Temping in London by MishyM
I will go over a number of different types of work you can find in London. To begin with, temping is a great idea if you are only here for a year or two. it allows you to work only a week somewhere if you wish, or a day, or 6 months! You can choose the sort of company you want to work for as well, and it allows you to take of time to travel for a month if you wish.-Temp work
Temp work is what I have been doing. I must have applied to, I kid you not, about 50 temp agencies when i first arrived. The thing with temp agencies is it takes them a LIFETIME to reply to you if you just email them. I recommend you call them, and have a chat to someone at the agency. This allows you to sell yourself, and your abilities!
Then they will ask you to email them your resume, and by this time you have already let them know who you are, and they will be more inclined to help you. Most of these agencies need you to have relevant work experience - from the jobs I have had through them, you don't really need it, but they ask for it anyway.
It also help a lot if you are good with word, excel, powerpoint and can type at a decent level. (this is for general office work)
Some temp agencies recruit for finance jobs, marketing jobs etc - just have a look on google and you will find plenty that suit your experience and the sort of jobs you are looking for. And if you are offered a job you don't want to do though your agency, don't be afraid to say no! They will find you another job, you don't need to worry about insulting them by turning one down!
This is a good site that lists recruitment agencies by speciality and will help you find one for banking, education, office work etc:
http://www.1st4jobsinlondon.co.uk/agencies/Some good agencies from my experience are:
Tate: Tate is my favourite so far - the recruitment agent I have worked with there has been fantastic. When I was looking for work she would call to check how things were going, and to let me know she was finding something for me. I also had plenty of other people from there call me up about jobs I was actually interested in. I highly recommend them if you are looking for general office work in London! (http://www.tate.co.uk/)
Crone Corkill: This is another great agency, that actually made an effort to find me something I was really interested in, and also calls to check if you need work and so on. They do look for more experience that most agencies, so you probably wouldn?t get away with applying to them if you didn?t have at least 1-2 years experience. They also recruit multilingual people. (http://www.cronecorkill.co.uk/)
Prospect-us: A not for profit recruitment agency - good if you want to work for a charity, university, NGO. (http://www.prospect-us.co.uk/)
I highly recommend these as agencies that put in the extra effort to keep in contact with you, find you a job you like and are just really helpful and friendly.