, it’s easy to lose hope in your future job and career prospects. Embracing temporary work is a way to give you an emotional boost, and give you confidence to move forward with your career.

A temporary position can also increase your knowledge about your industry or career path. Because you’re not permanently committed to the job, you can look at it as a way to observe the many different kinds of jobs within a company, how a particular work environment functions, or what jobs you might want to have 10 or 20 years from now.

Temporary jobs also increase the size of your network. Workplaces are social environments, and during your temporary assignment, making a new professional connection is just as likely as making a new personal acquaintance.

A Temporary Position Benefits Your Career

Holistic perks to temporary work are nice, but the benefits to your career are the real reason to embrace temporary work.

In years past, temporary work might have been for just a few days or a couple of weeks, but now many companies are bringing in contract employees for months, and possibly more than a year. Companies use these long-term temporary assignments as a way to ‘audition’ prospective full-time employees, and performing well often leads to a job offer.

Even if a temporary assignment doesn’t end with a job offer, working the position is a way to gain experience, which is particularly important for recent graduates. Classrooms often fall short when it comes to teaching applicable, hands-on skills, and sometimes the only way to gain those skills is through employment.

Getting work through a staffing agency – and doing a good job – also means establishing a good reputation with that agency. Staffing companies like to send the best representatives out for work, and good workers often find the end of one temporary assignment is quickly followed by the start of another.

You might think that a series of unrelated temporary assignments in a range of different industries looks bad, but future prospective employers will see it as taking initiative and a desire to work hard. A series of temp assignments also means you won’t have large employment gaps on your resume.

Cornerstone should be your first stop when it comes to finding temporary or contract work. Many of our contracted employees go on to become full-time employees with our client companies. Whether you’d like to specialize in a particular industry, or if you’re simply looking for work of any kind, contact us to learn about the various opportunities we have available.