by Timothy Aines

Created on: January 05, 2009

Let's face it. If you're using an employment agency to find a job, you're bottom feeding. Life has kicked you in the guts, and you are the victim of your own bad decisions, bad timing, bad luck, or possibly all three. The employment agency is the last stop before you get the job where you ask folks "Do you want fries with that?" or start selling blood and body parts at the local medical clinic.

There are three types of agencies out there. A government run employment agency, a private employment agency, and professional recruiting firms that some folks also think are agencies, but really aren't. Two of these three really only work for themselves and, well, the third one is questionable.

The government run agency is primarily used by most people only grudgingly, and as a condition of collecting an unemployment check. By design, the government agency is the one most geared to work on your behalf. However, the government agency, usually run by a state, has its own agenda too. Frankly, they want you off the unemployment rolls as soon as possible, and a day spent trawling through the flotsam of the job market is usually the price of entry. Some states offer the employment agency only as a helpful service. Many more though require it as a type of unemployment blackmail. If you want that unemployment check, then you have to go stand in line and comb through the available supply of mostly junk jobs.

The line itself is worth special mention. It is a great socio-economic leveling exercise. The rich, poor, mighty and humble all stand in line together, waiting to speak to an employment counselor. At the government employment agency you will find a cross-section of America that looks something like an induction line for a 1952 draft board; an eclectic lineup of tinkers, tailors, doctors, lawyers, actors and the hard core unemployed.

The jobs one finds at the end of the line tend to be high-turnover entry level positions that are at, or only slightly above, minimum wage. There is no challenge to obtaining one of these jobs. For the most part, they can be obtained anywhere through a variety of means. There are a few positions where employers will only accept a candidate as a direct referral from the government employment agency, but those are a minority. Like it or not, the state employment agency primarily serves as a collective dumping ground for mostly undesirable, high-turnover entry-level jobs that folks tend to not stay in too long. Employers know these jobs are fairly

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