From Mrs S. Burns Sir Your comment on employment agencies
and the replies drawn from Messrs Cropper and Marks cannot be dismissed as trivia when one considers the size of the situation and that it has made one or two of these 'personnel consultants' millionaires.
I was in the agency business myself for many years, when it was still a respectable word and until they started being taken over by qualified accountants and other professional backers, who were quick off the mark in recognising a lucrative source of income when books and accounts of agencies were examined in the immediate post and pre-war period. From there on it was ruthless big business.
Having watched developments with interest I am convinced that companies and employers, who now make loud protest about agencies and their unscrupulous ways, have themselves to blame for allowing all this to happen by lack of liaison with each other and maintaining lazy, out-of-date and inflexible policies on staff recruitment and staff management on both temporary and permanent sides. All and sundry have been despatched to clamouring companies with little classification between semi-literate shorthand typists and really competent reliable people. They have been allowed to drift around in a most capricious way and made to rely on agencies to place them whenever they felt like a change. Actual cost to company accounts must total millions when other abuse is considered: e.g. personal telephone calls, stationerY and postage unchecked. The Civil Service being what it is has handled the local labour exchange side disgracefully. Until recently they have hardly bothered to give private agencies any competition. Licensing authority was always weak and I should think they could only make token inspection of legitimate jobs advertised, against those actually registered and fictional ones, when you see agencies on every street corner, sometimes even next door to each other, covering office, domestic, catering, transport and nursing. Agency moguls now really believe they are 'personnel consultants'. There are possibly plans afoot to establish an Examination Board to consider a, Degree in 'personnel consultancy which will be necessary in future to establish oneself and thus help to keep conpetition down for those already in.
Good luck to anyone who tries to kill the octopus. Sheila Burns Winsome, 27 Peaks Hill, Purley, Surrey
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