I admit this could be entirely a matter of my own perception, and in fact not the case. So maybe the real question is: Are staffing agencies primarily staffed by attractive young women, and if so why?
But I’ve noticed, over the years I’ve spent dealing with staffing agencies, that the majority of people who work for them seem to be relatively young, relatively attractive women.
(Staffing agencies: Anything from Adecco to those niche industry- and city-specific agencies that find temporary or permanent gigs for workers.)
I never really thought to ask why, however, until last night, when I attended a local creative agency’s networking party. My wife was there, too, and when we left I remarked that almost all the agency staff were attractive young women. She agreed, and noted that that’s almost always the case. I agreed. Then we wondered why.
And now I’m asking you. Any ideas, freakonomic or otherwise?
My WAG…Someone may be willing to work a job the otherwise wouldn’t if an attractive young woman told them about it, rather then someone that looked like a sleazy used car salesman.
Another thing I’ve noticed. I do alot of work with drug reps. 90% of them are some of the nicest looking people I’ve ever seen, and as a class they seemed to be the best dressed people I run into on a regular basis.
By staffing agencies, do you mean firms that supply temp workers?
Do you mean the workers in the agency’s office, or do you mean the temps they send out?
If you mean their office is full of pretty young women, maybe it’s because their customers are men. Some men (most men?) are rendered mindless when they are eye-to-eye with a pretty young woman. We’ll buy anything she’s selling.
It is often true in the Boston area as well although not exclusively. I have gone in for pre-interviews at a couple of places and wondered if it was some kind of joke because of this phenomenon. It wasn’t just regular attractive either.
Temporary staffing is a heavily sales oriented culture that happens to be in the HR realm. I’ve been in this business for the last 17 years. In my non-scientific opinion, I’d say these two areas lean toward women (HR) and attractiveness (sales). Whether that’s caused by a bias in hiring, or some natural dirft by that group of people to the business, I can’t say. I can say that many of the people you sell to are women, not men. HR managers, office managers, and the like are quite often women.
As you might imagine, it’s not universal. Temp services that focus more on light industrial work, are less likely to have attrative women in the office.
This is most certainly the case at the clinic where my doctor has his office. About fifteen to twenty doctor’s offices are located in this clinic and drug reps are constantly coming and going, and without exception that I can recall, they’re all young (apparently one to five years out of college), very trim, fit looking and attractive, and very well dressed. However a fair number of them are men, though probably less than half.
Yes and the former. On question 2, I’ve been one of the [strike]temps[/strike] freelancers they send out, and I don’t qualify as a woman (and I’m not one to argue for or against my own attractiveness).
It’s certainly not a phenomenon unique to this industry, of course – I’d known that about drug reps for a long time, and when I temped at Macy’s creative department, most of their product buyers were in a similar demographic.
I’d just never consciously noticed it with the staffing agencies before.
Smooth Jack, it doesn’t surprise me that industrial placement agencies skew towards men.
I’m definitely curious about the trends that produce this scenario, like you – hiring bias or natural drift is the crux of my question, really.
I’m not sure there is a definitive answer to the question. I know the owners of numerous staffing companies and franchises. It wouldn’t surprise me to know that they deliberately seek out more attractive people to sell the business, but they are in HR, so they would never admit it.
Personally, I’ve had attractive sales people, and not so attractive sales people work for me. Working hard, and sticking with it, was a better formula for success than being pretty.
In the course of my job, in the last couple weeks, I had to visit all of the home builder’s sales offices in my school district. We were putting together future enrollment projections, and part of that involves getting a sense of how fast new homes are being sold. (They aren’t mostly)
(A) The people that work in those offices are the Maytag repairmen of our time. I’d walk in and be greeted like a conquering hero. They’d latch on and want to talk, make me coffee, bake me cookies, shine my shoes…
(B) Almost exclusively they are great looking women - mostly the same demographic as the drug sales people. But even the middle aged women there were attractive.
I agree that this is the logical result of the intersection of HR and sales. It also tends to be true if a company has a big enough HR staff to have dedicated recruiters. Applicants love getting that attention from an attractive young woman, who wants them to come work with her …
A couple things I’d add are that temp agency workers tend to be young, because it doesn’t require a lot of experience or education and it is often pretty heavy on the sales aspect, which burns people out. Young doesn’t equal attractive, but other things equal, it helps. Also, the agency workers need to set a standard for good professional dress and grooming, because they need their temps to dress appropriately. Not that this works miracles, but clearly if they don’t make the effort it won’t help matters. Again, well dressed and groomed doesn’t equal attractive, but it helps.
As someone with extensive past experience in the temp world - at least for those being sent out on “assignment”, they tend to be younger and less experienced because those of us who are more experienced (and older) tend to get hired away as permanent employees somewhere else if we’re at all competent. At least, that’s how I got my last two permanent jobs - I started as a temp and was hired on permanently. This probably doesn’t account for all of the observed, but it’s certainly a factor.
Likewise, within the agency staff, older and more experienced staff might be more likely to be promoted up to a higher level that isn’t so often seen. Certainly, when I was doing this regularly the front office staff tended to be young, but the regional types (I worked for a very large, nation-wide agency) were generally 40 or 50+
Simple, a lot of people come into temp agencies looking for work. When the agency needs help it has a large pool of people to choose from. All else being equal young pretty women tend to be chosen over old ugly men.
A friend is a temp recruiter, and most of her job involves networking. She’s in her thirties and she’s attractive, outgoing and amazingly cheerful. She can strike up a conversation with anyone. The job was made for her!
Cheerleaders are in high demand as pharmaceutical reps (link.)
In Thailand, just about everyplace is staffed by attractive young ladies. Often Vanessa Mae look-alikes. You know that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, “Last Action Hero,” where the kid is trying to convince Arnold he’s in a movie and not real life by pointing out that unusually attractive women are working in video stores and such? Thailand is like that. It’s a big fringe benefit of living here.
I would guess that this is a big part of it. A temp agency that has 15 “inside” employees might have 500 or more “outside” employees" It’s natural for the temp agency to recruit it’s inside employees from its roster of temps. So a temp agency is able to cherry pick in a way that other firms cannot.
There’s a few other professions where I’ve seen attractive women predominate. Apartment leasing agents are usually very attractive young women who have a “perky” air about them. Another place staffed mainly by hotties are tanning salons.
I used to do quality audits on one of the world’s largest and most famous employment services. I did notice a strong female bias, but not one towards attractiveness.
