SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET : REPORTS FORM THE FIELD : Turning to a Pro: How Best to Use an Agency : Find out who pays the fee, look for a specialist in your field and watch out for dishonesty.
When it comes to their jobs, Barry S. Harris, Robert D. Shivers and Michael J. Holguin have little in common: Harris is a salesman, Shivers an engineer and Holguin a shipping supervisor.
What binds them is that each has found full-time jobs through employment agencies in Southern California, and each says he benefited considerably by getting work that otherwise might not have come his way.
“It turned out to be an excellent move,” said Harris, 29, referring to an office-equipment sales job that he took a few years ago after being prodded by an employment counselor at Management Recruiters in Encino. “It helped refine a lot of my talents.”
The personnel employment business does not always get such rave reviews from clients. In recent years, the industry has been touched by charges of scandal, cheating and discrimination.
In one case, an employment agency on Wilshire Boulevard that was supposed to find people jobs overseas was accused of bilking 70,000 clients out of more than $25 million. The agency, Overseas Unlimited, was eventually closed in 1988 on orders from the Federal Trade Commission.
Customers of employment agencies in California no longer enjoy the protection of the Bureau of Personnel Services, a state agency that was phased out of existence last year because it did not have adequate funding.
“It’s really a case of let the buyer beware now,” said Jean M. Orr, who headed the bureau until last July.
The lack of consumer protection merely heightens the need for job seekers to use care and caution when they select employment agencies, which vary widely in service and quality.
But as the cases of Harris, Shivers and Holguin suggest, it’s a plus for everyone when the system works as designed. Workers get the job they want, employers find a qualified employee and personnel agencies get paid for acting as middleman.
“The main thing is to shop around and compare different agencies,” said Janelle Wedge, a former staffer at the Bureau of Personnel Services who now works for the California Department of Consumer Affairs.
Jobs most commonly filled by employment agencies are secretaries, accountants and salesmen, personnel experts say. The posts range in salary from $20,000 to $30,000 for secretaries to $100,000 or more for top executives.
Some employers prefer to use job agencies because they don’t have to screen lots of applicants, while job-seekers like to use them because it makes the hunt easier.
Of critical importance is the question of who pays the finder’s fee, the job-seeker or the employer. Fees can run as high as several months’ salary.
Not surprising, the harder a job is to fill, the more likely the employer is to pay. One firm, Management Recruiters, recently hit the industry equivalent of a bases-loaded home run when its Los Angeles office received a $157,500 fee for placing a top-level executive for Citicorp, according to Joanie Zeck, who heads the Los Angeles operations.
More typical, though, is the job Holguin found as a shipping supervisor for Consolidated Freightways near Ontario. Holguin, 36, holder of a business degree from Cal State Los Angeles, had to come up with a $5,200 finder’s fee to Culver Personnel to get the $38,000-a-year post.
“Never pay up front for a placement,” Orr counsels. “Pay only when you start the job.”
Applicants are usually placed in jobs where the personnel agencies believe they will fit in best.
“It’s different strokes for different folks,” said Robert O. Snelling Sr., head of the large employment agency that bears his name. “Someone comes in for a secretary’s job chewing gum and wearing bobby socks, we’ll send her down to the trucking company. If she comes in dressed real nicely, we’ll send her over to the law office.”
The personnel agency business is dominated by a few nationwide giants, such as Management Recruiters, Snelling & Snelling and Dunhill Personnel, all of which have offices in Southern California. Two fast-growing regional firms are Culver Personnel Agency and Apple One Employment Services.
For many job applicants, the system seems to work well. Shivers, 55, is chief engineer of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, a job he took last fall when Management Recruiters sought him out and asked if he would be interested.
Bored with his old job as a building manager, Shivers took the post and his new boss paid the finder’s fee. “I was in the right place at the right time,” Shivers said. “There was no pain at all.”
Many job-placement offices prefer to operate in fast-growing fields where work is plentiful. “We only work in markets that are hot, where the supply is not there and the demand is,” said Gary O. Van Eik, who heads the San Diego office of Dunhill Personnel.
Some of the hot jobs today range from physical therapists and nurses to secretaries with specialized knowledge in law or real estate and multilingual executives who have lived abroad, job experts say.
In the future, matching people with jobs may become an even bigger business. Already, some personnel executives complain that they have more good jobs than skilled people to fill them.
Glendale-based Apple One Employment Services, which specializes in clerical and accounting jobs, just acquired a private business college near Torrance to better train applicants for jobs.
“It’s very easy to find the jobs,” said Apple One owner Bernard Howroyd. “It’s very hard to find the secretaries.”
