There ARE jobs out there! - UPDATED

Evilm

I have to say that agencies are a bit hit and miss and only tend to call you when they want/need you. I've registered with about 15 in my time and have had moderate success in finding work from about 5 of them. My current job was through an agency on a temp to perm basis.

The contact regime I put in place was to call them if anything came up in the job adverts from them and remind them I was still around and discuss that role. Normally that wasn't the role I eventually got but they would call me back within a few days and say "you know, I think the perfect thing has just come in for you!".

I could usually find a reason to call each agency once every two weeks.

magenta22

It depends on the type of work you are seeking, what area you are in and how good the recruitment consultants at the agency are.
My experience of them are they are not very helpful. Fair enough I am looking for admin type roles and they are possibly the roles where there are over 100 people applying for one role but I see a role advertised, I enquire with the agency about it and I get either you are not quailified enough or you are over qualified!

I have even been know to do their job for them by finding a role and then they actually took all the credit and the commission from the company and paid me the basic rate!

Agencies shouldn't charge you to register with them, if you can't get to one easily, register online and then explain to them about travelling. If they want you to do any assesment tests they could email these to you but they will need to meet you so perhaps you could arrange to go in when you are in the town anyway? It depends really on how much you want to get a job, personally I don't find that the agencies are much help and I have spent quite a bit of time registering with them all but others have found they have been helpful.