Are Jobs Advertised in Employment Agencies Real
If you are looking for a new job, employment agencies can be as infuriating as they can be helpful. A tempting job ad in the local paper or in the window of an employment agency or recruitment consultant often turns out to be a pretext for getting you in for a lengthy chat about your career to 'register you', after which the job you applied for seems to have vanished like fairy gold.
Are the jobs they advertise real? Or are employment agencies wasting your time? The answer, as always, is complicated.
Employment agencies spend their time chasing two things. The first thing they need are employers who are happy to accept candidates for interview from the agency. The second thing they need are the candidates themselves, and then they try and fit the two groups together to make their commission. As a result of this second need, employment agencies may sometimes advertise jobs which are 'representative' of the kind of vacancies for which they recruit, in order to attract candidates of a suitable skillset. The jobs in question may be real active vacancies, they may be vacancies which have already been filled, or they may never actually have existed.
Is this dishonest on the part of the agency? Not entirely. When you look for jobs advertised in print, particularly in magazines with the long lead time they require, there is always a very real chance that the vacancy has already been filled. The advertisement still runs, and the recruiter will still accept resumes, even though there is no job at the end. With an employment agency, new jobs come in all the time, so sending a resume to an agency for a job that has closed is worth the price of a postage stamp to a far greater extent than sending it directly to the employer and missing the boat.
Also, the jobs advertised by employment agencies don't necessarily pretend to be real. They talk in vague terms about 'competitive salary' and 'central location' and 'experience required'. Anyone who has ever worked in business will tell you that large companies are always offering competitive salaries in central locations to experienced persons. If you're prepared to ring an agency offering such a vague job description, you can't get too precious about the specific vacancy not actually existing. Something of the sort will be around, sooner or later.
If an agency advertises a job with a specific address, precise salary and even the name of the client (incredibly rare), then you can be confident that it is a real job opening - there are legal issues involved in making up jobs that don't exist in someone else's company. Disney may be looking for a new lead animator for all you know, but you would be courting substantial legal risk by putting up a job advertisement in your office window on the offchance.
In short, if you see an employment agency advertising a job whose broad salary range and experience requirements match you, then you should definitely consider putting yourself forward. That position may or may not exist or still be active, but it is a sign that the agency concerned is actively seeking for candidates like you, and they are only doing that if they have jobs for which they can put you forward.
Are jobs advertised by employment agencies real? Not always. Does it really matter? As they tend to be so very vague, it really doesn't pose a huge problem, as long as you take them with a pinch of salt.
