There was a time when, if you wanted to find a (another) job, you looked for a potential employer. Nowadays there's usually a better way. Recruitment agencies, and jobs boards, can be a far more efficient way to proceed.Seen from an employer's point of view, a recruitment agency offers a variety of professional services that can save them time, and therefore money. Companies with their own specialised lines of goods or services, often don't have the interest, time or required skills to also be effective in the modern recruitment field. As a result they are often more than happy to appoint professional recruitment agencies to do most of this work for them. On the other hand the recruitment agency will specialise in this kind of work. They will be continually advertising for and interviewing candidates who want to find work in their particular field. By this means they will maintain an up-to-date potential candidates data-base. Then when an employer notifies them of a vacanc y they will often be able to recommend suitable candidates from their data-base, straight awayEffective (first) interviewing is critical to the appointments process. The recruitment agencies will offer a professional service in this area. The employer then usually conducts the second interview. As far as the candidate is concerned, the service offered by the recruitment agency is free. All the costs fall upon the employer. The employers contract to pay a fees to the recruitment agencies only if successful candidate came to them via that agency. Its a winner-take-all-situation; if the agency does not submit the successful candidate, it gets no fees. Most recruitment agencies continue to advertise in local and national newspapers, and sector specific magazines, but the growth sector for such advertising is the Internet. Some recruitment agencies rely on their own web-sites, whilst others use the so-called jobs boards as their primary means of advertising.Jobs boards are, in ef fect, high profile Internet web-sites upon which multiple recruitment agencies can market their services, and the jobs they are currently seeking candidates for. A typical jobs board may be representing dozens of agencies and listing hundreds of their jobs on its pages.Most jobs boards offer a simple, free, on-line registration process. Once registered the candidate can "see" all the jobs being advertised by all the agencies and can, by clicking on the right buttons, submit his/her name, direct to the recruitment agency, for consideration for any job Once the agency has a candidates "application", whether this comes direct,or via a jobs board, it will swing into action and begin its screening / interviewing process.Using this modern medium the whole recruitment process is immensely speeded up. The really effective jobs boards will send out Email alerts to their registered candidates as soon as they receive the job from the agency. As a result the agencies often begin to rece ive applications the same day.'Things', as they say 'ain't what they used to be'!