Recruitment Agencies

The existence of recruitment agencies business can be traced as early as the 15th century, when Englishmen practiced brokering in behalf of employers who do not have easy access to laborers. These brokers recruited people to work for a certain period in exchange for benefits ranging from free passage to the New World to provision of food and lodging.

In the modern day era, recruitment agencies are the employers’ external HR partner, providing a variety of services to businesses. These include matching employee qualifications to employer’s requirements, supplying other businesses with temporary workers, and providing other human resources services to clients and partners.

The advent of the dot-com and the boom in technology made the recruitment industry one of the best devolping businesses in the 1990s, placing approximately three million workers in the workforce. Coupled with the government efforts to provide more employment and the growing market for professionals on short-term basis, staffing services more than doubled between the years 1994 and 2000. We will se more of this in the years to come.

The slowing down of the UK economy and the terrorist attacks against the USA in the early part of year 2000, however, affected the recruitment industry. With the crunch of the economy, more companies adopted streamlining measures which resulted to layoffs and downsizing. As such, employment agencies have an excessive inventory of potential employees with not enough or no business clients at all.

Today however, the industry reports a steady growth on the market, and the comming years will probably mean more business for recruitments agencies and executive search firms.

When the economy is “back to normal” we will probably see a boom in the industry, as the requirement of new employees will explode. More people than usual will also be high educated as they take the chance to study during the crisis.

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