Lifestyles

Employment Agencies, Then and Now

In the summers between my college years, I visited employment agencies to find temporary work. I had solid typing, filing, spelling, and math skills, and if given a chance would be a reliable clerk.

The better agencies tested and interviewed the applicants. After all, any temp worker they sent out would be representing the agency. No computers were involved, and I tested and interviewed well.

One agency didn’t test me; it collected my application and said they’d be in touch. When I phoned to follow up, they offered me a job involving manual outdoor labor. I declined it. I am an indoor person – and without the muscle or stamina to perform hard physical labor. I preferred an office job. They said office jobs were reserved for female applicants. I said they should have told me that when I applied.

That agency stank (unless you’re female or muscular). But most were great.

One agency, bless their heart, found me a two-day job within walking distance of home, making photocopies in a law office. It was great to work so close to home, since back then I got around by public bus.

One summer I took a bus and then two transfers each day to reach a financial company’s headquarters where I typed up satisfactions of mortgage.

After college, I stayed away from temp agencies. Until we moved to New Hampshire. By now it was 2010 or 2011, roughly 30 years after my first success with temp agencies. I knocked on the doors of both temp agencies in our town.

The first agency gave me a test that ignored job skills. Its test, administered by computer, asked personal questions, with the answers in multiple-choice format.

They were trying to gauge the character or sobriety of the applicants. If they had interviewed me person-to-person, they would have been sold on my character.

One question stumped me, because it used a word I had never seen. I asked the woman in charge what the word meant. She wasn’t allowed to tell. I asked if I could go home and look up the word in my dictionary. No, that wasn’t allowed. I asked if instead of choosing a pre-written answer, I could write my own. No, that wasn’t allowed. I asked if I could skip the question. No, that wasn’t allowed.

So in the end I had to guess.

The question asked what I would do if I found out a coworker was using a certain substance – and this substance is what I had never heard of. For all I knew, it was a needed medicine, like insulin. Turns out it was an illegal drug. Because I guessed wrong, I flunked the test and slunk away, never to return.

The second agency, to my delight, tested job skills and didn’t ask any hypothetical questions. They put me in front of a computer and the test came up. First were English questions – spelling and grammar. Easy as pie.

Then came math, which I enjoy. As a kid, I could determine any hitter’s batting average and any pitcher’s earned-run average. At the diner, friends would hand me the group check so I could figure out how much each of them owed, including sales tax.

And all that without using a calculator.

But the agency’s math questions stumped me, even though I knew the answers. For there was no way to type in or write the answers.

Instead, the test required the applicant to use the keyboard to make the computer solve the problems. This is something I had never – and still haven’t – been taught. I asked the person in charge to let me answer the questions without using the computer. Nope, not allowed.

So I failed that test. And slunk away, never to return.

Because many employment agencies no longer interview applicants face to face, they are missing out on plenty of good workers.

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