Hunting Jobs For The Jobless

It's no easy feat, the business of finding someone a job. Doubly so in a bad economy.

Yet North Shore staffing agencies are tackling that difficult task: Connect the too large pool of candidates with the too few job openings.

And to look through the eyes of these middle-men and -women, the the American economy looks much like a limping dog licking its hind leg. 

"It wasn't a good year all around," said Pam Clark, the operations manger at , which serves Des Plaines and the immediate vicinity. She's been at her job in the northwest suburbs for the past 15 years, and she doesn't see the job market bouncing back as quickly as in past downturns. "Back in the 1980s and 1990s, it didn't take five years to at least get consumer confidence up. The biggest problem right now is fear."

Still, the news isn't all bad. 

"2011 has been a little better, but we're wishing it was a little farther along than it is," Clark said. "When you think back to 9/11, the country took a hit financially and emotionally. People were devastated. But now the emotional devastation is financial. People are losing their homes." 

Clark has noticed improvements since the worst of the rescession — "2009 was horrific; we were getting 400 plus resumes a day," she said — and thinks the market is picking up. Birk Staffing has placed about 35 percent more candidates than it did last year. But it's still tough because hiring someone is a major investment some companies aren't in a position to make.

"Our industry has to evolve with the economy," Clark said. 

Information Technology

One sector of the staffing industry, however, seems to be growing.

"We've seen an increase in permanent placement," said Justin Priest, branch manager for the Chicago Loop office of , a firm that specializes in IT works. "Obviously, in a bad economy, a company isn't going to be hiring as much, but it doesn't really depend as much on the economic state as it does what's happening in the technology industry."                               

He did say, however, that he's seeing a lot of "temp-to-perm" agreements because companies are concerned about whether or not a prospective employee will work out in the long run.

Nationally, Priest said Sapphire has a two to one placement rate: two interviews, one hire. In the Chicago area over the past year, he estimated Sapphire has placed about 120 to 150 professionals with companies.

The Boutique Firm

There's yet a different story in the world of the sole-proprietor staffing agency. Razz Jenkins started Purple Squirrel Search, Inc. in 2008, after a decades-long career in the corporate staffing world, just as the economy took a turn for the worse. His firm gets its name from recruiting slang that refers to "the hard-to-find candidate in the hard-to-fill position."

That's the role the Des Plaines man sees for himself: to find the purple squirrels and deliver them to the companies who need them most. It's not going well.

"It's horrible," Jenkins "Unfortunately, companies are just unwilling to do two things: hire someone and pay a [finder's] fee. As an outside recruiter trying to finagle my way into an opportunity with a client, it's just not happening."

Instead, Jenkins said, companies are reconfiguring to assign more work to the employees they haven't laid off.

"One person is doing the work of four these days," Jenkins said. "They're loathe to look for new personnel. It's the old saying: 'The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know.'" 

And the Catch-22 kiss of death? Unemployment.

"Once you're unemployed, you are 'damaged goods,'" Jenkins said. 

Purple Squirrel has struggled, because of the economy and because of the small scale in which it operates. In the past three years, Jenkins has seen three candidates hired. But he's not discouraged.

"I've been doing this so long that I've got the wherewithal to weather the storm," he said. As for whether things will improve in the future? "There's such volatility in this market that it's impossible to know what you don't know."