I went through recruiters for contract positions at Pfizer. It usually means you get paid less than a traditional hire and have no benefits, but in my experience if you are good at what you do, and you fit in with your team, you have a good chance at getting hired on after the contract ends. The contract set-up allows the company to give you a trial period without having to pay extra for things like benefits. If you have a contact in the company, it's the best way to go, but if not, recruiters are a great resource.

I had worked with Aerotek Scientific previously for summer work while I was in college, so I called them and they set me up with one of their recruiters. He interviewed me so that he knew what I was qualified for and what I wanted in a job. I found that he was a wealth of knowledge and he immediately knew of several positions he wanted to try and fit me for. Within 2 weeks I had several positions to look through. In fact, on one day I had two different phone interviews scheduled with two different groups at Pfizer. After I interviewed with the first one that group went to the second one and told them they couldn't interview me.

Manpower and Aerotek Scientific are two great staffing firms. Be careful though. There are some smaller companies out there that are trying to break into this market. One of them that a friend was hooked up with was Artech Scientific. They were based out of India, which she didn't find out until later when she had issues, and they were really hard to work with. I recommend sticking with well known companies.