Day labor agencies are like pawn shops, they cater to and exist because of disadvantaged and desperate people.
maybe, but it's up to the candidate for the job to accept whatever hourly rate is negotiated, and you can always say, no thanks.
bottom line....recruiters don't work for candidates. candidates don't pay us money. we work for clients, they pay our bills. we are hired to find people that they can't find on their own.
while temp agencies have the same end game as recruiters, which is placing candidates in jobs, it's a different world. temp agencies build their pipeline full of candidates, so whenever a client needs someone for a temporary gig, they have a database full of people they can call to place them in the job ASAP.
recruiting executives is a different game. they're looking for more specialized skills. if my client asks me for a pink porsche, and i show them a yellow volkswagan, chances are, they'll fire me. my job isn't to find as many candidates as possible, it's to find specialized candidates that my client wants to interview for whatever particular job i'm working on. it would be a complete waste of my time to just source resumes for my database.
i build a lot of very personal relationships with candidates.....we talk about super personal shit. how much money they make, how much stock they have, if they can relocate, if their house is underwater, if their wife or partner will be on board with relocation, how much money it will take to get them out of their house, if their fucking bitch daughter is a senior in HS and the captain of the cheerleading team, etc etc etc....these are important facts we have to get, to make sure we're able to deliver our product to our client at the end of the process, assuming the client wants to buy.
but the bottom line is, i work for the person that is paying my bills.
it's a pain in the ass job, because my product is a fatally flawed product, a human being. i've got some really amazing stories. while most people are pretty decent, they still lie, cheat and steal.
my best story ever was when i placed this guy in a relatively decent gig with a pharma company. i think his base salary was around 90k or so. anyway, we get to the end of the process, dude gets the job, the deal is done, and everyone is happy. 2 weeks go by and i get a call from my client, saying they can't find him. i call him, email him, get no response. so i go to google and type his name in....motherfucker was in jail for murder. apparently he was involved in some crazy love triangle and ended up stabbing this chick like 40 times and throwing her body on the side of the road. he's currently rotting in jail, and we certainly didn't get paid.
while it's a pretty lucrative business to be in, it can be an extremely thankless job.