They go by many names: employment agencies, staffing agencies, recruitment agencies, headhunters. No matter what name you prefer to use, they all share a common goal — to match employees in search of jobs to employers in search of candidates.
To help you understand just how one of these agencies can be a tremendous help in bringing job seekers and employers together, we need to take a little trip back in time to gain an understanding of how it began.
By leveraging wider nets of targeted candidate attraction … recruitment agencies are able to save companies significant time and money reviewing qualified from unqualified candidates.
So where did this all start? Who was the first person to have that “aha” moment and fill the need for companies and workers who just couldn’t make that connection themselves?
In 1890, the first privately owned employment agency opened in the U.S. under the name, Mrs. A.E. Johnson Employment Agency. According to old newspaper clippings, the Mrs. A.E. Johnson Employment Agency placed domestic help in the homes of clients with last names such as Roosevelt and Rockefeller. Merry Maids, eat your heart out. Several employment agencies followed suit with the Engineering Agency opening in 1893 and the D.J. Nugent Co. in 1897. Those went on to become General Employment Enterprises which also owned Businessmen’s Clearing House, established in 1902, and Flexi-Force, respectively.
It wasn’t until the 1940s during WWII that employment agencies started seeing a growth spurt. With workplaces experiencing a void left by those called to duty, it was the challenge of the employment agency to fill those spots with workers who were not obligated to military service.
The end of the war led to an influx of workers returning from the Army, many with new skills that could be applied to the blossoming technology field. Headhunting companies became popular as a response to the growing workforce. Headhunting agencies worked in service of those seeking employment until the strong economy of the 1970s led to a shift from working for the employee to working for the employer.
In the 1990s, Headhunting had begun to spring into new forms and took on a variety of trendy names and specialized strategies such as “synthesized” recruiting, “broadband” staffing, “converged” recruitment strategies, as well as something that became known as MARS, or “Multi-disciplinary Advanced Rapid Staffing.”
Up until the 1990s when the World Wide Web became a household name, it was the newspapers and trade press that led the way to many companies filling their vacancies.
In fact, one of the earliest documented employment agencies, D.J. Nugent Company, got the word out going house to house on horseback. This is not the case today. The use of Internet based services and computer technologies to support all aspects of recruitment activity and processes have become widespread. Today’s modern recruitment agency has an almost unlimited supply of helpful tools available.
With the onslaught of technology, job boards and places like Craigslist, why should a company with job openings or a candidate in need of a job, even bother with the thought of using a recruitment agency?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to just cut out the middleman and do it themselves? Perhaps, but let’s take a look at what the DIY of filling your own job openings looks like.
First you must write a job description if you don’t already have one, then post the job listing preferably in more than one place. Then be prepared to be inundated with applications, cover letters and resumes all of which you will have to collect, organize and review. Is this sounding like a good time yet? Read on. There is more.
Next up, prescreen applicants based upon the materials, pre-screening several of those through phone interviews and then conduct formal interviews. Once you have narrowed down your choice, you will check references and verify past employment, conduct background screening and then work out compensation. The final step is extending a job offer that may or may not be accepted.
Let’s face it. Most businesses today just do not have that luxury and taking a current employee away from their normal job responsibilities to assume the role of headhunter, doesn’t make sense, financially or professionally. Using a recruitment agency frees up your time and your employee’s time, to focus on your core business.
There are agencies and recruiters out there that specialize in any industry, such as adult, or position you can imagine. By working with an agency or recruiter that has a specialty for your type of position, you will immediately access the exact talent pool you are trying to reach, as well as upping your chances of getting the best possible candidate. The time a specialized agency or recruiter will take to fill your position will also be significantly less since they only work with candidates with specific skills sets.
To sum up, employers should weigh the cost of lost opportunity by having a position unfilled, the cost of having a poor hire, and the endless and tiresome cost of searching for a candidate. By leveraging wider nets of targeted candidate attraction, which are growing all the time, recruitment agencies are able to save companies significant time and money reviewing qualified from unqualified candidates. An employer only needs to indicate what they are looking for, and the recruitment agency will take it from there.
Hone Lynn is the administration manager and advertising sales manager at X Industry Jobs. She has over 15 years of experience in the adult entertainment industry starting with cam sites in the late 1990s. Lynn went on to work with companies such as Gamma Entertainment and FUBAR Webmasters. X Industry Jobs (XIndustryJobs.com and HotJobsAlert.com) was launched in 2007 with the mission to assist hiring managers from adult entertainment companies worldwide. Its goal is to bring them qualified candidates in a professional and confidential style for open positions they have within their organizations. Lynn can be reached at hone@xindustryjobs.info.