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UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
F rances P e r k in s , Secretary
CHILDREN’S BUREAU
»
.
.
K a t h a r in e F. L e n r o o t , Chief
+
JUNIOR PLACEMENT
A Survey of Junior-P lacem ent Offices in Public
Em ploym ent Centers and in Public-School
Systems of the U nited States
BY
JANE H. PALMER
Bureau Publication No. 256
United States
Government Printing Office
Washington : 1940
For sale b y the Superintendent o f Documents, W ashington, D . C.
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Price IS cents
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CONTENTS
Page
Letter of transmittal___________________________________________________
Introduction___________________________________________________________
Scope and method of the study__________
Questionnaire survey___ _________________________ ;___ _____________
Field survey________________ ___________ ________________ ; _______ .
Junior-placement offices in the United States____________________________
Auspices_______________________
Functional organization___________
The youth served__________________________________________________
The offices visited— their organization and the youth they served________
Organi zation_____________
Character of the applicant group_____________
Recruiting policies_________________________________________________
Registration procedure_________________________________________________
Purpose of the interview___________________________________________
Classification for placement________________________________________
Interviewing facilities and division of responsibility_________________
Maintenance of active registration status.__________________
Supplementary information on the applicant_________ ;______________
Proof of age___________________________ - ______________________
Personal-interest blanks________________________________________
Tests__________________________________
School records_________________________________________________
Employer references____________________________________ *_____
Health records________________________________________________
Records of other agencies______________________________________
Registration records____________________________________________________
The registration card_______________________________________________
Registration files______________________________________ .»___________
Cross-references_______________________________________________
Classification records_______________________________________________
Supplementary files__________________________
Supplementary lists____________________________________________
Visible-index files________________________________
Relation to registration files___________________
Clearance of files_______________________
Removal and transfer of records____________________________________
Guidance program______________________________________________________
The role of the junior counselor________________________
Use of the interview___________________________________________
Counseling resources____________________
Use of guidance specialists. _________ ,______________________________
Use of school facilities______________________________________________
Other guidance and training facilities_______________________________
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IV
CONTENTS
P age
Solicitation of employers’ orders____________ •___________________________
Methods__________________________________________________________
Maintenance of contacts with employers___________________________
Policies and problems of coordination______________________________
Records___________________________________________________________
Receipt and filling of employers’ orders_____________________ ____________
Receipt and routing of orders______________________________________
Records of employers’ orders___________________________
Investigation of establishments_____________________________________
Substandard jobs__________________________________________________
Selection of applicants_____________________________________________
Initial selection________________________________________________
Final selection_________________________________________________
Other methods of selection_________________________________________
Clearance of orders________________________________________________
Notification of the applicant_______________________________________
Referral_________________________________________________________
Verification of placement___________________________________________
Follow-up of placements_______________ ;____________________________ ___
Purpose of follow-up________________________
Methods of follow-up______________________________________________
Follow-up through employers__________________________________
Follow-up through applicants__________________________________
Special applicant groups________________________________________________
Applicants for housework____________________________________
Handicapped applicants__________________________
Applicants associated with the schools______________________________
High-school graduates_________________________________________
Pupils enrolled in the schools_______
Applicants placed as apprentices________________
Applicants placed in the Civilian Conservation C orps_______________
Other types of applicants__________________________________________
Services other than placement__________________________________________
Services in regard to curriculum changes___________________________
Special guidance services________________________________ __________
Assistance to law-enforcing agencies________________________________
The counseling staff_______________________ :____________________________
Personnel______________________________________________________
Salaries____________________________________________________________
In-service training______________
The public-school system and the public employment office in a program
of junior placement__________________________________________________
Summary______________________________________________________________
Appendix A.— Junior-placement and counseling services within public
employment offices, 1937-39._________________________________________
Appendix B.— List of selected readings on junior placement______________
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LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL
U
n it e d
States D
epartm ent
C
of
L
abor
h il d r e n ’ s
B
,
ureau
,
Washington, March 25, 1940.
M a d a m : There is transmitted herewith Junior Placement; a survey
of junior-placement offices in public employment centers and in
public-school systems of the United States. The survey was under
taken at the request of the United States Employment Service. The
work was begun early in 1937, during a period of rapid expansion in
the number of special placement services for young and inexperienced
applicants. It follows an earlier survey in the same field which was
made in 1922 and reported in Children’s Bureau Publication No. 149,
Vocational Guidance and Junior Placement.
The Children’s Bureau acknowledges with appreciation the assist
ance and cooperation given by the officials in charge of junior-place
ment services and their staff members who furnished information to
the Children’s Bureau concerning the operation of these services.
The Bureau is indebted also to the National Youth Administration
and to the Employment Service Division of the Bureau of Employ
ment Security in the Social Security Board (formerly the United
States Employment Service) for advice and suggestions on the plan
of study and the presentation of the material.
The survey was planned and carried on under the general direction
of Beatrice McConnell, Director of the Industrial Division of the
Children’s Bureau, and was supervised by Elizabeth S. Johnson,
Assistant Director in Charge of Research in that Division. The field
work was conducted and the report written by Jane H. Palmer.
Respectfully submitted.
K
H
on.
F
rances
P
a t h a r in e
e r k in s ,
Secretary o f Labor.
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F. L
enroot,
CJhiej.
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JUNIOR PLACEMENT
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INTRODUCTION
The young person who has left school and must soon assume the
responsibilities of adult life needs the opportunity to exercise and
develop his abilities and to carry the responsibility that a job can
offer him if he is to achieve a full and satisfactory life. But if his
job is to offer this opportunity it must be one that will bring personal
satisfaction through being in line with his interests, ambitions, and
abilities; that will not impose an undue burden on his health and
strength; and that will afford him an adequate wage.
The search for suitable employment, never an easy one for the
inexperienced worker, has become more and more difficult during
recent years; many young persons, failing to find a place in the work
ing world, have been faced with a situation at best perplexing and
often tragic. The gravity of this problem of unemployment among
the youth of the country is suggested by figures available from the
1937 national census of unemployment. This census indicated that
almost 4 million young persons 16 and under 25 years of age were
unemployed in November 1937 and that these young persons com
prised more than one-third (37 percent) of all unemployed persons
16 and under 65 years of age. The proportion unemployed among
all young persons 16 and under 25 years of age employed or available
for employment (30 percent) was nearly twice as high as was the
case among persons 25 and under 65 years of age (17 percent).1
Concern over the employment needs of youth during the past
decade not only has focused attention on the need for more jobs for
young workers but has also brought increasing interest in the need for
placement services through which they can be helped to obtain employ
ment that it suited to their interests and abilities. Moreover, the
contractions and shifts in employment opportunities during this
period have led to increased interest in vocational guidance, not only
for young persons still in school but for young men and women
entering upon occupational life. This growing concern over the need
i These figures have been calculated from data presented in the Census of Partial Employment, Unem
ployment, and Occupations: 1937, Final Report, vol. 4, Enumerative Check Census, p. 12, table 7; p. 22,
table 7; and p. 141, table 72. The census estimated the number of totally unemployed persons (including
emergency workers) 15 and under 25 years of age as 3,923,000. Correction of this figure to eliminate the 15year-old group gives an estimated total of 3,844,000 unemployed persons 16 and under 25 years of age.
1
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
to assist young persons to find employment that is particularly
suited to their capacities and interests has resulted in a marked
increase in the number of services set up expressly for the purpose of
placing young applicants in employment.
Junior-placement work as a special service for young applicants had
its beginning more than 20 years ago. The earliest offices were estab
lished under the supervision of private agencies concerned with help
ing young people make the transition from school to work. Placement
programs started in this way were the forerunners of at least two large
junior-placement offices (in Boston and New York City) which were
operating at the time of this study. In each of these cities the place
ment program was later taken over in whole or in part by the local
public-school system or by the local public employment service.. In
other cities also public schools and public employment offices have been
responsible for most of the junior-placement work done during the past
15 or 20 years.
Before 1930 much of the junior-placement work carried on through
out the country was sponsored by public-school systems. The first of
these were established in 1915 in Boston and in 1916 in Philadelphia.
Public employment services entered the field in 1917 when a junior
division was established in Cleveland, Ohio, and when a law was passed
in New York State providing for the organization of juvenile employ
ment bureaus in the State department of labor. It is estimated that
by 1930 public-school systems and public employment services of at
least 30 cities in the United States had developed or were in the
process of developing specialized junior-placement offices.2
It was after 1930 that the number of these specialized offices began
to assume its present proportions; during 1936 alone it more than
doubled. Most of the expansion during these 6 years occurred within
the public-employment-office system and was due largely to funds
which became available through two Federal agencies during this
period. The Wagner-Peyser Act, approved June 6, 1933, contained a
provision that funds appropriated by States or their local subdivisions
for public-employment services might be matched with money from
Federal sources and so made it possible for employment offices to
enlarge the sphere of their activities and improve the caliber of their
service by introducing special placement techniques for juniors and
for other applicant groups presenting special placement problems.
Later, in 1936, further expansion was made possible through the
guidance and placement program of the National Youth Administra
tion, which cooperated with many public employment offices and
assisted them by adding to their staffs special placement workers
1 This estimate is based on information obtained b y the Children’s Bureau in the course of the present
study and on the report of an earlier survey of junior placement made b y the Children’s Bureau in 1922
iVocational Guidance and Junior Placement, Children's Bureau Pub. N o. 149, Washington, 1925).
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IN TR O D U C TIO N
3
whose full time could be given to the registration and placement of
junior applicants.
The staff members of these and other junior-placement offices have
found that the immaturity and inexperience of the average junior
applicant create many problems that are different from those pre
sented by adults and that special procedures are therefore necessary
if the placement office is to serve its junior applicants effectively. In
the case of most adult applicants maturity and previous work experi
ence furnish reliable evidence of the kinds of work in which suitable
placement may be made. Many junior applicants, on the other hand,
are lacking in both these respects; others, who have had a limited
amount of previous work experience, have been employed on jobs
unrelated to their real interests and abilities. Since comparatively
few junior applicants have any substantial amount of work experience
to serve as a guide in placing them, placement workers find it desirable
to give special attention to abilities, personality characteristics, educa
tion, and plans for the future. And since going to work is an entirely
new experience for many young applicants, placement workers are
concerned also in following up the young worker’s progress on the
job and in helping him to adapt himself to this new situation. It is
the emphasis placed on these aspects of the placement program that
most distinguishes junior- from adult-placement work.
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SCOPE AND METHOD OF THE STUDY
The present study was undertaken by the Children’s Bureau at the
request of the United States Employment Service.1 Its purpose is to
report on the specialized techniques which placement workers have
developed in their work with junior applicants and to ascertain the
extent to which specialized junior-placement services have been
organized throughout the country. It is concerned with the place
ment programs and the employment-office procedures that have been
developed expressly for junior applicants as distinct from adults.
At the outset it was apparent that a survey of the junior-placement
work that was being carried on under all kinds of auspices would not
be feasible because of the difficulty of canvassing all the various types
of agencies that might sponsor such placement programs. Inasmuch
as most of this work was under the direction of State and federally
supervised public employment offices and public-school systems, the
survey was directed only toward offices operating under the auspices
of one or the other of these two types of agency and does not include
the limited number of specialized placement services sponsored by
various types of social agencies.
The criterion adopted for identifying these specialized juniorplacement programs was one of staff. Inasmuch as staff members
whose major responsibility was junior placement were considered
most likely to have developed specialized procedures for this group of
applicants, the survey was limited to employment offices in which one
or more staff members devoted full time to work with juniors. Ac
cordingly, it does not touch upon the junior-placement work done by
public employment offices in which each interviewer registered and
placed applicants of all ages, usually according to the same general
procedures, nor upon the work done in many public schools in which
i The U. S. Employment Service was formerly In the Department of Labor. In July 1939 its functions
were transferred to the Social Security Board in the Federal Security Agency. It is now the Employment
Service Division of the Bureau of Employment Security in the Social Security Board.
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SCOPE AND M E T H O D OF STU D Y
5
placement of young persons was incidental to the established programs
of those agencies.2
Two methods of approach were used in making the study: First,
information was obtained in regard to the location and the nature
of specialized junior-placement services by means of a questionnaire
distributed on a Nation-wide basis; and second, through observation
and consultation in a group of selected offices, a study was made of
the special problems encountered in junior-placement work and the
procedures that placement workers have developed to meet these
problems.
Questionnaire Survey
The questionnaire was distributed in February 1937 to superin
tendents of public-school systems and, through directors of State
employment services, to managers of all public employment offices
maintaining separate divisions for junior registrants. These officials
were asked to report on any junior-placement services, staffed by
persons giving full time to this work, that were operating under their
supervision during all or a part of the year 1936. This information
was solicited from all cities with a population of 10,000 or more and
from all school districts of the same size. It did not seem practicable
to canvass smaller communities since it seemed unlikely that they
would have felt a need to establish full-time placement offices.3
Replies to the questionnaire were received from the public employ
ment services in all 48 States and the District of Columbia and from
public-school systems in 908, or 92.2 percent, of the 985 cities in
which public-school superintendents were asked to furnish this infor
mation. Full-time junior-placement offices were reported by 21
public-school systems, or 2.3 percent of the 908 answering the inquiry,
and by 51, or 7.9 percent, of the 645 public employment offices which
were operating at that time in cities with a population over 10,000.
In addition, 1 public employment office reported a service for junior
applicants operating in a suburban county area with a population of
1 It Is recognized that the number of public-school systems and public employment offices whose juniorplacement programs fall within the scope of this survey represents only a small proportion of the total
number of public schools and public employment offices offering placement assistance to young applicants.
In practically all public schools, teachers and other staff members were placing at least some young per
sons in employment. In m any cases this work was incidental to other programs and was confined almost
entirely to occasional referrals made at the request of prospective employers. In addition, there were
unquestionably some schools with well-organized placement programs which were outside the scope of this
survey because the staff members doing placement gave a substantial amount of their time to other activities
also—educational and vocational guidance of pupils, coordination of part-time vocational education with
part-time employment in related trades, and enforcement of school-attendance laws.
Almost all public employment offices without separate junior divisions also placed junior applicants in
employment, and the interviewers in those offices gave varying amounts of their time to this applicant
group. In a few of these offices, special programs for juniors had been developed b y assigning the registra
tion of all juniors to one interviewer who gave a part of his time to this work and the rest of it to work with
adult registrants.
* The U. 8. Employment Service reported no com m unity of less than 10,000 population in which the
public employment office maintained a special division for junior applicants during the year 1930.
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
60,000 just outside New York City, where the junior-placement
worker conducted the program on an itinerant basis.
The questionnaire included inquiries about the organization of each
of these placement offices and the procedures followed in registering
and placing junior applicants. Much of the information obtained
from each office in this way was necessarily lacking in detail and, in
some cases, lacking also in comparability with information returned by
other offices. In the latter connection it was apparent that juniorplacement workers sometimes differed among themselves in the mean
ings they ascribed to some terms commonly used in placement work,
as for instance, “ follow-up.” 4 In other cases differences in methods of
statistical reporting made it impossible to obtain data on a comparable
basis even for such important items as the number of new applicants
registered and the number of placements effected.
For these reasons this report places little emphasis on the procedural
and statistical information obtained through use of the questionnaire.
Nevertheless, these data have been invaluable in furnishing an over-all
picture of junior-placement work in the country at large and have
proved useful both as a guide in selecting the offices to be visited for
further study and as a check on the degree to which the procedures
followed by those offices were representative of practices elsewhere in
the country.
Field Survey
The major part of the findings of this report are based on a field
study of 12 offices visited in the fall and winter of 1937 and early 1938,
after the questionnaire survey. These offices were the junior divisions
of the public employment services of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Cincin
nati, Ohio, Concord, N. H., District of Columbia, Durham, N. C.,
New York, N. Y., Rochester, N. Y., Rockland County, N. Y., the
school placement services of Atlantic City, N. J., Detroit, Mich.,
and Essex County, N. J., and the junior-placement service in Phila
delphia, Pa., which was operated under the joint supervision of the
Pennsylvania State Employment Service and the public-school system
of Philadelphia.5
4 In referring to different phases of employment-office procedure this report adheres to the terms generally
used b y placement services affiliated with the U. S. Em ploym ent Service.
* Visits were made as follows: Fall and winter of 1937, Atlantic C ity, Concord, District of Columbia,
Durham, Essex County, N ew York C ity, Rochester, Rockland County; winter and early spring of 1938,
Cedar Rapids, Cincinnati, Detroit, Philadelphia.
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JUNIOR-PLACEMENT OFFICES IN THE UNITED
STATES
The Children’s Bureau received, through its questionnaire survey,
reports from 73 public-school systems and public employment offices
which were operating junior-placement services of the type that came
within the scope of this study, namely, offices in which one or more
junior counselors 1 devoted substantially all their time to the place
ment of young people who were about to leave school or had already
done so. These 73 offices represent all junior divisions that were
functioning as a part of public employment services on December 31,
1936, and all full-time offices being operated on that date by publicschool systems that returned questionnaires. Inasmuch as 92.2 per
cent of the public-school systems canvassed reported to the Children’s
Bureau on their placement programs, it may be assumed that the 73
offices constitute virtually all services of this type in the United States
at the time of this survey.2
The cities in which these 73 offices were located and the number of
staff members reported for each office are given on pages 8 and 9.
The offices ranged in size from agencies in which 1 junior counselor
assumed entire responsibility for all phases of junior-placement work
(19 offices) to the large city organizations in Philadelphia and New
York City, each of which was staffed with more than 25 workers.
Inasmuch as a few of the 73 services operated several branch offices
for junior applicants within a city-wide placement system, the separate
offices maintained for junior applicants numbered approximately 100.
For the purposes of this report, however, each city placement system
is termed a single junior-placement service or office irrespective of the
number of its branch offices.
Two-thirds of these offices were in metropolitan areas reported by
the census of 1930 to have a population of 100,000 or more. Even so,
junior applicants were offered this kind of assistance in placement in
less than half of the 93 cities of that size in the country. Less than a
tenth of the 283 cities with a population of 25,000 to 100,000 and only
a fraction of 1 percent of those smaller than that were provided with
similar services.
'
1 The term “ Junior counselor” was most generally used to designate the staff members working with Junior
applicants in these placement services and accordingly has been adopted throughout this report. Other
titles such as “ adviser” and “ interviewer” were also used.
8 The results of a later survey of the extent to which Junior counseling and placement services had been
developed within public employment offices are given in appendix A (p. 129).
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
PUBLIC E M PLO Y M E N T OFFICES
City
Number of staff
members (full time
and part tim e)
working with
junior applicants
Cities with 100,000 or more
population:
Albany, N. Y ____________
Birmingham, Ala__________
Boston, Mass_____________
Bridgeport, Conn__________
Buffalo, N. Y ________
Chicago, 111_______________
Cincinnati, Ohio___________
Cleveland, Ohio___________
Columbus, Ohio___________
Des Moines, Iowa_________
Fort Worth, Tex__________
Hartford, Conn____________
Indianapolis, Ind__________
Jacksonville, Fla__________
Jersey City, N. J__________
Louisville, K y _____________
Miami, Fla________________
New Haven, Conn_________
New Orleans, La__________
New York, N. Y __________
Omaha, Nebr______________
Rochester, N. Y ___________
San Francisco, Calif_______
Springfield, Mass__________
Syracuse, N. Y____________
Tampa, I la _______________
Tulsa, Okla________________
Utica, N. Y l ______________
Washington, D. C _________
Worcester, Mass___________
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3
7
2
10
17
7
4
1
1
3
2
6
3
3
5
2
2
3
62
2
8
16
3
5
2
1
3
13
4
City
Num ber of staff
members (full time
and part tim e)
working with
junior applicants
Cities with 25,000 to 100,000
population:1
Binghamton, N. Y _________
Cedar Rapids, Iowa_______
Charlotte, N. C ___________
Concord, N. H ____________
Council Bluffs, Iowa_______
Danville, 111_______________
Davenport, Iowa__________
Decatur, Ill_______________
Dubuque, Iow a____________
Durham, N. C _____________
East St. Louis, 111_________
Joliet, 111_____________
Little Rock, Ark__________
Manchester, N. H _________
Nashua, N. H _____________
Pawtucket, R. I ___________
Rockford, 111______________
Rockland County, N. Y ___
Sioux City, Iowa__________
Springfield, 111_____________
Waterloo, Iowa____________
Cities with 10,000 to 25,000 pop
ulation:
Fort Dodge, Iowa_________
1
1
4
2
1
2
2
3
1
3
5
4
2
1
2
1
3
2
1
2
1
1
1 Includes Rockland County, N . Y ., where the
junior counselor worked on an itinerant basis in
each of the county high schools.
J U N IO R -P L A C E M E N T OFFICES IN T H E U N IT E D STATES
9
PUBLIC-SCHOOL OFFICES
City
Number of staff members
(fu ll tim e and part time)
working with
junior applicants
Cities with 100,000 or more
population:2
Baltimore, M d_____________
Boston, Mass___________
Chicago, 111________________
Detroit, Mich_____________
Indianapolis, Ind__________
Los Angeles, C a lif.2_______
Milwaukee, Wis___________
New Orleans, La__________
New York, N. Y __________
N e w a r k , N. J. ( E s s e x
County)_________________
Philadelphia, Pa. 2_________
Pittsburgh, Pa_____________
2
13
1
10
2
7
5
1
33
8
35
1
City
Number of staff members
(fu ll tim e and part tim e)
working with
junior applicants
Cities with 100,000 or more
population— Continued.
Portland, Oreg____________
Providence, R. I. *_________
St. Paul, Minn____________
San Francisco, Calif- ______
Seattle, Wash_____________
Cities with 25,000 to 100,000
population:
Atlantic City, N. J________
Mount Vernon, N. Y --------Rockford, 111______________
Cities with 10,000 to 25,000 pop
ulation:
Royal Oak, Mich__________
12
8
1
2
3
2
1
1
1
1 Affiliated with the U. S. Employment Service.
Auspices
Fifty-two, or nearly three-fourths of the 73 services, were organized
as junior divisions of local public employment offices and 21 operated
as special services of local public-school systems, 3 of the latter being
affiliated also with their respective State employment (services. In
all, these 73 placement offices served 66 county or municipal areas; in
59 of these areas the work was conducted either by the public-school
system or by the public employment service or as a joint undertaking
of both agencies, and in the remaining 7 areas separate and independ
ent placement offices serving approximately the same districts were
maintained by each of these 2 agencies.3
Junior-placement work, organized directly under the auspices of one
or the other of these two agencies, was often financed in part or wholly
by funds received from outside sources, and to some extent the
counselors in these offices were responsible to other agencies as well
as to the organization which exercised immediate supervision over
their work. Thus, the work of all junior divisions in public employ
ment centers was supervised by the managers of those employment
centers and through them by the directors of their respective State
employment services and by the United States Employment Service,
and a large proportion of these junior divisions were subject also to
supervision and guidance from other agencies which furnished a part
of the funds for their work. The National Youth Administration was
the outside agency making the largest contribution to this work; 33,
or almost two-thirds, of the 52 junior divisions in public employment
* Boston, Mass., Chicago, 111., Indianapolis, Ind., N ew Orleans, La., N ew York, N . Y ., Rockford, 111.,
8an Francisco, Calif.
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
offices received financial support and guidance in their junior programs
from this source. Other Federal agencies such as the National Re
employment Service and the Works Progress Administration also
financed some of the work in public employment offices.
To a somewhat lesser extent, public-school offices also were financed
by and responsible to agencies other than the local public-school
system. In most of them the junior-placement program was under
the ultimate direction of the superintendent of the city public-school
system, with immediate supervision exercised most frequently by the
school director of guidance or the principal of the school in which
the office was located. The placement services in Los Angeles,
Philadelphia, and Providence operated under affiliation agreements
with the United States Employment Service, which matched school
appropriations for junior placement with funds from Federal sources
and which shared in the supervision of the placement program.4
The work in five other school offices5 also was financed in part by
agencies other than the local school system, by Federal agencies such
as the National Youth Administration, and by private agencies in
the community.
Functional Organization
Functionally the 73 offices represented two types of placement
service for junior applicants. The great majority operated as com
plete placement units with responsibility for all phases of the juniorplacement program. Each registered its own junior-applicant group
and maintained a special file of its junior registrations, solicited open
ings from employers in its community, selected and referred applicants
for job orders received, and handled whatever special follow-up of
applicants was undertaken after placement. Replies to the ques
tionnaire indicated that all but 6 of the 73 junior services operated
in this way. Although those that were affiliated with public employ
ment centers did, to some extent, share employers’ orders and
information about establishments and agencies in their commimities
with the other placement divisions of the employment centers with
which they were affiliated, each assumed responsibility for placing
its junior applicants in employment, and basically each operated
as a complete placement unit.
The six junior services6 that did not function in this way were
all junior divisions in public employment offices that indicated on
their questionnaires that they carried only part of the responsibility
for placing their junior applicants. The junior counselors in each of
« The placement programs in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Providence are classified as school services
because, although financed in part b y the public employment system at the time of this survey, they were
initiated b y the school systems of those cities and have continued to operate in dose relationship to those
school systems.
* Atlantic City, N . J., Detroit, M ich., Portland, Oreg., St. Paul, M inn., Seattle, Wash.
* Chicago, HI., Cincinnati, Ohio, Danville, 111., Decatur, 111., Indianapolis, Ind., District of Columbia.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
J U N IO R -P L A C E M E N T OFFICES IN T H E U N IT E D STATES
11
these junior divisions were responsible for determining the interests
and abilities of junior registrants, but staff members in other divisions
of their respective employment centers were in charge of a part or all
of the placement procedure itself. Thus, in these six public employ
ment centers the regular procedures followed for applicants of all
ages were supplemented, in the case of juniors, with special services
which the staff of the junior division rendered chiefly in connection
with counseling and registration. These junior services have been
called “ functional junior divisions,” and in this report they will be
distinguished as such from the complete placement units. While the
relationships between functional divisions and other divisions of their
employment centers varied somewhat from one office to another, no
functional division carried responsibility for all aspects of junior
placement to the same degree as did the complete junior-placement
unit.
The Youth Served
Most of the 73 offices accepted all applicants who resided within
the districts they served and whose age qualified them to register as
juniors. The area served by each public employment office usually
included several counties adjacent to the city in which the office was
located; school offices, on the other hand, were usually organized to
serve residents of their city school districts. Almost without exception
the juniors registered by both types of placement service were young
persons above the minimum legal age for employment (14 or 16
years) and under 21 or 22 years of age; half of the 73 offices extended
their services to young persons up to 25 years of age as well, par
ticularly when applicants in this upper age group had had no sub
stantial amount of previous work experience.
Sixty of the seventy-three junior offices accepted all registrants
who met their age and residence requirements. Twelve, or approxi
mately one-sixth of the total number, imposed further restrictions.
Six public employment offices limited the specialized services of their
junior divisions to boys, or to white applicants, and persons not
qualifying in these respects were registered and placed by adult
interviewers according to the usual adult procedures. The other six
offices, which were operated by public-school systems, limited the
groups served on the basis of educational background or race; two had
been organized primarily for the purpose of placing the graduates of
their respective school systems who had completed vocational-training
courses and they confined their work almost entirely to this particular
Group.
The questionnaire included an inquiry about the nature of the ap
plicant group reached and a request for statistical information on the
212235°—40----- 2
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
12
J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
numbers registered and placed during 1936. Unfortunately, compar
able data were not always available, and any statistical report of the
work of these offices must necessarily be far from complete. Public
employment offices and the public-school office in Philadelphia, all of
which were affiliated with the United States Employment Service, did
report uniformly on certain aspects of their placement work,7 but
other public-school offices, which were without this kind of central
affiliation, had developed a variety of reporting methods. Further
more, many of these school offices were very closely coordinated with
school programs of guidance and vocational training, and a statistical
report of their registrations and placements therefore falls far short
of representing the services they were performing in their respective
communities.
Statistical information reported by 67 public-school and public
employment offices shows 200,198 new applicants and 93,361 place
ments during 1936. The distribution between boys and girls is shown
in table 1 for each type of office. Although a slight difference was
apparent in the percentage of each sex served by public employment
offices and public-school offices, boys made up a majority of the young
people registered in both types of office. In the 51 public employment
offices reporting, 58 percent of the total applicant group were boys
and 60 percent of all placements made were for boys. In the 16
school offices reporting, boys constituted 51 percent of all applicants
and 44 percent of all placements made were for boys. Thus school
offices appeared not only to be reaching a slightly larger proportion of
girl registrants than were public employment offices but also to be
making a greater proportion of their placements for this applicant
group.
T
able
1.— New applicants and placements reported by 67 junior-placement offices,
1986
51 public em ploym ent
16 public-school offices
offices
Total
N ew applicants and placements
Num ber
Percent
distri
bution
Number
Percent
distri
bution
Number
Percent
distri
bution
N ew applicants........... ..................... .
200,198
100.0
128,786
100.0
71,412
100.0
B oys............................................ .
Girls_______________________
111, 979
88,219
55.9
44.1
75,205
53,581
58.4
41.6
36,774
34,638
51.5
48.5
93,361
100.0
62, 552
100.0
30,809
100.0
50,964
42, 397
54.6
45.4
37,332
25,220
59.7
40.3
13,632
17,177
44.2
55.8
Placements............................ ...........
B oys__________________________
Girls___________ ____ __________
‘
i Complete statistical reports of the service extended junior applicants b y all public employment offices
affiliated with the U. S. Employment Service, including those without separate junior divisions, are pre
sented in the publications of that agency: W ho Are the Job Seekers (1937) and Filling Five M illion Jobs
(1937).
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
J U N IO R -P L A C E M E N T OFFICES I N T H E U N IT E D ¡STATES
13
The difference in the type of applicant served by these two types
of office was considerably greater with respect to the amount of time
elapsing between the youth’s withdrawal from full-time day school and
his registration at the placement service. Owing no doubt to the fact
that they were operated in conjunction with their school programs of
guidance and vocational training, school offices were attracting com
paratively large numbers of young people who were about to withdraw
from school or had recently done so. Public employment offices,
which are less closely linked with public-school systems, tended to
register a correspondingly large number of young people who had
been out of school for some time. Fourteen school offices and 48
junior divisions of public employment services reported by question
naire on the proportions of their registrants who had recently with
drawn from school. Ten of the fourteen school offices estimated that
80 percent or more of these juniors had been enrolled in school within
9 months before registration. Only 6 of the 48 public employment
offices reported such a large proportion. Five public employment
offices estimated that this group made up less than 20 percent of their
applicants, while none of the school offices placed their estimate at
such a low figure. This difference in the recency of withdrawal from
school appeared to be the most significant difference between appli
cants served by schools and those served by public employment offices.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
THE OFFICES VISITED—THEIR ORGANIZATION
AND THE YOUTH THEY SERVED
The major part of this report deals with the procedures followed
in the 12 offices studied in the field. The development of the place
ment programs in these selected offices was undoubtedly influenced
to a great extent by the character of the communities and of the
applicant groups they served and by the manner in which they were
organized, and a knowledge of these basic factors is necessary to a
full understanding of the procedures which they had developed.
Information about the size of each office visited, the agency sponsor
ing it, and the community in which it was located is presented briefly
in table 2. Other characteristics of each of these 12 offices should
be noted also before considering the procedures which each had
developed.
T vble 2.— Junior-placement offices and branch offices visited
Location of office
Public employment offices:
Cedar Rapids, Iow a____________
Cincinnati, Ohio______________
Concord, N . H _____________
Durham, N . C. (2 branch offices)..
N ew York, N . Y . (2 branch offlees)......................... ........
Rochester, N . Y ______
Rockland County, N . Y _____
Washington. D . 0 _______
Public-school offices:
Atlantic C ity, N . J __________ . .
Detroit, M ich. (1 branch office)...
Newark, N . J. (Essex C ou n ty). . .
Philadelphia, Pa.3 (4 branch offlees)______________________
Population
of c i t y 1
Date of
organiza Num ber
tion of
of new
special
appli
ized
cants,
junior
1936
service
Number
of place
ments,
1936
Num ber of full-time
staff members, 1936
Junior
counselors
56,097
451,160
25,228
52,037
1936
1934
1936
1936
1,012
L 447
520
1,910
460
1,796
' 638
1,373
2
6,930,446
328,132
59,599
486,869
1918
1929
1934
1935
17,011
3,558
'569
3,803
7,024
3,485
'459
1,403
17
5
1
3
66,198
1,568,662
442, 337
1932
1921
1925
638
2 12,304
5,619
402
2 6,746
2 ,595
1
6
3
1,950,961
1916
15,932
3,683
12
Clerical
workers
1
3
1 According to the 1930 census. Population of the county is given for Rockland County, N . Y
the junior counselor worked on an itinerant basis in each of the county high schools
2 Includes applicants served in both branch offices, only one of which was visited
3 Affiliated with the U. S. Em ploym ent Service.
15
where
All but 4 of the offices had been operating for at least 3 years at
the time they were visited. Since their programs were the result of a
longer period of practical experience in junior-placement work than
was the case in many junior offices elsewhere, their procedures may
be well considered among the most effective in use at the time this
14
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
T H E OFFICES VISITED
15
study was made.1 However, the methods found effective by any
one of these offices cannot necessarily be applied with equal success
to all types of junior-placement organizations. The communities in
which these 12 offices were located differed in population, in indus
trial composition, and in the service agencies available for work with
young people. The individual offices visited were affiliated with two
types of supervising organizations, functioned in different capacities
within those organizations, and maintained applicant files which
ranged from a few hundred in some offices to more than 10,000 in
others. At one extreme was Atlantic City, with a population of
approximately 70,000, commercial activity that centered around the
resort trade, and a junior-placement office located in the boys’ voca
tional school, where the counselor had frequent contact with many
students who later came to him for placement. At the other extreme
was New York City, a metropolitan center with a great variety of
business and industrial enterprises, where the public employment
system maintained 6 large branch junior-placement offices and had
access to the services of many other agencies working with young
people in the city.
In these and in other cities visited the nature and resources of the
community sometimes exerted a marked influence upon the program
of the placement office. Thus in the school office in Detroit the
special procedures followed for applicants being considered for appren
ticeship in large industrial establishments were unlike any procedures
observed elsewhere. In other cities, where special services such as
psychological clinics were not available through other agencies in the
community, placement offices themselves had found it necessary to
assume responsibility for those services; and in still other cities,
where exceptionally useful records such as school guidance records
were available through other agencies, some counselors placed con
siderable emphasis on the procedures necessary to effect a transfer
of these records to the placement office.
In adapting their placement programs to the communities they
served, counselors in some of the offices visited had developed methods
and procedures which were entirely dissimilar. This was particularly
true of the independently organized school offices, which were without
centralized supervision that might have served to unify their place
ment programs; but even in those offices that were a part of local and
national public employment systems and that followed the same basic
policies and reporting methods counselors were usually free to adapt
their programs to the special needs of the communities they served.
1 Where procedures observed in the course of the field study appeared to be markedly different from the
methods which other placement services reported b y questionnaire, that fact is noted in later sections of
this report.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
16
J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
Only within certain limits, therefore, may the placement proce
dures followed by the offices visited be considered typical of juniorplacement practices throughout the country. The communities
which these 12 offices served were representative of urban centers in
the country at large, and counselors on their staffs found themselves
dealing with much the same kinds of problems as counselors else
where. The 12 offices were representative also of practically all
types of organizational set-up reported by offices elsewhere which
returned questionnaires; and many of them, as members of Stateand Nation-wide public employment services, were following the
same basic policies and procedures as outlined by their supervising
agencies and as developed with the aid of the field representatives of
those agencies.
Organization
Seven 2 of the twelve offices visited operated as junior divisions of
public employment centers and through them were affiliated with
their respective State employment services and with the United States
Employment Service. An eighth junior office was a part of the
District of Columbia public employment center, which was under the
direct supervision of the United States Employment Service. These
eight offices followed basic policies and procedures outlined for public
employment offices by the United States Employment Service, and
some of them in which junior-placement work was financed by the
National Youth Administration conformed also to the procedures
outlined by that agency. Some offices, like those in New York State,
operated under the direction of State supervisors of junior placement
and followed special junior procedures developed for use in all offices
throughout the State area.
The four other offices visited were sponsored by public-school sys
tems, and each operated somewhat more independently than was gen
erally the case in public employment services. Of these, the junior
services in Atlantic City and in Detroit were conducted by the boards
of education of these cities, while a third office, located in Newark,
was supervised and financed by the board of education of the Essex
County vocational schools. The fourth school office visited was the
junior-employment service of Philadelphia. Originally established
and conducted by the public schools of that city, in 1934 this junior
service entered into an affiliation agreement with the United States
Employment Service, and although it continued to operate in close
relationship with the city public schools thereafter the Pennsylvania
State employment service also exercised supervision over its program.
i Cedar Rapids, Cincinnati, Concord, Durham, N ew York C ity, Rochester, Rockland County.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
T H E OFFICES VISITED
17
The 12 offices included both types of functional organization that
have been discussed. Ten 3 operated as complete placement units
and were responsible for all phases of the placement procedure. Two
served as functional junior divisions in the public employment centers
in Cincinnati and in the District of Columbia, other divisions of those
employment centers sharing some of the responsibility for the place
ment of junior applicants. Since these 2 offices differed in their
relationships with other divisions of their respective employment
centers, and since reference will be made to their special problems
and procedures in later sections of this report, the organization of
each is outlined briefly at this point.
In the Cincinnati employment center the registration divisions, of
which the junior division was one, were separate from the divisions
through which applicants of all ages were placed. Thus the junior
division was responsible for the registration of young applicants
only. All selections of persons qualified to fill employers’ orders and
all referrals and placements were subsequently made by staff members
in other divisions responsible for placement, each of which handled
applicants of all ages seeking employment in a specified field of work.
The registration records of junior applicants were therefore filed, not
in the junior office itself as they were in the complete placement unit,
but in a central registration file which also contained the records of
adult applicants.
A somewhat different division of responsibility for j unior applicants
existed in the District of Columbia public employment center, where
the junior division was essentially a counseling service through which
junior applicants were given the guidance to which their youth and
inexperience entitled them before they were referred for registration
and placement to other divisions, known as operating divisions,
which handled applicants of all ages.4 Whereas in Cincinnati all
records were filed centrally, in the District of Columbia each operating
division kept its own records. The records of junior applicants which
were filed in each operating division contained only that information
about the applicant which was especially Useful in view of the type
of placement made by each operating division. In addition, the
junior division maintained a file of master records giving full informa
tion on each junior applicant; these the counselors used mainly for
8 Atlantic City, Cedar Rapids, Concord, Detroit, Durham, Essex County, New York C ity, Philadelphia,
Rockland County, Rochester.
4 In January 1938, when unemployment compensation went into effect in the District of Columbia and
shortly after the office there was visited, the relationship of the junior division to the operating divisions of
the public employment center changed somewhat. Since that date, junior counselors in the District of
Columbia have been responsible for completing the registrations of all junior applicants, assigning them to
suitable classifications, and then routing their records to the operating divisions responsible for placement.
The District of Columbia procedures described in this report, therefore, are not the same, in all respects,
as those being followed at the present time.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
18
J U N IO R P L A C E M E N T
counseling purposes and occasionally when asked to do so by oper
ating divisions, for selecting applicants to fill job orders.6
Character of the Applicant Group
The 12 selected offices were organized to serve applicant groups
substantially the same as those registered by most junior-placement
services in other parts of the country. The usual restrictions in
regard to the residence of applicants were observed. None of these
services as a whole made sex, race, or education a qualifying factor
in connection with their acceptance of registrants, but the separate
branch offices maintained by some of them did so. Branches in
Philadelphia and New York served areas which were districted; the
2 offices in Durham served white and Negro applicants, respectively;
and of the 2 Detroit school offices 1 served applicants from Wayne
University and the other, considerably larger in size, served a junior
group drawn from the city as a whole and generally younger and less
highly specialized in educational background.
All 12 offices had set up certain age requirements. Registration as
a junior applicant was open usually to young persons between 16 and
21 years of age. In many offices there was also provision for handling
the registrations of inexperienced young persons who were above
this age.® A few offices also placed registrants 14 and 15 years old,
particularly in part-time and temporary employment.
It was evident that many counselors felt it undesirable to adhere
too closely to age and residence requirements. In the actual conduct
of their work almost all had occasion to register and place young people
who did not meet their stated requirements and, in the case of public
employment offices, to transfer to adult divisions at least some of the
young people who fell within the age limits regularly handled by the
junior office. Undoubtedly, the particular group served by the junior
office was often described in terms of age and residence because it was
most expedient to explain the function of the junior office to the
general public in these terms. Moreover, age furnished an indication
of the maturity and experience of the prospective applicant himself
and attracted to the junior office those who were likely to be most in
* According to information obtained b y questionnaire, functional junior divisions of a somewhat different
type were operated in Indianapolis and in at least three of the public employment offices in Illinois. None
of these were visited in the course of the field survey, but their response to the questionnaire indicated that
in these offices, too, the actual referral of junior applicants on job openings was done b y staff members who
handled registrants of all ages. In each of them, however, junior counselors registered all junior applicants,
maintained their own registration file within the junior division, and used it for selection, not occasionally
as in the District of Columbia, but as a regular procedure whenever staff members in charge of placement
felt that the opening available was suitable for a junior applicant.
1 In order to reach older, inexperienced applicants the junior service in N ew York C ity had organized
one of its six branch offices as a special counseling service (undistricted) for inexperienced applicants between
the ages of 21 and 25 years who were placeable in commercial, retailing, and professional work. A plan to
establish a similar special service for young applicants desiring work in other fields had not yet been put
into operation at the time the N ew York public employment service was visited in the field.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
THE
OFFICES VISITED
19
need of its service. In public employment centers age also proved to
be the distinguishing characteristic which was most practical from the
point of view of receptionists and other clerical workers who directed
applicants of all types to the proper registration divisions.
School offices usually registered all applicants who were within the
age range that they served. Inasmuch as these registrants were for
the most part lacking in any substantial amount of previous work
experience, counselors in some of the offices visited considered it
desirable to have in their files also the names of a limited number of
older and more experienced applicants who could be referred on open
ings which they occasionally received for experienced workers. For
this reason counselors in school offices registered a limited number of
qualified persons above the specified age limits or kept on hand the
registrations of former applicants who had passed the upper age limits.
The type of applicant that junior divisions in public employment
centers registered and placed was somewhat different from that served
by school offices. Junior divisions responsible for the placement as
well as the registration of their applicants handled only job orders
calling for beginning workers, all orders for jobs requiring experience
or skill in trade processes being filled in adult divisions. Thus, the
applicant group qualified to fill job orders received by the complete
junior division of the public employment office was not an age group,
primarily, but rather a group qualified to fill unskilled and beginning
jobs. This being the case, counselors in most complete junior divisions
not only redirected to adult interviewers a limited number of excep
tionally well-qualified juniors who had originally come to the junior
division because of their age but also registered in the junior division
a few inexperienced older applicants referred to them by adultplacement workers. In this way the applicant group served by many
junior divisions in public employment offices was limited to persons
who were lacking in any substantial amount of previous work exper
ience and who were placeable only in openings calling for beginning or
inexperienced workers.
Recruiting Policies
Most counselors felt it desirable to have among their registrants a
wide representation in age, educational background, ability, and
experience. Practically all employers with whom they dealt had
occasion at one time or another to use a variety of types of junior
applicants, and certainly all inexperienced young people, irrespective
of background and training, could profit by the specialized service
available in the junior-placement office. Most counselors therefore
considered that recruiting policies aimed to bring all types of appli
cants in touch with the junior office were essential to an effective
placement service.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
20
J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
At the time of this survey there had for some years been a general
scarcity of jobs and a corresponding abundance of applicants. Many
counselors had more applicants than they could hope to place within a
reasonable period of time and no great effort was necessary to attract
persons of varied backgrounds, interests, and training. Frequently,
however, an unduly large proportion of these registrants were of
mediocre ability— young persons likely always to experience difficulty
in obtaining employment. Consequently the limited amount of time
counselors gave to organized recruiting was often confined to an effort
to reach applicants with somewhat more satisfactory experience or
training and with ability that was average or above average.
Counselors with whom the matter was discussed reported that they
had found that this type of young applicant could best be reached
through the graduating classes of the local academic and vocational
high schools. Moreover, these prospective graduates were most apt
to be lacking in previous work experience and therefore in special need
of the kind of placement service available in the junior office.
Each year counselors in the four school offices visited and in five
of the eight public employment offices 7 went into the schools for the
purpose of explaining their services to high-school principals and
graduating classes and encouraging registration. Many also dis
tributed announcements to be posted in the schools and supplied
principals and teachers with cards of introduction and descriptive
material to be given young people planning to register at the place
ment office. In Rockland and Essex Counties the placement service
was presented to students in school handbooks and in other literature
as part of the school program.
Talks were given before adult groups as well as before school pupils.
Indeed, it was the opinion of the counselor in one small community
visited that prospective applicants could often be reached much more
effectively through their parents than through the schools. Many
junior-placement workers therefore found it desirable to explain
their services to parent-teacher associations, church groups, and
fraternal organizations.
Other methods used to reach potential applicants included news
paper feature articles about the placement office, talks to C. C. C.
enrollees at the time when their enlistment periods were about to
expire, agreements with employers for referral to the placement office
of young people applying at their establishments for work, and the
use of the radio for general publicity. In these ways counselors
sought to increase their field of usefulness to employers as well as
to young people by making their programs known to a diversified
group of potential registrants.
j Atlantic C ity, Cedar Rapids, Detroit, District of Columbia, Durham, Essex C ounty, Philadelphia,
Rochester, Rockland County.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
REGISTRATION PROCEDURE
The applicant’s registration at the placement office is primarily a
fact-finding procedure. The counselor needs information that will
enable him to determine the kinds of work in which the applicant may
be suitably placed, and the applicant on his part needs information
about the routine followed by the employment office and his own
obligations as a registrant.
Counselors who were interviewed in the course of the field study
reported that much of this information was given in the course of
interviews with junior registrants at the placement office; in addition,
many counselors made it a policy to obtain further data about the
applicant’s qualifications through the reports of other agencies and
individuals in the community who had known him in the past and
through objective tests of ability and achievement.
Purpose of the Interview
The applicant’s first contact with the placement office usually takes
place at the time of his first interview with the counselor. In most
cases, therefore, counselors devote considerably more time to the
initial interview than they find necessary for subsequent conferences
with the applicant, when he is better known to them.
Before registering applicants as available for employment, coun
selors in the offices visited usually explained to them the services of
the placement office and their obligations as registrants. Some also
supplied leaflets, which young applicants could read when waiting to
be interviewed or could take home and study. The mimeographed
folder used for this purpose in Durham is reproduced on page 22; it
illustrates the kind of information and suggestions which counselors
have found helpful in acquainting applicants with placement services
and procedures.
The initial interview also provided the counselor with his first
opportunity to ascertain the kind of work the applicant was qualified
to do. On the basis of facts obtained from the applicant about his
education, past work experience, vocational and avocational interests,
and physical and personality characteristics, he was assigned to occu
pational classifications which would later guide the office in placing
him in employment. Occasionally the information supplied by the
applicant was too meager to enable the counselor to make an assign
ment of occupational classification at the time of the first interview,
21
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
22
T H E OFFICES VISITED
Inform ation A bout Junior Service
concerning the nature of your
work and we may discuss with you
any difficulties in connection with
your job.
I. What Is the State Employment
Service?
A. The North Carolina State
Employment Service is organized
for the purpose of helping people
to find jobs. No fee is charged, for
the State believes in bringing to
gether employers and applicants
without cost to either.
B. The State employment serv
ice has several divisions each
specializing in placing certain kinds
of workers, such as professional,
commercial, industrial, labor and
service, and junior. The junior
division is devoted entirely to plac
ing young men and women under
II I . How Bo We Work?
You are considered for the job
your are best qualified to fill.
The applicant who can do best
what the employer wants done is
given first consideration. If two
of you are equally qualified we
send the one who has been coming
to the office longer and more regu
larly. This rule must be broken
if you cannot be reached by tele
phone.
21.
IV . General Information.
II. What Is Expected of You?
Although there are more jobs
now than there have been in the
past few years, you must realize
that it will probably take a while
for you to get one. You should
look everywhere you can, but you
should also keep in touch with us
regularly, no matter how long it
takes, until through some source
you get a position.
You should keep on preparing
yourself for the job you are inter
ested in, even though the possi
bility of getting that particular job
at the present time is remote.
We will b8 glad to talk over your
future work plans with you; and
if you are in doubt as to what you
want to do, we will be glad to
make arrangements for you to take
some vocational tests to find out
more about your own abilities.
A. The first time you come to the
office between the hours of 9 and
1 o’clock you will be registered for
work. You will be asked to report
on a certain day thereafter so that
we may be able to keep in touch
with you. It is very necessary
that you have a telephone number
at or near your home so that we
can reach you quickly in case we
get a job for you. Make arrange
ments with someone to call you
and bring that number in so that
it may be placed on your applica
tion card.
B. After you get a job, you will
be asked to come in some evening
to talk it over with us. We want
to keep in touch with you even
after you are placed so that you
may give us accurate information
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
REGISTRATION PROCEDURE
23
but in most cases some assignment, even though tentative or of a very
general nature, could be made at that tune. Most counselors made
it a policy to discuss these assignments carefully with all applicants
and to refrain from assigning any occupational classifications that
were not mutually acceptable.
Needless to say, classifications assigned at this or at any other time
were always subject to change if additional information on the ap
plicant’s abilities made it advisable. Unlike the classification of adult
applicants, which could usually be determined readily on the basis of
previous work experience, the proper classification of junior appli
cants often required an investigation of the records of agencies that
had dealt with them in the past and several interviews with the
counselor at the placement office. Sometimes it was only by the
use of these outside sources of information and repeated conferences
with the applicant that his inherent interests and abilities could be
ascertained.
Classification for Placement
One of the fundamental differences between junior- and adultplacement procedures lies in the systems of occupational classification
which have been found useful for these two types of applicants.
Many junior counselors have felt that the job categories used in con
nection with applicants of all ages are better suited to adult registrants
than to inexperienced young applicants whose occupational skills are
comparatively undeveloped and who may be placeable in a wide
variety of beginning jobs.
For this reason junior counselors often classified their applicants in
occupational categories that were considerably broader than those
generally used by adult interviewers. A young girl classified as a
“ kitchen worker,” for instance, would be assured of consideration for
a greater number of job openings than would be the case had she been
assigned to a more specialized classification such as “ salad girl.”
For much the same reason counselors found descriptive classifications
useful. Thus an applicant listed as having a “ good sales personality”
would be assured of consideration for a larger variety of openings than
if he were classified as “ gasoline-station attendant.”
Broad occupational categories and descriptive categories were used
particularly in the smaller offices visited. In selecting those applicants
qualified to fill employers’ orders, counselors in small offices had little
need for finely differentiated occupational classifications. The num
ber of applicants usually available in any one of the general categories
was seldom so large that a consideration of the whole group interfered
with efficiency in filling an employer’s request for a specific type of
worker within that field. It was only in the case of the limited
number of juniors whose training or abilities were exceptionally
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
24
J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
specialized that counselors in the smaller placement offices used specific
occupational categories comparable to those generally used for adult
applicants.
Most offices handling large numbers of registrants made com
paratively little use of broad occupational categories and descriptive
categories. Among thousands of registrants, hundreds might well be
classified for kitchen work or saleswork, for instance, and such
categories would be of little assistance in enabling the counselor to
make a reasonably quick selection. By using more detailed classifica
tions within each of these major groupings counselors in large offices
were able to make selections from panels that were less cumbersome
and at the same time contained the names of those applicants who
most closely met the specifications for the opening in question. In
this way the classification system followed by the junior divisions of
the New York City public employment service divided all sales occu
pations into the three fields of promotion, commission, and retail-store
work; each of these was further broken down into specific occupations
which, in the case of promotional sales work, ranged all the way from
window trimming to impersonating Santa Claus during the Christmas
season. Insofar as possible, all applicants registering with the New
York City placement service were assigned to specific occupational
categories such as these. In order that applicants might be con
sidered for all jobs for which they were qualified, they were assigned
to as many classifications as seemed justified by their ability—in
most cases at least three, and frequently more. Only those who were
notably lacking in special interests and abilities were given general
descriptive classifications, such as “ factory type.” Counselors in
large placement offices endeavored to keep such general classifications
at a m in im u m because, unless they did so, their files tended to become
unwieldy for selection purposes and applicants who were classified
in this way stood small chance of placement.
In New York City, as in most other large placement services, the
specific categories used were those which experience had proved to be
best adapted for the selection of applicants for the types of orders
which the office was accustomed to receiving. These categories varied
considerably in different cities, depending partly upon the size of the
community and the nature of the employer clientele and partly upon
the training and previous work experience of the applicant group
served. Often those used by junior counselors in public employment
offices were quite unlike those used by adult-placement workers in the
same organization.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
REGISTRATION PROCEDURE
25
Interviewing Facilities and Division of Responsibility
Interviews for registration purposes were usually held at the offices
of the placement service, most of which were located so as to be
accessible to registrants throughout the areas they served. Occa
sionally, as in Rockland County and Durham, other arrangements
were necessary for registering applicants living in county areas who
found it difficult to reach the placement office. The public employ
ment center in Durham, which served five neighboring counties, had
on its staff a traveling representative who interviewed junior as well
as adult registrants living in the outlying districts. The registration
records of any junior applicants interviewed by this representative
were turned over to the junior division of the Durham office, where
they were placed in the junior registration files. In Rockland County
the junior counselor kept scheduled office hours in a central placement
office and in each of several localities elsewhere in the county, the
high schools furnishing space for this purpose.
Where one junior counselor was in charge of all work with juniors
he was, of course, responsible for the registration of all junior appli
cants. In offices staffed by two or more counselors it was customary
for each to handle the registrations of a different applicant group.
Usually these groups were distinguished either wholly or partly on the
basis of sex 1or race.2 Less frequently, as in Philadelphia and Detroit,
the applicant's educational background or the field of work for which
he desired to register also determined which staff member handled
his registration.
Interviews were conducted privately in most offices. Counselors
with whom the subject was discussed considered privacy essential to
the establishment of a satisfactory relationship with the applicant.
Nine of the twelve offices visited furnished private interviewing rooms
or booths for all counselors, and in the three where those facilities
were not available, as much privacy as possible had been achieved
by the arrangement of the counselors’ desks.
The situation in regard to the length of time available for individual
conferences with applicants was much less satisfactory than provisions
for privacy. Many counselors stated that they often found it neces
sary to complete a registration interview in 15 minutes or less, par
ticularly when unusually large numbers of applicants happened to
appear at the office. Staff members in 2 large offices reported that
they sometimes interviewed 40 or more applicants in a single morning,
including some, of course, who were not new to the office and who
therefore could be interviewed more briefly than new registrants; in a
third office it was not uncommon for each counselor to hold 25 regis1 Essex County, Detroit, N ew York C ity, Philadelphia, Rochester.
* District of Columbia, Durham.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
26
J U N IO R P L A C E M E N T
tration interviews in a morning in addition to a number of briefer
reinterviews. Counselors were fully aware of the disadvantage of
such interviewing schedules but had found them unavoidable if all
applicants were to be registered when they first came to the office.
In order to provide somewhat more adequate time for each inter
view, the counselors in Cedar Rapids, Cincinnati, and the Brooklyn
branch of the New York City public employment s’ervice had adopted
an appointment system for interviews. By spacing conferences at
regular intervals throughout the week, counselors in these three offices
were able to exercise some control over the numbers of registrants
coming to the office each day and thus make more efficient use of their
interviewing time. Recognizing that any procedure which delayed
registration might sometimes work an unwarranted hardship on the
applicant, they made an effort to single out for immediate interview
those individuals whose circumstances appeared to justify special
attention at the time they first came to the office.
Maintenance of Active Registration Status
In the interest of efficiency counselors found it necessary to keep
informed of subsequent changes in the applicant’s employment status;
otherwise time would be lost in considering for placement young
persons who proved to be no longer available. In order to keep their
registration active, therefore, applicants of most of the offices visited
were required to report to the placement office at monthly or bimonthly
intervals. It was possible for the applicant to make this report either
by coming to the office in person or by mail or telephone.
Personal visits were usually encouraged as a means for the applicant
to keep his registration active. It was a policy in most of the offices
visited for counselors to reinterview personally all those who came to
the office for this purpose, and whenever practicable each counselor
saw those whom he had originally registered. In spite of their
crowded interviewing schedules counselors felt that this time was well
spent, because repeated contacts enabled the applicant to become
better acquainted with the staff and the procedures of the placement
office and at the same time placed the counselor in a position to check
on changes in the applicant’s qualifications that might have occurred
since the time of registration and that might not otherwise have be
come evident. Moreover, these later contacts with the applicant were
a valuable supplement to registration interviews, which were often
necessarily brief. It was only in a few offices where the time available
for the initial interview was somewhat more adequate, as in Cincinnati
and Cedar Rapids, that applicants returning to make a routine report
on their registration status were seen by receptionists rather than by
junior counselors; counselors themselves usually reinterviewed only
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
REGISTRATION PROCEDURE
27
those applicants who specifically requested this conference or whose
registration presented special problems.
Supplementary Information on the Applicant
Counselors often found it advisable to verify and supplement some
of the basic information obtained from the applicant at the time he
registered. Young people seldom know how to make the best or the
most accurate presentation of their experience and qualifications, and
any additional information that may be obtainable through psycho
logical tests and personal-interest blanks and the records of other
agencies in the community constitutes a valuable check on the appli
cant’s own statements and on the counselor’s judgment of his capa
bilities.
Policies followed in obtaining supplementary information varied
considerably, depending on the amount of time that staff members
could devote to this work and on the resources of the community
and the resourcefulness of the counselor. Counselors in most of the
offices visited obtained additional information only for the few appli
cants for whom it seemed particularly desirable. There were, how
ever, a number of offices that made it a practice to obtain supplemen
tary records either for all registrants or for special groups such as
high-school graduates, for whom the data seemed most likely to be
useful or accessible. Usually the data requested were not available
until after the initial registration interview, and any decisions arrived
at in regard to the applicant’s plans or occupational classifications
were considered tentative until the desired information was at hand.
Proof of Age.
Practically all offices required proof of age from at least those
applicants whom counselors suspected to be below the legal minimum
for full-time employment. A few offices required every registrant to
present proof of age,3 accepting for this purpose birth or baptismal
certificates, passports, or the records of local offices in charge of issuing
employment certificates. The definite knowledge of the applicant’s
age thus obtained enabled counselors to guard against making any
placements not in accordance with the protective restrictions of their
State child-labor laws and to assure an employer that the applicant
was legally permitted to do the work required. Especially in States
where the workmen’s compensation law provided double compensa
tion for minors injured when illegally employed, it was to the advan
tage of employers to know that a check had been made of the ages of
all applicants referred to them by the placement office.
8 Detroit, N ew York, Philadelphia, Rochester, Rockland County.
212235°—40------3
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
28
J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
Personal-Interest Blanks.
In the public employment office of Cincinnati a questionnaire or
personal-interest blank was filled in by the junior applicant and filed
as a part of his registration record. This blank, which is reproduced
on page 29, was so worded as to encourage a free statement of likes
and dislikes, interests, plans, and recreational activities. The appli
cant generally filled it in while waiting at the office for his registration
interview, and the information was therefore available to the counselor
at that time. Counselors reported that it often served to disclose
significant information about the applicant’s tastes, maturity, and
level of understanding, with a minimum expenditure of time on their
part.4
Tests.
Almost all junior counselors consulted scores from at least some
psychological and other types of tests in order to check their impres
sions of the applicant’s ability as well as the applicant’s own state
ments in regard to the kind of work he was able to do. Some of these
tests were trade or achievement tests designed to show the degree of
skill that the applicant had already acquired in trade processes and
in clerical work, and they were used chiefly in connection with the
immediate problem of job placement; other tests of individual apti
tudes and intelligence, used somewhat less extensively, furnished more
general information about the applicant’s abilities and were useful to
counselors primarily when they were assisting young persons to
formulate vocational and educational plans that would be in line
with their abilities.
Many of the tests used for these two purposes were of questionable
significance in the hands of anyone but a trained psychologist.5
Consequently, relatively few psychological tests were administered
by placement offices that did not have special testing facilities of
their own or access to the psychological clinics of other agencies in
their communities. Most of the test information that counselors in
these offices obtained for junior applicants came from other agencies
that had tested them in the past, largely from the public schools that
the young persons had attended.
4 The Cincinnati office was the only one of those visited that regularly made use of interest blanks; other
offices, including several of the public employment services in Illinois and those in Indianapolis, Ind., and
Worcester, Mass., indicated on the questionnaires they returned that they also made it a practice to obtain
this kind of information from all or from selected groups of their junior registrants.
* This report does not propose to evaluate the different tests used b y placement offices at the time of this
study. M ost of them required careful Interpretation of the applicant’s performance b y a trained examiner
and some were admittedly experimental. For information on specific tests, see Bingham, Walter V .:
Aptitudes and Aptitude Testing (Harper & Bros., New York, 1937); Stead, Shartle, and associates: Occu
pational Counseling Techniques (American Book C o., N ew York, 1940).
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
REGISTRATION PROCEDURE
Personal-interest Blank
Counselor
N a m e_____________________________Age . — S e x ________ D a t e ________
1. What do you do that you like best out
side of work or school hours?
Outdoors
Indoors
1. _________________
1 . ______________
2. _________________
2 . ______________
3 . _________________
3 . ______________
2. Have you any hobbies?
they?
10. What have you often
thought that you would
like to do for a living?
Why?
How long have you been
interested in this field?
What are
3. What things outside your job would
you now like to learn to do either in
connection with work or with recrea
tion?
11. What occupations or fields
of work would you like
more information about?
12. What kind of work are you
trying to get now?
4. What school subjects did you like best?
5. What school subjects did you find
most difficult?
6. Which of the following subjects, if you
had them, did you like better?
English or mathematics__________
Science or h istory__________
__
7. What have you studied outside your
regular school course that you liked?
8. What course of training or special
13. Do you read newspapers?
Which ones?
What parts?
14. What magazines do you
read often?
15. What three books outside
of school books that you
have read do you especially like?
16. Where do you meet y»ui
friends?
subjects would you like to take if
you could?
9. Where did you hear about the Em
ployment Center?
17. What club meetings oi
athletic groups do you
attend frequently?
( Use other side if necessary)
Form used in Cincinnati
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
What do you like best to
29
30
J U N IO R P L A C E M E N T
Tests administered by tbe schools and used by counselors in these
junior-placement offices were usually designed to measure the in divid
ual’s general level of ability and were useful primarily for guidance
purposes; in most cases these tests did not give information about
any specific trade or clerical skills which the applicant might have
acquired or for which he showed aptitude. Many counselors have
felt that for the purposes of the placement office the latter type of
test information was the more significant. Inasmuch as such infor
mation was not generally available to placement offices through the
schools and since, as a matter of fact, trade tests are of limited value
unless administered at the time the applicant is considered for place
ment, counselors in most of these offices have felt it necessary to
arrange for a limited number of young applicants to be tested specifi
cally at the request of the placement office. A few have been able
to obtain this testing service through the cooperation of business
schools and other agencies, which have agreed to administer specific
tests to applicants referred by the placement office. The majority of
counselors, however, have found it necessary to make provision
within their own organization for the administration of those tests
that they considered essential. Since they undertook such testing
without the aid of trained examiners, they limited it largely to tests
that were relatively simple to administer and score and that required
a m in im u m of interpretation of the applicant’s performance. By far
the most widely used tests were speed tests in shorthand and type
writing. The United States Employment Service has sought to
insure the proper administration of these speed tests by providing
the services of a field psychologist to public-employment-office coun
selors and receptionists who wish instruction in administering and
scoring them.
Six junior-placement offices visited in the field 6 limited their test
ing programs to tests of the kinds that have been discussed. In
none of these offices did counselors consult scores from more than two
or three kinds of tests, and those were available for a limited number
of applicants only. Counselors stated that the information thus
acquired was useful chiefly in connection with determining whether
or not the applicant was qualified for immediate placement in a speci
fied type of work. They made no attempt to analyze the funda
mental interests and aptitudes of the individual through the medium
of this information.
Six of the twelve offices visited, all of which were located in or near
large metropolitan centers, had developed their psychological test
ing programs beyond this point.7 Counselors in each of these offices
6 Atlantic C ity, Cedar Rapids, Concord, Durham, Essex C ounty, Rochester.
7 Cincinnati, Detroit, District of Columbia, N ew York C ity, Philadelphia, Rockland C ounty. Less than
10 of the remaining 61 offices reporting b y questionnaire but not visited in the field indicated that their test
ing programs were equally comprehensive.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
REGISTRATION PROCEDURE
31
had access to the services of comprehensive testing units which were
supervised by trained psychologists and were equipped to make an
intensive study of the abilities of selected applicants. In the Phil
adelphia school office and in the public employment offices of Cin
cinnati and the District of Columbia these units functioned as one of
several special activities carried on by the placement service as a whole.
In Detroit, New York City, and Rockland County testing units under
the supervision of agencies other than the placement office extended
their services without charge to applicants whom junior counselors
referred to them for special testing.
Tests to determine proficiency already acquired, like those which
were administered primarily for placement purposes by counselors in
offices without special testing facilities, made up only a small part of
the work of psychological testing units. Most of their test procedures
were directed toward aiding the counselor in advising the applicant
about the fields of work in which he seemed most likely to succeed,
and they included tests measuring the applicant’s ability in as many
fields of work as possible as well as tests designed to measure general
intelligence, interests, and personality. Such comprehensive testing
programs required a careful observation of the applicant’s perform
ance while the tests were in progress and interpretation of the per
formance by trained examiners. The results of these tests were
generally used for purposes of general vocational prediction rather
than for immediate job placement.
Comprehensive testing of this sort was in no case a routine proced
ure followed with all applicants. Applicants were usually singled
out for special testing because of their need for individual guidance or
because their classification for employment presented problems to
the junior counselor that might be clarified by test performance.
Special testing was arranged for those who appeared reasonably
capable but who were vocationally undecided, those who were plan
ning to prepare for or enter occupations for which they were apparently
unsuited or for which the training necessary was so extensive that it
seemed advisable to check their aptitudes, and those who, although
experienced, had found their work uncongenial and wanted to make
a change.
Most counselors made no attempt to refer an applicant for psycho
logical testing unless they were assured of his understanding and
cooperation. The psychologists in charge of the testing program
determined the kinds of tests to be given on the basis of the problem
as outlined by the junior counselor and the applicant’s performance
as the testing procedure progressed. In reporting the results of the
tests they placed special emphasis on giving to the counselor who had
originally referred the applicant a careful interpretation of test
performance, preparing for his use written reports which were incor
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
32
J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
porated into the applicant’s record. In New York City and the District
of Columbia the report of each applicant’s test performance was
discussed in conference by psychologists, counselors, and placement
workers, and plans satisfactory from all points of view were thus devel
oped for handling the applicant’s registration. In the District of
Columbia this conference was followed by an interview to which the
applicant himself was invited so that he might participate in the
analysis of his own registration problem. This procedure served
not only to define the problem for the applicant but also to render him
more receptive to suggestions for improving his plans and making
the greatest possible use of his special interests and abilities.
School Records.
The schools formerly attended by junior applicants were a source of
information which many counselors felt to be second in value only to
information furnished by the applicant himself. The contact which
teachers and advisers maintain with a pupil over a number of years
enables them to give an estimate of his personality, interests, and
abilities which is sometimes of great help to the counselor in classifying
him for employment.
Placement officers sponsored by public-school systems made con
siderably more use of the records available in the schools than did
most junior divisions connected with public employment centers.
Inasmuch as these school offices were operating as a part of their city
school systems and were frequently quartered in the school buildings,
the counselors on their staffs were in closer touch with teachers and
other school officials and were familiar with the kinds of pupil records
kept and with their significance. Moreover, many of the publicschool systems that supervised these placement offices had assumed
responsibility for educational and vocational guidance, and they
kept the sort of pupil records which were especially helpful for the
purposes of the junior counselor.
An increasing number of public employment offices have come to
recognize the importance of this close relationship between the school
and the placement office. It has been somewhat more difficult for
public employment offices to effect a transfer of records from the
schools, however, partly because the two agencies are independently
organized and partly because many of the school systems in their
communities lacked guidance programs and even, in some cases,
adequate record-keeping systems.
Of the 12 junior-placement offices visited, 4 8 requested school
information on all types of applicants, 7 9 confined their investi
gation to selected groups, and 1 10 was in the process of drawing
• Atlantic City, Essex County, District of Columbia, Rockland County.
• Cedar Rapids, Cincinnati, Concord, Detroit, Durham, Philadelphia, Rochester.
io N ew Y ork City.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
REGISTRATION PROCEDURE
33
up plans for a routine inquiry into the school records of junior appli
cants, although at the time of this survey it was making contacts
with the local schools only in connection with a very few applicants
for whom school information seemed particularly desirable.
Several counselors who did not check the school records of all
applicants indicated that they would unquestionably have done so had
the necessary clerical assistance been available. Lacking facilities for
investigating the records of all applicants they made inquiries for those
groups for which they felt this information would be most significant.
Some counselors believed that the schools became less valuable as a
source of information as the applicant’s school days become more
remote, since the records of young persons who had been out of school
for several years were sometimes difficult to locate and teachers’
recollections of their abilities and characteristics were likely to be less
reliable. Hence, in Concord and Durham school records were checked
only for applicants who had graduated during the current school year,
and in Cincinnati for applicants who were under 18 years of age and
who, because of their youth, were likely to have been enrolled in the
schools recently. Other counselors felt that the school records of
applicants who progressed no further than the elementary or early
high-school grades were likely to prove less useful for placement
purposes than the records of better-trained applicants, and accordingly
they made inquiries only for high-school graduates 11 or for applicants
who had completed at least some high-school work.12
Information requested of the schools included at least the grade
completed by the applicant, a record of his ability and the quality of
his work, and teachers’ comments about his personality. Attendance
records also were requested by some offices,13 because counselors felt
that they were indicative of health, of habits of regularity, and of
possible causes for school failure. In Rochester and Atlantic City, and
somewhat less systematically in other offices visited, an effort was made
to obtain the year-book picture of each high-school graduate; this was
attached to the applicant’s registration card in the placement office
and served as a reminder of the applicant which was sometimes helpful
when counselors had occasion to consult his record in his absence.
Many junior counselors obtained this school information informally,
by correspondence or by telephone. Where the group investigated was
of any considerable size, however, placement workers had developed
school-information forms on which school authorities could record the
desired information. Counselors in Cedar Rapids, Concord, Durham,
and the District of Columbia used a standard school-information card
prepared by the United States Employment Service for use in public
11 Concord, Durham, Cedar Rapids, Detroit, Rochester.
18 Cincinnati.
11 Detroit, N ew Y ork City, Cincinnati, Atlantic City.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
SCHOOL-INFORM ATION CARD
[Actual size: 8 by
CO
inches]
Ju n io r S ectio n
N e w Y o r k S t a t e E m p l o y m e n t S ervice
AFFILIATED WITH
N A M E O F ST U D E N T .
U n ite d S t a t e s
A D D R E S S ........................
TO
................................................................... H IG H S C H O O L , W IL L Y O U A S S IS T U S IN BEIN G
O F S E R V IC E T O T H E A B O V E N A M E D ST U D EN T O F Y O U R S C H O O L B Y F IL L IN G IN T H E
IN F O R M A T IO N R E Q U IR E D O N T H IS F O R M ?
_____________
C O U R S E ..................................................
date
G R A D U A T E D .......................................
IF D R O P O U T
G IV E D ATE (M O . 8t Y R . ) .......................................
S e r vic e
DATE.
COUN SELOR.
P. G . C O U R S E ..................................................
H IG H E S T G R A D E
C O M P L E T E D .......................................
em ploym ent
O F F IC E A D D R E S S .......................................................................................................................
L E N G T H ........................................
P O S IT IO N IN C L A S S .
R E A SO N F O R D R O P O U T ............................................
RESULTS
N A M E O F T E ST
O F
3RD YEAR
S T A N D A R D IZ E D A P T IT U D E TESTS
D AT E G IV E N
(A C A D E M I C , A C H IE V E M E N T ,
O R IG IN A L S C O R E
HEALTH RECORD
P ERCE N T IL E R A N K
4TH Y E A R
8c M E C H A N I C A L )
REM ARKS
DATE O F LA ST EXAM .
o i c . e e i k i d i c a t f A N Y D EFECTS SU C H A S A N E M IA C A R D IA C , D EFECTIVE H E A R IN G , TEETH , H E R N IA , N E R V O U S , S K IN O R O R T H O P E D IC D ISE ASES.
, N n V cA T E A T T E N D /U IC E O F ^ ^ U D eS t^ IN ^SP E C IA L C L A SSE sC S U C H A S S IG H T C O N S E R V A T IO N , H A R D O F H E A R IN G . O R P O T E N T IA L T . B . O T H E R C O M M E N T S
O N T H E G E N E R A L H E ALT H O F T H E ST U D E N T W IL L A ID U S IN P LA C IN G H IM T O H IS B E ST A D V A N T A G E . IF N O D EFECTS A R E K N O W N , P LE A SE S O ST A T E .
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
(See other side of form)
J U N IO R PLA C E M E N T
TR A N SC R IPT OF SCH OOL RECORD
2N D Y E A R
(Reverse side)
T E A C H E R ’ S R A T IN G (P L E A SE R A T E O N L Y T H O S E ST U D E N TS Y O U H A VE K N O W N W E L L )
IN D IC A T E Y O U R O P IN IO N O F T H E ST U D E N T IN T H E F O L L O W IN G C H A R A C T E R IS T IC S . C O N S ID E R C A R E F U L L Y D E SC R IP T IV E P H R A S E S B E F O R E R E C O R D IN G Y O U R O PIN IO N .
C H E C K O N L Y T H O S E C H A R A C T E R IS T IC S Y O U H A V E A C T U A L L Y O B S E R V E D A N D M A K E A N Y A D D IT IO N A L C O M M E N T S IN “ R E M A R K S C O L U M N .”
D O ES N O T T A C K L E
A D IFF IC U L T T A S K .
□
COM PLETES W O R K
O N L Y IF E N C O U R
AGED.
□
C O M P L E T E S U SU AL
A S S IG N M E N T S
PUNCTUALLY.
□
D EP EN D AB LE IN
C O M P L E T IN G A L L
A S S IG N M E N T S .
□
SEEKS SUPPLE
M ENTARY W O RK .
□
(2 ) D O ES
H E C O O PE R A T E
W IL L IN G L Y IN G R O U P S
W IT H O T H E R S T U D E N T S ?
NOT ADAPTABLE,
OBSTRUCTS G RO U P
W ORK.
□
W O R K S BEST
AL O N E .
W O R K S W IT H O TH E R
ST U D E N TS IF
NECESSARY.
□
U S U A L L Y H E LPFU L
IN W O R K IN G W ITH
OTH ERS.
□
(3 ) D O E S H E D IS P L A Y A C
T IV E
IN T E R E ST
AND
A L E R T N E SS IN S C H O O L
W ORK?
R E P E A TS M IS T A K E S ,
G R A S P S IN S T R U C
T IO N S S L O W L Y .
□
V E R Y E A S IL Y
ANGERED OR
D E P R E SSE D .
□
FORW ARDS W ORK
OF THE G R O U P.
□
Q U IC K T O G R A S P
IN S T R U C T IO N S .
(4 ) D O E S HE M A IN T A IN C O N
T R O L L E D B E H A V IO R A N D
A N EVEN T E M P E R A T
M O S T T IM E S ?
□
S L O W IN IM P R O V
IN G O N M IS T A K E S .
A V O ID S REPETITIO N
O F M IS T A K E S .
□
E R R A T IC A T T IM E S .
□
U S U A L L Y EVEN
TEM PERED.
□
1. D ID HE M A K E A N Y O U T S T A N D IN G C O N T R IB U T IO N S IN S C H O O L A C T IV IT IE S ?
□
Y E S ...................
□
CONTROLS
B E H A V IO R A L M O S T
ALW AYS.
•□
N O ...................
2 . D ID H E P U R S U E A N Y H O B B IE S O R D EVELO P A N Y S K IL L S D U R IN G SP A R E T IM E T O A M A R K E D D E G R E E ?
REM ARKS
G R A S P S IN S T R U C
T IO N S IN S T A N T L Y ,
SEEK S FURTHER
IN F O R M A T IO N . □
S H O W S U N U SU A L
E M O T IO N A L A N D
NERVOUS STA
B IL IT Y .
□
W H IC H O N E S ?
Y E S ................... N O ................... W H IC H O N E S?
C O N T A C T S W IT H G U ID A N C E D E P A R T M E N T .
REGISTRATION PROCEDURE
(1 ) D O E S H E KEEP A T A S
S IG N E D
W ORK
U N T IL
C O M P L E T E D IN SP IT E O F
IT S D IF F IC U L T Y ?
PLE ASE N O TE A N Y O C C U P A T IO N A L P LA N S D ISC U S S E D W IT H ST U D E N T, A N D IN D ICATE O C C U P A T IO N S IN W H IC H Y O U BELIEVE HE IS M O S T L IK E L Y T O SU C C E E D . . . . *
G E N E R A L R E M A R K S (A TT E N D A N C E , E T C .)
S IG N A T U R E
Form (developed b y N ew York State Em ploym ent Service) used in N ew York C ity and Rochester
T ITLE
CO
Ct
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
36
J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
employment offices; all school offices visited as well as the public
employment offices in Cincinnati and New York State had developed
special forms adapted to the particular schools with which each
cooperated. Many of these special forms had been developed jointly
by schools and employment offices. The school form used by most
junior offices throughout New York State (see pp. 34-35) was drawn up
late in 1937 by a committee composed of representatives of the advisers
in the public schools and of the counselors in the public employment
offices; it covered the kind of information which the schools were
equipped to supply and which at the same time would be useful to the
employment service. Counselors in other offices had drawn up their
own forms and then submitted them to school authorities for approval
or, as in Rockland County, the school principals themselves had worked
out the form in which they found it most satisfactory to relay this
information to the placement office.
Usually counselors obtained these records by sending schoolinformation forms directly to the school the applicant had attended.
The public employment offices in Rochester and Cincinnati followed
a somewhat different procedure and, instead of dealing directly with
officials in each of several city schools, had arranged for the transfer
of all school records through the administrative offices of their schoolguidance department. Junior counselors in these two offices reported
that this arrangement enabled school-guidance supervisors to keep in
touch with the type of information being relayed to the placement
office and in many cases resulted in a great saving of the counselor’s
time and more prompt and complete reporting of the records of
applicants.
Employer References.
For those young people who had previously been employed, junior
counselors had an additional source of information on character
traits and special abilities. Counselors interviewed expressed some
difference of opinion on the actual usefulness of references obtained
from former employers, however. Many felt that the kinds of jobs
held by young and inexperienced workers were for the most part too
incidental to supply valuable reference information. They had
found that the work which young boys and girls were likely to have
obtained, such as selling newspapers and caring for small children,
often bore no relation to their fundamental vocational interests.
Furthermore, much of this previous employment was temporary, such
as store work during the Christmas season, and some counselors felt
that more often than not employers were unable to make a reliable
estimate of ability and personality under these circumstances. Other
placement workers interviewed were convinced that any past employ
ment experience was well worth investigating for the purpose of
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
REGISTRATION PROCEDURE
37
gaining insight into character qualities and attitudes if for no other
reason. They felt that any additional information on occupational
skills that might be acquired in this way was particularly helpful in
the case of juniors who were in the upper age ranges but who could
not properly be called experienced workers.
Many of the offices visited reported that they made no attempt to
obtain information on previous work records as a regular procedure;
most of them did so only occasionally when the counselor had reason
to doubt the applicant’s statement about past work experience,
when prospective employers asked for such references, or when place
ments which they contemplated demanded exceptional honesty and
reliability. Other offices regularly investigated employer references
only for young people who had worked as cashiers or P. B. X . opera
tors, or had done other specialized work which might qualify them for
future placement in the same type of employment. Counselors in
still other offices regularly investigated the work records of all regis
trants or of a considerable number; thus in Atlantic City references
were obtained from the last two employers of each applicant, and in
Cincinnati the placement office got in touch with all employers for
whom the applicant had worked a month or more.
The Concord office, which made no regular investigation of work
records on its own account, did assemble the necessary information for
any employers who might later wish to obtain references. The counse
lor in Concord obtained from each junior applicant the names of two
previous employers or, if he lacked sufficient experience for this, the
names of two character references, and those names were made
available to any prospective employer wishing them. This was done
because the junior counselor had found that employers in that small
community, who often knew each other personally, were more likely
to obtain an unqualified estimate of the applicant’s ability from
each other than the placement office could obtain for them.
In most offices all references checked were obtained informally by
telephoning directly to the employer or by calling on him. In five
offices,14 all of which investigated the employment records of a large
number of their applicants, references were usually obtained by
mail and much of the work entailed was handled by the clerical
staff. Under the counselor’s instructions, clerical workers mailed
to former employers, usually those for whom the applicant had worked
a month or more, a form letter inquiring about the kind of work he
had done, why he had left, and his efficiency and personality. Some
of these letters, like that used in the District of Columbia (see p. 39),
bore the applicant’s written consent to the inquiry.
14 Atlantic C ity, Cincinnati, District of Columbia, Essex County, Philadelphia.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
38
J U N IO R P L A C E M E N T
Health Records.
Most junior counselors made it a policy to obtain at least a mini
mum of information about the state of tbe applicant’s bealtb wben
he registered since even ailments that appear to be of minor impor
tance may, if they are neglected, lead to loss of time on the job,
seriously impaired efficiency, and irritability and other characteristics
that make the employee an unsatisfactory worker. Furthermore,
some physical disabilities impose important limitations on the kind
of work that it is prudent for the individual to undertake.
Notwithstanding the importance attached to health, placement
services rarely made provision for medical inspections to check on
the general physical condition of any considerable group of applicants.
The Philadelphia office was the only one visited that was equipped
to give this service to most of its registrants. The placement work of
the public schools in that city had always been carried on in connec
tion with the issuance of employment certificates, and the medical
inspectors who examined children under 18 years of age who were
applying for work certificates were also available to examine others
whom the junior counselors might refer to them. In this way it was
possible to make a routine check on the general physical condition of
about 75 percent of the young people who came to the school place
ment office to register.
None of the placement offices in the other communities visited was
able to approximate so complete an investigation into the health of
their registrants. Most of these communities, it is true, maintained
free clinics to which individuals could be referred for general physical
examinations, X-rays, dental care, and other services, but such
agencies were already overburdened with patients, and it was neces
sary for them to confine their work almost entirely to those who were
already known to be in need of treatment.
Under these circumstances placement counselors found it necessary
to depend almost entirely on information about the applicant’s health
that was already available. Usually they obtained it directly from
the applicant himself, less frequently from other agencies in the
community. In the latter connection, inquiry was hampered by the
fact that there was seldom any one agency to which they might go
for this kind of information as they could to the schools for data on
education and ability, and by the fact that much of the data available
either was superficial or was based on examinations that had been
given several years before registration. At best, health information
fiom agencies such as schools and clinics or from physical examina
tions required by State laws for employment certificates and other
purposes was available for only a very small proportion of the total
applicant group. Consequently, most counselors found it impracti
cable to undertake any routine investigation of health records for all
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
39
REGISTRATION PROCEDURE
Employer’s Letter of Reference
--------------------------------------- , who was previously in your
employ, has recently applied to this office for placement.
Some knowledge of his past employment record will be
helpful in placing him. We shall appreciate your coopera
tion in checking the statements he has given us and in com
pleting the information requested below. A franked
envelope, which requires no postage, is enclosed for the
return of the form.
This information will be regarded as strictly confidential.
Very sincerely yours,
-------------- ---- ------ -----------f
T h is fo rm is b ein g sent a t m y requ est, a nd it is
agreed th a t I shall n o t h o ld y o u lia b le in th e
ev e n t th a t y o u r rep ly is t o m y discredit.
Junior Counselor.
Name of former em ployer________ *_________ ____________
Dates of em ploym ent___________________ ___ ;_______
c3
Q
Nature of work done___________________________ ___
Reason for lea v in g ____ ________ ______ ____ ___
Valuable characteristics:
Weak points:
Other comments:
Signature__________________ _______•
P osition ______ _______
Form used in the District o f Columbia
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
40
J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
applicants; instead they themselves assumed responsibility for deter
mining which applicants presented health problems serious enough to
warrant further investigation or special consideration in connection
with placement. Their usual practice was to inquire about the
applicant’s health in the course of the registration interview.
The success which counselors achieved in detecting health problems
in this way was difficult to estimate. Many serious health handicaps,
such as some types of heart conditions, are not apparent even to a
careful observer, and at times it is undoubtedly a difficult task to
elicit reliable information from the applicant himself. In the first
place, the young person does not always understand the significance
of his own health problem, and in the second, he is naturally guarded
in making any statement which he feels might disqualify him for a
job. Where direct inquiries about health have seemed likely to be
unproductive, some counselors reported they found it possible to
obtain significant information indirectly through routine questions on
height and weight, and inquiries into the kind of school attended,
the applicant’s reasons for absence or withdrawal from school, and
physical examinations taken in connection with insurance policies.
Obviously such an approach presupposes time for unhurried confer
ences with individual applicants.
Records o f Other Agencies.
Occasionally counselors found it desirable to get in touch with
various social agencies in the community in order to supplement their
information on applicants. Social agencies were much less extensively
used than the other sources of information that have been discussed,
partly because of the limited time which counselors had at their dis
posal to make these inquiries and partly because of the fact that these
agencies dealt with only a very small proportion of the total applicant
group. Nevertheless, practically all counselors had occasion from
time to time to obtain the records or recommendations of social agen
cies that had had previous contact with their junior registrants.
Included among the records used were those of group-work agencies
like the Y. M. C. A., Y. W. C. A., and Boy Scouts, those of correctional
institutions such as industrial schools, juvenile courts, and probation
departments, and those of relief and case-work agencies such as county
welfare departments and private social agencies.
In a few of the communities visited the various social agencies
maintained central clearance services with which they registered the
names of individuals and families with whom they were working.
The counselor in Rockland County automatically referred to a clear-
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
REGISTRATION PROCEDURE
41
ance service of this sort the names of all junior registrants. Upon
receipt of the clearance office’s report of the agencies in the community
with which the individual or his family were active, the counselor
was in a position to get in direct touch with those organizations that
were most likely to have significant information on the applicant’s
background and interests. In much the same way counselors in
Cincinnati and Philadelphia regularly cleared by mail or by telephone
those cases that they felt justified special handling.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
REGISTRATION RECORDS
Inasmuch as counselors do not find it possible to place each appli
cant in employment at the time that he first comes to the office, there
must be some provision in the placement office for retaining his name,
together with pertinent information about his ability and experience,
until a placement can be effected. It is the function of the record
keeping system to organize and arrange this kind of information to
meet the needs of the counselor who later has occasion to consult it.
The record-keeping systems that served this purpose varied con
siderably, particularly among the independently organized school
offices. Even public employment services, most of which used the
same types of forms, filed and used those forms in a variety of ways.
Counselors serving a few hundred registrants had little need for the
extensive and sometimes complex records which the counselors of
larger offices found necessary in order to keep track of the-registrations
of thousands of applicants.
Notwithstanding differences due to size, the record-keeping systems
of all offices had been set up to serve two fundamental purposes.
They were arranged in such a way as to enable a counselor who was
interviewing a junior registrant to locate the record of that registrant
among several hundred registrations and also to enable a counselor
who was filling an employer’s order to locate the records of all regis
trants who might be qualified for placement in the type of work
specified by the employer. Hence, the record-keeping systems of
these offices permitted counselors to identify applicant records either
by the name of the applicant or by a specific occupational classifica
tion that had been assigned, as the situation might demand.
The Registration Card
The applicant’s registration card was the core of the record-keeping
system. It contained substantially all the basic information avail
able on each junior registrant, together with the counselor’s appraisal
of his qualifications and the specific classifications assigned him, and
it determined to a large extent the kinds of job openings for which
he would later be given consideration.
Most counselors have felt that the information which is especially
significant in connection with the placement of junior applicants is
not adequately provided for on many of the registration forms devel
oped for use with applicants of all ages. In placing inexperienced
42
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
REGISTRATION RECORDS
43
young people they have found it desirable to give special attention to
the applicant's educational and family background and to his interests
and future plans— considerations that are of considerably less impor
tance in adult-placement work. For this reason, counselors in most
junior offices entered the registrations of boys and girls on special
junior-registration forms.
The registration card most widely used at the time of this study was
developed in 1935 by the United States Employment Service for use
in public employment offices.1 (See pp. 44-47.) The same form
was used for boys and girls except that the cards were of different
colors. The card was 8 by 9}i inches, folded to 8 by 5; it provided
almost twice as much space for the applicant’s record as did the
8- by 5-inch registration cards commonly used for adult applicants
by public employment centers. It was an adaptation of the forms
used for adults, but by omitting a few items inapplicable to juniors
and by making use of a double rather than a single card it provided
additional space for the types of inquiries that counselors felt to be
significant in connection with the placement of junior applicants.
Six other offices visited also used special junior-registration forms,
somewhat different from the form of the United States Employment
Service but providing for essentially the same type of information.
The three public employment services visited in the State of New York
used a registration folder developed for junior applicants by the New
York State Employment Service, and each of the school offices in
Atlantic City, Essex County, and Philadelphia used single cards,
somewhat less detailed, which they had developed independently.
The junior-registration forms used by counselors in the public
employment offices in Cincinnati and the District of Columbia were
the same as those used for adult applicants.2 Both of these offices
were functional junior divisions which filed the registration records of
junior applicants with those of adults and, for the sake of uniformity,
used the same kinds of registration cards for applicants of all ages.
Inasmuch as the card used by the Cincinnati office was a 9- by 12-inch
folder and was the equivalent of an unfolded card twice that size,
space was available to record a considerable amount of additional
information pertinent to the younger-applicant group. In the District
of Columbia, as has already been noted, a master file of all junior
registrations was kept in the offices of the junior division, the United
States Employment Service junior-registration card being used for
this purpose.
i This special junior-registration form was used b y 4 of the offices visited and b y 26 of the 43 public-school
and public employment offices elsewhere in the country for which this information was available.
J The junior divisions of the public employment offices in Cleveland, Columbus, Hartford, N ew Haven,
Jersey City, and the branch office in N ew York serving older inexperienced applicants also entered junior
registrations on the forms used for adult applicants in those offices.
212236°—40-----4
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
JU N IOR-REGISTRATION CARD
[Boys—white card; girls—buff card]
[Actual size: 8 b y 9J4 inches]
P R IN T Y O U R N A M E A N D A D D R E SS
First name
M iddle name
Last name
D O N O T W R I T E IN T H IS B L O C K
Educ.
Telephone No.
Local address
W
M
N
F
1 1 111111
Age 1 Date
0
Unemp.
Classification
D iv.
Occ. code
Yrs. U. S.
Citizen
Yrs. d t y
W here were you born?
C ity
ft.
in.
Weight
lbs.
State father’s name
Check health:
Check: Are you
Good
Below av’ ge
Single
W idow ed
Excellent
Poor
Married
W hat is father’s usual occupation?
Can you type?
D o you know shorthand?
H ow m any words a minute?
W hat factory machines can you operate?
H ow m any words a minute?
Have you done practical nursing?
W hat size uniform do you wear?
N am e brothers and sisters over 16
Yes
No
Parents’ nationality
Kind of work wanted: (Jfieck
Catholic
Permanent
Full-time
Check religion: Jewish
Part-time
Protestant Tem porary
D
o
you
own
an
auto?
Check:
D
o
you
live
at
Give number of de
home? W ith other rela
pendents, if any:
Have a driver’s license?
tives? Or board?
Total
Partial
State mother’s occupation, if any
H ow m any brothers and Older
sisters have you?
Younger
W hen were you born?
M on th
Day
Year
Divorced
Separated
W hat office machines can you operate?
Can you read blueprints?
Have you taken care of children?
D o you own a uniform?
Occupation
H ave you done laundry work?
H ave you cooked?
Hand?_______________ Machine?_____________
Can you live at the place where you work?
In full charge?________________Ass't?
Name brothers and sisters over 16
1
3
2
4
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
State drafting experience, if any
Can you read micrometers?
H ave you served meals?
Occupation
PLACEM ENT
Height
State or country
J U N IO R
Previously
em ployed
Ind. code
E D U C A T IO N A L R E C O R D
Name of last grammar or high school attended
Date left
Grammar or grade school
W hat course did you take?
Names of teachers who knew you best
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
High school
Subjects liked best
Subjects liked least
Circle highest grade completed
1 2
Age left
Reason for leaving
3 4
College
Grad, study
List below any vocational subjects (stenography, woodshop, etc.) you have studied
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
Name of school
Subjects
N um ber of semesters
REGISTRATION RECORDS
What languages, besides English, do
you
Speak?
Read?
Write?
Are you willing to leave the city?
State physical handicaps
Extra-curricular activities (sDorts. school
Course
Years completed
Degree
Name of evening school
Further school plans
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Date left
Reason
Months
Hobbies
05
JUN IO R -R EG ISTR A TIO N CARD
{Reverse side)
EM PLOYM EN T RECORD
Renewal Dates
Employer—Last regular job
Position held and duties
Length of .....
employment
Address
Date-left
Under whom did you work?
Employer
Position held and duties
Reason for leaving
Length of
employment
Address
Date left
K ind of business
Under whom did you work?.,.
Employer
Position held and duties
Reason for leaving
Date left
Under whom did you work?
W hat other kinds of working experience have you had?
D O N O T W R I T E B E L O W T H IS L IN E
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Rate of pay
Length of
employment
Address
K ind of business
Rate of pay
Reason for leaving
Rate of pay
J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
K ind of business
REFERRALS
REGISTRATION RECORDS
Junior Counselor
Form (developed by the United States Employment Service) used in Cedar Rapids, Concord, Detroit, D istrict o f Columbia, and Durham
<1
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
48
J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
The information called for on the applicant's registration card was
filled in as completely as possible at the time of his first visit to the
office. Counselors reported that while some of their applicants could
enter the factual data requested quite satisfactorily, younger persons
were likely to encounter difficulties. For this reason most counselors
themselves filled in the registration card in the course of their first
interview and then obtained the applicant’s signature on the card.
This assured the office of a complete, uniform, and legible record for
the applicant, together with a sample of his handwriting. On the
other hand, counselors who requested each applicant to make out his
own registration card pointed out that that arrangement saved them
time and also provided them with a valuable indication of the appli
cant’s general level of understanding. Items entered by the applicant
himself were always discussed with him by the counselor in the course
of the registration interview in order to make certain that he had
understood the kind of information desired.
Since the interviewing record itself and the counselor’s appraisal of
the applicant’s appearance, personality, and qualifications for specific
kinds of work are fully as important as previous experience in selecting
applicants for many types of junior job openings, counselors in most
offices endeavored to enter this kind of information as fully as possible
on the registration card. Especially in Cincinnati and in the District
of Columbia, where information had to be relayed from the junior
counselors to placement workers in other divisions of the public
employment center, an effort was made to have full and complete
records. In New York City also the importance of complete records
was emphasized because several counselors often dealt with a single
individual during the time that he was registered in one of the large
branch offices of the city.
It is not to be inferred that full and up-to-date registration records
were the rule in all the offices visited, however. Undoubtedly the
pressure to keep such records was considerably less in small offices,
where counselors were personally acquainted with many of their ap
plicants, than in metropolitan centers, where memory could not be
depended on in dealing with the large number of young people regis
tered. Although full records were undoubtedly the aim of most
offices, there was a tendency, inherent in any individualized approach
to an applicant, for counselors to refrain from entering on the regis
tration card those impressions and judgments that were difficult to
crystallize in record form and to rely instead on their recollection of
the applicant when the time came to consider him for placement.
This tendency was often exceedingly difficult to avoid in offices where
counselors’ schedules were full and there was little or no clerical as
sistance available for keeping even the most routine kinds of records.
Nevertheless, full records are unquestionably a desirable form of in
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surance against the minor catastrophes which unexpected staff changes
or absences might otherwise precipitate and a guaranty that all ap
plicants will receive full and fair consideration, independent of tricks
of memory, whenever suitable job openings occur.
Registration Files
When completed, the applicant’s registration card was filed so that
it would be available to anyone in the junior-placement office who
might have occasion to interview the applicant further or to consider
him for placement. In all the offices visited, with the exception of
that in Cincinnati, this was done by means of a registration file main
tained in the junior office, arranged alphabetically according to the
name of the applicant and separated into two sections according to sex.
In Cincinnati all junior registrations were filed with adult registrations
and the file was arranged according to the identification number as
signed the applicant; the record of an applicant was located in this
numerically arranged registration file by the use of a supplementary
file of index cards arranged alphabetically and giving the applicant’s
name and registration number.
The registration files of most of the offices visited contained not
only the registration card of each junior applicant but any supple
mentary information in regard to his qualifications which the office
might have obtained. Whenever available, reports and recommen
dations of psychological-testing units, schools, social agencies, and
employers were either inserted in the registration folders which most
of these offices used or, in the case of the Philadelphia placement
service, secured to the registration card by means of a flapless envelope
open along two sides, which was slipped over a lower corner of all
records assembled on each applicant. While arrangements like these
sometimes tended to make the file bulky, they had the real advantage
of centralizing all records on each individual so that they could be
located quickly.
In a few offices supplementary records were not filed in this manner;
instead, brief notations giving a limited amount of the additional
information obtained from sources outside the placement office were
either stapled to the registration card itself or else noted directly
upon it in as much detail as possible. While files kept in this way
were often more compact than those which contained all supple
mentary material assembled, nevertheless they did not in most in
stances contain the full information on each applicant that was
available in the registration files of other junior offices.
Cross-references.
Junior-registration files maintained within the junior division itself
were useful mainly in connection with filling job orders handled by
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the junior division. In public employment centers, where most of
the job orders filled by the junior division were those calling for begin
ning workers, counselors sometimes found it desirable to have the
records of at least some junior registrants available for action in
adult-placement divisions also. These registrants were, for the most
part, limited to a few whose youth and inexperience properly entitled
them to the special handling given to juniors but who also possessed
some degree of previous work experience. While many of the positions
which such applicants were qualified to fill were beginning jobs
handled by counselors in the junior division, others were openings
requiring occupational skills on an adult level which would auto
matically be allocated to adult-placement workers.
In order to assure these applicants consideration for the maximum
number of jobs that they were qualified to fill, their registrations were
cross-referenced in the appropriate adult-placement divisions. Two
registration cards were provided. One, usually the primary registra
tion card, was entered on the form regularly used by counselors for
junior applicants and was filed in the junior division, and the other,
known as the secondary registration card or cross-reference card, was
entered on the adult-registration form by an interviewer in that divi
sion and filed for his use in the adult-registration file. Both cards
were marked to indicate this duplication in records, and subsequent
changes in the applicant’s employment status which became known
to one division were cleared with the other division, usually by means
of interoffice memoranda.
In a similar manner the registrations of a limited number of juniors
living in Rockland County were cross-referenced in the nearby New
York City junior offices, where suitable work was more likely to be
available than in the suburban district in which they resided.
In all public employment offices visited which operated as complete
placement units, with the exception of the office in Concord, crossreferences were given to a small group of junior registrants only. In
Concord the registration of each junior was cross-referenced in the
adult-registration files, irrespective of the type of work in which he
had been classified.3 Much the same effect was achieved in the
functional junior service in the District of Columbia, where the central
placement file was supplemented by a separate file in the junior
division.
Where the registrations of all junior applicants were cross-refer
enced in this fashion, a considerable amount of clerical work was
necessary in order to keep the applicants’ records in each division up
to date. Counselors who handled the registrations of junior appli
cants in this way pointed out that many orders could be filled equally
3 The complete placement unit in Hartford, Conn., reported b y questionnaire that all junior applicants
were also given cross-references in adult divisions.
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well by adult or by junior applicants and that the advantages of
having the registrations of all junior applicants available for action
on all employers’ orders received outweighed the clerical work neces
sary to maintain up-to-date records in all divisions holding the
applicant’s registration.
In public-school offices the problem of cross-references seldom
arose because insofar as possible all types of orders received were
filled with junior applicants. School placement workers did, however,
encourage many qualified young persons to register with their local
public employment services when it appeared likely that this would
materially improve their chances of obtaining work.
Classification Records
If the alphabetically arranged file was small the counselor could,
by skimming through the limited number of cards, quickly locate the
records of all applicants possessing the qualifications necessary to
fill an employer’s order. But this method of identifying applicants
assigned to a specific occupational classification was far too time con
suming to be efficient in offices with large numbers of junior regis
trants, and counselors in such offices found it necessary to maintain
supplementary records to provide a speedier method of identifying
applicants according to the classifications assigned to them. Although
the form in which these classification records were kept varied some
what in the different offices visited, in all cases the records themselves
were so set up that information on registrants was made available,
not according to the name of the applicant but according to the occu
pational classifications which had been assigned to him. Thus,
classification records provided the counselor with a quick means of
identifying the names of all applicants assigned to a specific occupa
tional category, and enabled him to locate in the alphabetically ar
ranged registration file the full registration record of each of these
applicants.
The supplementary classification records kept were of three types,
and since these three types of records were used somewhat differently
by counselors selecting applicants to fill employers’ orders, each will
be described briefly.
Supplementary Files.
Most offices using supplementary classification records kept them
in the form of a file which was arranged occupationally and served the
needs of all junior counselors on the staff who might have occasion to
consult it in filling employers’ orders.4 Each applicant’s name,
together with other identifying information, was entered in these files
under each of the occupational categories in which he had been classi4 Cincinnati, Durham, Essex County, and one of tw o branch offices visited in N ew Y ork City.
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
fied. For this purpose, some offices used individual filing cards con
taining a brief summary of the information given in the registration
file (see below); others used somewhat larger cards on which were
listed in chronological order the names of all registrants classified in a
given occupational category. By consulting all entries in the desired
occupational category, counselors were able to ascertain the names of
all applicants classified in that category and thus locate the complete
record of each of these applicants in the alphabetical registration file.
CLASSIFICATION-FILE CARD
[Actual size: 5 b y 8 inches]
Name
Date of birth
Class
Education
Experience
Remarks:
Form used in Durham
Supplementary Lists.
Supplementary classification records were kept as lists in Detroit
and in Philadelphia. Entries on these lists were made chronologically
as each applicant appeared at the office tore gister and included brief
notations about the specific classifications which had been assigned
him. Inasmuch as each counselor in these two school offices was
responsible for the registration and placement of a clearly defined
applicant group, each kept his own supplementary classification list
in the manner that seemed most expedient for the particular applicant
group with which he dealt. In some instances, separate lists were
kept according to the academic background, or the age, or the amount
of previous work experience of the applicant; in others, according to
broad occupational groupings which were considerably more inclusive
than the specific occupational categories in which the applicants
themselves were classified. Although an applicant might have been
classified in several occupational categories it was seldom necessary
to enter his name on more than one list, either because the list itself
included all those of a specified age or educational background or
because the broad occupational groupings used covered all fields of
work in which the applicant might be suitably placed.
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Visible-Index Files.
For a part of its applicant group, the Philadelphia office kept its
supplementary classification records as visible-index files, which per
mitted greater flexibility in use than the classification lists that have
been discussed. The device was made up of separate visible-index
cards, giving identifying information on each applicant and the classi
fications that had been assigned to him. These cards were slipped
into holders in such a way that a completed panel resembled a classi
fication list. Visible-index files had the advantage, however, of
enabling the counselor to add the names of new applicants, not neces
sarily in chronological order, as classification lists were kept, but in
alphabetical order or any other order that seemed most useful.
Relation to Registration Files.
It should be noted that in almost all the offices using occupationally
arranged classification records the registration file was arranged
alphabetically. This was the direct opposite of the arrangement
commonly used for the registration records of adult applicants in most
public employment offices. These were usually filed occupationally,
an alphabetical index file being used for finding purposes and the
listing of an individual applicant under more than one occupational
category being achieved by the use of duplicate or secondary regis
tration cards inserted in the proper section of the registration file.
Junior counselors had not found the arrangement used by adultplacement workers to be practicable for their applicant group. Where
as the occupational abilities of the adult applicant tend to be fairly
well established, and he may usually be assigned to one or to a very
few specific occupational categories, the inexperienced junior applicant
may often be qualified for placement in a variety of beginning jobs
and accordingly may be classified in several occupational categories.
Were junior-registration files arranged occupationally, therefore, they
would require a considerably larger number of secondary registration
cards than would be necessary for adult applicants. The number of
secondary registration cards necessary in such a junior file would
require fairly expensive office supplies and a considerable amount of
clerical work for copying the data from the applicant’s primary regis
tration card, and it would, in any case, tend to make the registration
file itself unwieldy. Most junior counselors therefore have preferred
to maintain their registration files alphabetically and to supplement
them with separate classification records arranged occupationally.
Since the latter were supplementary to the registration file, it was
necessary that they contain only the brief information necessary to
identify the applicant, and the duplicate entries necessary for appli
cants classified in several categories could be made with a m in im u m
of clerical work and expense for supplies.
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J U N IO R P L A C E M E N T
It is partly because of the fact that a different arrangement of the
registration file has seemed desirable in the junior division of the
public employment office that many proponents of the complete
placement unit have preferred that type of organization. Since the
registration files of the complete junior division were maintained
separately from the files of the adult divisions with which it was
associated, they could be set up in the manner that best met the needs
of the junior division.
This criticism of the functional type of junior division did not apply
in all respects to the two functional junior divisions visited. In
neither Cincinnati nor the District of Columbia was the record-keeping
system of the employment center as a whole organized according to
the usual methods followed by public employment offices. In Cin
cinnati the junior and adult records contained in the registration file
were arranged numerically rather than occupationally and were sup
plemented by separate classification records which served the same
purposes as separate classification records in the offices that have been
discussed, and in the District of Columbia junior counselors main
tained for their own use a master file of junior registrations arranged
alphabetically as were junior-registration files in most other offices.
In both Cincinnati and the District of Columbia, therefore, placement
workers were able to avoid the inconvenience incident to keeping the
records of junior applicants in occupationally arranged registration
files.
Clearance of Files
Counselors removed promptly from the active registration files all
records of applicants whom they knew to be no longer available for
employment. In all offices the records thus removed were those of
young people who notified the office that they no longer wished to be
considered for placement as well as those of applicants placed by the
office in permanent employment. A few offices handled in the same
way the registrations of applicants placed in temporary employment;
counselors in other offices considered such applicants as still available
for employment and accordingly continued to keep their registrations
in the active file.
The records of applicants who failed to keep the office informed of
their employment status were removed from the active registration
files also. This was usually done at regular intervals, varying from
1 or 2 months in some offices, to a year or more in others. Before
taking this action, counselors in four of the offices visited 6 made it a
practice to notify the applicant in order to make doubly sure that he
had understood his obligation to keep in touch with the office. For
this purpose, three of these offices used the standard United States
* District of Columbia, Durham, Philadelphia. Rockland County.
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REGISTRATION RECORDS
Renewal Card
[Return post card]
[Message to applicant]
U nited S t a t e s E m p l o y m e n t
s e r v ic e
Telephone.
In order to bring our records up to date, may we know if you are still
looking for work?
Please fill out the attached card and mail it to this office. No postage is
required.
If you do not reply within the next 10 days, we shall assume that you no
longer desire our assistance in seeking employment.
Yours truly,
Manager.
By:
Date
[Message returned by applicant]
D a te____
Please check:
]/
I am still looking for work_____________________________ □
I am em ployed_______________________________________
□
Name and address of employer
Comments:
(Signature)
(Address)
Form (developed b y the United States Employment Service) used in District of Columbia, Durham,
and Rockland County.
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
Employment Service form (see p. 55), which was printed on a return
post card and so provided the applicant with a ready means of reply.
Counselors in other offices periodically transferred all lapsed registra
tions to the inactive files without communicating with the applicants
concerned or they sent notification that this action was about to be
taken only to those whose registrations it was particularly desirable
to keep on hand because they possessed skills and abilities for which
there was likely to be demand on the part of employers.
Clearance was effected by transferring the applicant’s registration
card to an inactive registration file, where it was kept available should
the applicant later renew his registration. Where the classification
records of each applicant were entered on separate cards in a supple
mentary file, these supplementary cards also were transferred to an
inactive file. Where classification records were kept as lists or where
they were entered on lists used in occupationally arranged classifica
tion files, however, they were somewhat less convenient for clearance
purposes. Counselors cleared these lists of the names of inactive
registrants by crossing names off the lists. Inasmuch as entries thus
eliminated tended to accumulate in large numbers in the less recent
sections of the list, those sections became increasingly difficult to use
and eventually it was necessary to recopy the active entries into cur
rent sections of the list. Several counselors interviewed referred
specifically to this shortcoming but felt it was outweighed by the
economy in office supplies and in clerical work that was achieved when
classification records were kept in this form. The visible-index panels
used in Philadelphia were much better adapted for clearance purposes
since each entry was made on a separate card and inactive entries
could be removed and new entries added at will without impairing the
compactness of the entire classification record.
Removal and Transfer of Records
The registrations of applicants who reached the upper age limits
served by these junior offices, usually 21 years, also were removed
from the active files. Before taking this action most counselors made
it a point to reinterview each registrant concerned in order to explain
the reason for closing his registration in the junior division, and, par
ticularly in public employment offices, to encourage his transfer to the
adult division. In some public employment offices, also, the junior
division’s records of applicants making this transfer were routed to
adult-placement workers for their information before being placed in
the closed file of the junior division; most junior offices routed their
records to adult-placement workers only when asked to do so, but
a few, notably the junior divisions in Cedar Rapids and Rochester,
sent automatically to adult divisions all records of applicants trans-
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ferring their registrations. In these and in a few other offices, joint
conferences between applicants and junior- and adult-placement
workers were sometimes held at the time of transfer.
It was unnecessary, of course, to arrange for a transfer of records in
the functional junior divisions of the Cincinnati and District of
Columbia public employment centers, which maintained central
placement files for registrants of all ages, or in the Concord offices,
which achieved a similar relationship by cross-referencing all junior
registrations. In these offices junior counselors and adult-placement
workers shared information on the applicant’s status throughout
the period in which he was registered with the junior division. Nor
did school placement offices find much occasion to transfer their
records to adult-placement agencies. Counselors in the public-school
offices visited did, however, hold themselves ready to furnish what
ever information adult-placement workers in public employment
services might request from them on their former applicants.
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GUIDANCE PROGRAM
The registrations of most junior applicants were completed when
they first came to the office or shortly thereafter, in order that place
ment might be made as soon as suitable job openings occurred.
Counselors found, however, that many of these young persons failed
to make the most of their abilities and opportunities unless time and
attention were given also to problems of guidance, problems which
varied considerably among different individuals but which were often
of just as much importance as the more immediate need for a job;
were this not the case, the term “ junior counselor’’ would be a mis
nomer.
Counselors reported that many young applicants came to the place
ment office quite unprepared to appraise their interests and training
in terms of the various employment opportunities that might be open
to them in their communities. They needed a background of infor
mation about those employment opportunities and about the possi
bilities they had to offer the experienced adult worker. Other appli
cants, because they were unfitted or inadequately trained for work
they wished to do, needed to reevaluate their abilities and interests
and to plan needed training programs. Still others, who had never
worked before, needed advice on such essentials as the importance of
personal appearance in getting and holding a job and on how to
conduct themselves as employees.
Consequently counselors in most offices spent a substantial amount
of their time in helping young applicants to increase their employa
bility. Under most circumstances, advice and information available
in the placement office and mutual understanding between applicant
and counselor sufficed to meet the situation; in a few cases in which
problems were particularly urgent or complex counselors found it
necessary to refer applicants to other agencies in the community
better equipped to give the necessary service.
The Role of the Junior Counselor
Many of the guidance problems that counselors handled were com
mon to a considerable proportion of the applicants with whom they
worked. Regardless of differences in temperament and experience,
most young people need information on how to conduct themselves
when they apply for a job and when they obtain one, and many of
58
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them have a common interest in learning about certain types of
occupations.
Counselors in a few of the offices visited met some of these basic
needs with guidance projects designed to reach their junior applicants
as a group. In the District of Columbia, for instance, selected junior
applicants were invited to attend a series of lectures and discussions
sponsored jointly by the Young Men’s Christian Association, the
National Youth Administration, and the local employment center.
University professors, employers, and representatives of the employ
ment center gave talks on selected vocations and led discussions which
covered such subjects as choosing a vocation and applying for a job.
In Durham also, conferences on similar subjects, in which all junior
registrants were invited to participate, were held under the auspices
of the local employment center.1
Use of the Interview.
Often the development of satisfactory attitudes and of suitable
vocational and educational plans involves individual problems of
temperament, financial responsibility, and family attitude. Problems
of this sort can be clarified only through individual conferences be
tween the applicant and the counselor, repeated as often as necessary.
Undoubtedly most of the guidance given to young people in the
placement office takes this form.
Good personal relationships between applicant and counselor are
essential to the success of any counseling program, since the applicant
as well as the counselor must have a desire to share and cooperate
in any plans that may be developed. Most of the counselors inter
viewed felt that applicants could be counseled most effectively, not
when they first came to the placement office as strangers, but when
they returned for later interviews and were more familiar with their
surroundings and with the counselor. Moreover, this arrangement
also gave the counselor an opportunity to add to his knowledge of the
applicant before reinterviewing him by inquiring into his training,
work record, and character traits through other agencies that had
known him in the past. Thus the placement staff in New York City
made it a policy to use the initial interview chiefly for the more routine
processes of registration and relied on frequent reinterviews for coun
seling and for the development of such special plans as might seem
desirable in individual cases. In order to gain a good understanding
of the applicant’s placement problem and to initiate further plans
with the least possible delay, counselors in the New York City junior1^ h esch ool Placement office in Portland, Oreg., reported b y questionnaire that it conducted a workapplication class to instruct registrants how to sell their services to employers. Other offices, notably
ttiose operated b y the public-school system in Boston, Mass., and b y the public employment service in
Chicago, HI., and Worcester, Mass., reported that their applicants were given similar suggestions in printed
form.
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
placement service requested applicants to report for reinterviews at
weekly intervals during the first month after their initial registration;
after this they were usually required to report to the office only at
monthly intervals, although if they desired to come more frequently
they were welcome to do so.
The quality of the counseling undertaken by many junior-placement
workers was undoubtedly hampered by the limited amount of time
available for interviews. While the schedules which many counselors
found it necessary to maintain were usually sufficient for registration
purposes, often time did not permit the free discussion necessary for
identifying any but those who most obviously needed counseling
assistance. Undoubtedly, less obvious but not necessarily less urgent
cases went undetected when interviews had to be conducted hurriedly;
and even when detected it was of course all but impossible for many
counselors to deal with complex situations in the time at their
disposal.
This difficulty had led the junior counselor in Cedar Rapids to use
his interviewing time somewhat differently from counselors elsewhere.
In that office applicants kept their registrations active by reporting
directly to the receptionist; the counselor himself held no reinterviews
for this purpose unless applicants asked to see him. The time saved
in this way made it possible for him to hold more leisurely registration
interviews with all new applicants. These initial conferences often
lasted three-quarters of an hour or longer and usually sufficed to
bring to the surface any problems which might warrant special con
sideration. Thereafter, only those young people who were found to
be in need of special counseling were requested to return directly to
the counselor for reinterviews. Undoubtedly this arrangement
worked as well as it did because in a community the size of Cedar
Rapids a counseling relationship was comparatively easy to establish.
Even under these circumstances, however, the counselor often found
it inadvisable to initiate any extensive counseling programs at the
time of the applicant’s first visit to the office.
Counseling Resources.
The guidance programs of some junior offices were restricted almost
as much by the training and experience of the counselors who carried
on those programs as they were by the limited time available for inter
views. The backgrounds of the counselors in the offices visited are
discussed more fully in a later section of this report. It is enough to
remark at this point that only one-third of the staff members of these
12 offices were college or university graduates with training in guid
ance techniques. Most counselors drew largely on their native com
mon sense and alertness to the problems of young people, reinforced
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by practical knowledge of work opportunities acquired through their
daily contact with the employers in their communities.
Many counselors made use of reference material on occupations in
their work with individual applicants. To meet the need for such
material the United States Employment Service was, at the time of
this study, engaged in assembling a series of technical job descriptions
for use in public employment offices. This research program had not
progressed far enough to make job-description materials available for
more than a few major industries,2 but to this extent at least it was
furnishing counselors in public employment offices with job specifi
cations useful for placement purposes and with a background of
occupational information useful in counseling junior applicants.
The job descriptions prepared by the United States Employment
Service were designed for the use of placement workers and were for
the most part too technical to be useful to most young applicants
whom counselors wished to refer to literature on occupations. For
the latter purpose counselors found more suitable material in the type
of occupational information that has been assembled by many publicschool systems, fraternal organizations, private research agencies,
and by the National Youth Administration. The material of this
type that was available in some of the offices visited consisted of two
or three miscellaneous pamphlets placed in the waiting room for the
use of any young people who wished to read them. Counselors in
other offices had assembled rather complete libraries of such occupa
tional information; some of the branch offices in Philadelphia listed
this reference material so that it could be consulted readily by appli
cants waiting to interview the counselor. In Philadelphia and else
where this kind of material was used also as a source of information to
which many applicants were referred after their interviews with
counselors. Especially in communities where public schools stressed
vocational guidance, many young persons were more than ready to
take advantage of such opportunities for obtaining occupational
information.
Most of the occupational material used by each junior office had
originally been compiled for general use throughout the State in which
the office was located or throughout the country at large. Some
counselors with whom the matter was discussed emphasized their need
for further information dealing specifically with the local employment
situations affecting their own placement services. A few counselors
met this need by sending a limited number of their applicants to local
business and industrial leaders who had expressed a willingness to
give young persons information on local conditions. Others, notably
the public employment center in the District of Columbia, had
J Automobile-manufacturing industry, cotton-textile industry, construction industry, laundry industry.
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J U N IO R P L A C E M E N T
undertaken research programs in order to bring together in written
form a fund of information about opportunities for young persons in
their own communities which could be used by the placement office
for guidance purposes. Occupational information assembled in this
way included general information already available through published
sources as well as data on the wages and working conditions prevailing
in the community served by the placement office, the training facilities
available there, and the establishments where employment oppor
tunities for young workers were most likely to exist. Counselors
obtained much of their information on local conditions by visiting
workers in the occupations being studied, establishments in which
they were employed, and the schools in which they received their
training; occasionally they assembled it through questionnaires and
by analyzing census material.
Use of Guidance Specialists
Recognizing that some types of guidance problems require special
ized techniques and a greater expenditure of time by the guidance
worker than most counselors are in a position to give, counselors in a
few of the offices visited had so organized their programs that sub
stantial numbers of applicants could be offered specialized guidance
services through other channels. For the most part, these offices
were large placement organizations where the size of the staff and the
services available through other agencies in the community permitted
a relatively high degree of specialization in the work of the various
staff groups.
As has already been said, the junior office visited in the District
of Columbia was organized in such a way that each junior applicant
was provided with a specialized counseling service to the extent neces
sary. Inasmuch as the primary function of the junior-counseling
division there was guidance rather than registration and placement,
the junior counselors had been appointed primarily because they were
qualified as guidance workers and had a knowledge of guidance
techniques. Inasmuch as the more routine procedures by which
each applicant’s registration was completed and kept active were
usually handled by other staff members in the operating divisions of
the employment center, the time of the staff members in the junior
counseling division could be kept relatively free for counseling services.
The young persons whom the junior counselors in the District of
Columbia reinterviewed were not primarily those who returned to
the office to keep their registrations active, but rather those who
returned to the counseling service for occupational and school infor
mation, those who were encountering difficulty in finding work through
the employment center, or those who wished consideration given to
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their qualifications for work other than that in which they had been
originally classified.
A somewhat smaller proportion of junior registrants were given a
similar counseling service in three other offices visited^ In the Cin
cinnati public employment center, staff members of the junior division
as well as staff members of other divisions referred all applicants in
need of counseling to consultants in another division of that center; in
Detroit and in New York City junior counselors had access to inde
pendent agencies which maintained offices adjacent to the juniorplacement service and had been organized to give selected applicants
the specialized treatment sometimes necessary.3
_In all three of these offices there was a clear-cut division of responsi
bility between the junior counselor and the specialist in the consulta
tion service. The junior counselor was primarily responsible for the
registration and, in Detroit and New York, for the placement of all
junior applicants as well as for such development of vocational and
educational plans as could be achieved in the limited time at his
disposal. Although counselors in these offices were responsible also
for detecting problems requiring more intensive work, they usually
made no attempt to handle such problems themselves. On the
other hand, the consultation workers to whom selected applicants
were referred, acted only in an advisory capacity to the placement
office and seldom undertook responsibility for placement. They were
concerned primarily with the type of problem that involved long
term planning and training programs, and they worked mainly with
young persons with personality or home problems that interfered
with placement, those who were vocationally undecided, and those
whose plans were at variance with their apparent abilities and who
stood in need of counseling, psychological testing, or retraining before
placement could be undertaken. The staff members of most con
sultation services undertook no work with persons whose problems
were primarily due to mental deficiency, who were in need of psy
chiatric care, or who were already being served by other guidance
or social case-work agencies in the community.
Care was exercised in the selection of applicants whom junior
counselors recommended for special counseling services. Final deci
sions regarding which cases came within the sphere of the consulta
tion service and regarding the special treatment which each individual
should receive were left entirely in the hands of the consultation
specialists themselves. This policy of careful selection, together
> The Council for Youth Service in Detroit and the Junior Consultation Service of the Vocational Service
f°r , ^ m0rf !n N ^ Y ° rk C ity exten<ied consultation services to applicants of the junior-placement offices
m those cities. The junior service in Rockland County, which was within commuting distance of New
Y oik, also referred a limited number of junior applicants to the New York C ity Junior Consultation Service.
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
with the close contact maintained between counselors and consulta
tion workers, made it possible for the latter to do intensive work when
it seemed likely to be helpful. The junior applicants with whom
consultants worked made up only a small proportion of the total
number of registrants in these large offices, but even so the number
served was considerable and the technical assistance which counselors
were thus able to obtain was an invaluable aid to them in their
placement work.
Consultation workers were able to devote considerably more time
to each individual in this selected group than were the junior coun
selors who handled comparatively large numbers of registrants daily.
They held careful and repeated conferences with the applicant him
self and made extensive use of the supplementary material already
discussed— interest blanks, school records and recommendations,
social-agency records, and psychological tests. Data obtained from
these sources, together with the record of the consultant’s conference
with the applicant, were usually entered on special forms, which pro
vided more space for this kind of information than did the registration
cards used by the junior counselor.
In Cincinnati the complete consultation record was usually filed in
the applicant’s registration folder and any staff member who had
occasion to deal with the applicant therefore had access to all perti
nent information available. In New York City and in Detroit, where
counselors and consultation specialists maintained separate files, the
findings and recommendations of the consultation worker were sub
mitted to the junior counselor in written form at the time each con
sultation case was closed, and this report was filed in the junior office
with the applicant’s registration record. In both of the latter cities
also plans acceptable to both the consultant and the placement
worker were worked out for each applicant in joint conferences at
which the recommendations of the consultation workers were related
to the practical placement problem as seen by the staff of the place
ment office.
Use of School Facilities
Frequently the study of an applicant’s placement problem pointed
to the advisability of his obtaining further training in order to equip
himself for work in which he was interested. In this connection,
counselors made particular use of the evening schools in their com
munities. In Philadelphia, for instance, many registrants were
requested to come to the placement office for reinterviews at the
beginning of the night-school term so that supplementary training
could be discussed; letters were written to other applicants suggesting
enrollment in the evening schools.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
GUIDANCE PROGRAM
65
Unemployed young persons were referred also to short-unit voca
tional courses given during the day and planned in such a way that
training could be completed within a brief period of time. In some
communities where short-unit courses were not available counselors
themselves had been instrumental in inducing public-school systems
and other agencies to develop such training programs, the staff of
the placement service sometimes furnishing all or part of the instruc
tion. Again in Philadelphia speed classes in shorthand, typewriting,
and office machine work had been started by the public schools at
the suggestion of the placement service and many applicants register
ing for office work were referred by counselors to those classes in
order that they might have an opportunity to increase their profi
ciency. The teachers in charge of the instruction worked closely
with the placement counselors, often recommending pupils whom
they considered best qualified for openings received by the placement
office.
Counselors in almost all offices also persuaded many applicants who
were too young or too poorly prepared to make immediate placement
desirable to return to full-time day school. The junior counselor in
the Cedar Rapids public employment office estimated that dining the
2 years his office had been in operation he had been instrumental in
returning well over a hundred applicants to full-time day school.
Some of these were young persons beyond the compulsory-schoolattendance age who had intended to stop school, while others were
pupils who had been referred to him by school-attendance officers in
the hope that he could, through his practical knowledge of employ
ment opportunities, convince them of the importance of continuing
their education in order to equip themselves better for work.
Less frequently, placement workers referred applicants to the
public schools for guidance. Thus in Rockland County junior appli
cants were from time to time sent to see the county director of guid
ance in order to obtain occupational information or to discuss the
wisdom of dropping out of school to go to work. Apart from this,
however, school guidance workers seldom served the immediate
counseling needs of placement offices. The guidance programs of
most school systems were generally keyed to serve the educational
rather than the placement needs of their pupils; the guidance program
of the placement office, on the other hand, was intended to orient
the young applicant to a practical work situation at the particular
time when he became available for employment— a situation with
which school vocational counselors were often unfamiliar because
they had little opportunity to observe current employment condi
tions at first hand. In view of this situation, many placement counse
lors have felt that the school’s greatest field of service in connection
with placement counseling lies in the guidance which it offers to young
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
persons still attending the schools. It was perhaps significant that
counselors in two communities with very limited school guidance
facilities mentioned with regret that many of their young applicants
were unprepared even to state the kind of work they wanted to do,
whereas placement workers in a third community with an outstanding
school guidance program stated that many young applicants came to
the placement office well prepared to discuss their interests and to
evaluate their qualifications.
Other Guidance and Training Facilities
As result of the counseling procedure, a limited number of applicants
were referred to individuals and agencies in the community other than
those already discussed. For the most part, such referrals were for
short-unit training courses conducted by social agencies or adulteducation councils. Less frequently they were for specialized counsel
necessary in handling some types of health, social, and home problems.
A few offices handled applicants who had serious health problems
somewhat differently from other registrants; the special procedures
used with this group are discussed in a later section of this report
which deals with the registration and placement of handicapped
applicants (see pp. 109-112). Frequently the arrangements between
the placement office and cooperating agencies provided for an exchange
of reports and recommendations, as in Cedar Rapids, where the in
structor of a speed class in typing offered by the Young Women’s
Christian Association regularly reported to the placement office on
the speed attained by the various students enrolled in the course, all
of whom had been selected and referred through the junior counselor.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
SOLICITATION OF EMPLOYERS’ ORDERS
Almost all counselors spent a scheduled proportion of their time in
soliciting job openings suitable for their registrants. Contacts with
employers, made initially in order to explain the purpose of a place
ment service for juniors which was new to the community or to the
employer, were continued at regular intervals in order to maintain
cooperative relationships thus established.
In outlining the basic policies which lay behind solicitation, a
supervisor of the New York State Employment Service voiced the
feeling of many counselors elsewhere in stating that solicitation of
jobs for inexperienced young applicants should be directed toward
finding a suitable job for each registrant rather than toward a general
search for any job openings that could be located. This had been a
policy difficult to put into practice, however, because of the scarcity
of jobs and the abundance of applicants at the time of this study.
Consequently, much of the solicitation done constituted a general
search for jobs suitable for all or for special groups of junior registrants.
Solicitation was most likely to be productive of job orders when it
was timed to coincide with seasons of greatest business activity.
Many enterprises such as stores, garment factories, and resort hotels
periodically take on seasonal workers, and counselors in practically
all offices found it profitable to emphasize solicitation from establish
ments of this sort at those times of the year when they were most
likely to be needing additional workers.
Job solicitation was governed to some extent also by the fluctuations
which took place from time to time in the character of the applicant
groups registered in the junior-placement office. Thus counselors
anticipating a large registration of high-school graduates at the end
of the school year made it a point at that time to solicit firms with
which they were most likely to place that type of applicant, and some
offices occasionally used, as a guide to the types of establishments
solicited, the particular occupational classifications in which they
had a preponderance of well-qualified registrants at a given time.
There was considerably less solicitation of a particular job suitable
for a given junior registrant than solicitation for all or special groups
of junior registrants. Solicitation on behalf of individual registrants
was usually confined to those applicants who possessed characteristics
in which employers had previously indicated they were interested or
to individuals, such as operators of power sewing machines, who were
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68
J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
qualified to do work for which there happened to be a current demand.
Many of the employees with whom counselors got in touch under these
circumstances had already expressed their willingness to interview at
any time those applicants who were found by the placement office to
meet their specifications. Other applicants for whom counselors
occasionally undertook special solicitation included those whose
physical handicaps made this necessary and those whose social back
ground made their lack of employment a particularly acute problem.
Although jobs sought for these various types of individual applicants
did not always materialize at the time they were solicited, placements
often resulted eventually.
In addition to this direct solicitation, counselors sometimes inter
ested other individuals in the community in helping exceptionally
capable applicants to locate suitable employment. One counselor
with whom this matter was discussed had enlisted the help of members
of a local fraternal organization who by means of their contacts in
the community attempted to locate employment opportunities for
the more gifted applicants.
Methods
The counselors in all the 12 offices visited considered personal
calls on employers more productive of job orders than any other
method of solicitation. Insofar as possible, therefore, office managers
arranged interviewing schedules which would allow time for counselors
to make these outside contacts.
The amount of time which counselors actually foimd available for
solicitation by personal visit was necessarily limited by pressure of
other duties connected with placement, notably by the number of
registrants it was necessary for the office to handle. Time spent in
visits to employers ranged from more than 30 percent of the coun
selor’s time in one office visited to less than 5 percent of the counselor’s
time in others.1 In general, counselors in those offices that had been
recently organized devoted considerably more time to visits to em
ployers than counselors in offices that had been operating over a
period of several years. Particularly when the placement service
was new in the community and there was a need to build up an ade
quate employer clientele as quickly as possible, counselors found it
necessary to devote a considerable proportion of their time to making
these visits. Thus, when the junior-placement office was organized
in Rockland County more than half of the counselor’s time was given
to calling on employers in order to acquaint them with the service
and solicit job orders; by the end of a year the major part of this
canvass of employers in the district had been completed and the time
1In public employment offices, solicitation was done b y adult-placement workers as well as b y Junior
counselors, and some orders obtained b y the former were eventually routed to junior divisions for handling
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
SOLICITATIO N OF E M PLO YE RS’ ORDERS
69
given to visits to firms had been cut to approximately one-tenth of
the counselor’s time. In this office, as in other offices, the counselor
continued to solicit job orders by calling on employers who were
unacquainted with the placement service as well as by renewing con
tacts periodically with those who had already been approached. The
total time necessary for solicitation was diminished, however, because
most employers already knew of the placement service available and
calls made to renew previous contacts were comparatively brief.
Letters of solicitation also were used to inform employers about the
services of the placement office. Newly established placement
services found it particularly nesessary to supplement their visits with
this less time-consuming method of reaching employers unacquainted
with the service; otherwise they would have been forced to depend
for their job orders on a comparatively limited group of employers
until counselors could call on all employers who were prospective
users of the service. These letters of solicitation were sent, in some
instances, to general mailing fists drawn up from the directories of
State labor departments, from city and telephone directories, and
from information supplied by local chambers of commerce; in others,
they were addressed to employers known to have had young workers
on their pay rolls, according to the records of factory inspectors or
of work-certification offices, and according to the statements of junior
applicants themselves whom they registered at the placement office.
Less frequently, counselors wrote to employers who advertised for
workers in the newspapers, suggesting that they consider making
use of the facilities of the placement office.
Through feature articles published in local newspapers and in
bulletins of merchants’ associations, through talks given by counselors
before fraternal organizations and other groups, and through radio
programs, many junior offices obtained other effective publicity.
None of those methods, with the exception of the last, was used
regularly in any of the offices visited, however. In the District of
Columbia a series of radio broadcasts sponsored by the public em
ployment center had proved effective in giving the community an
understanding of its work. Brief programs, scheduled each morning
over a period of several months, featured talks by various staff
members on the operation of the service and interviews between the
radio announcer and selected registrants which served to demonstrate
the types of applicants available for placement.
Maintenance of Contacts W ith Employers
Several of the offices visited had been in operation for a considerable
period of time, and most of their contacts with employers were with
those who already knew about the placement service. Insofar as
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
possible, counselors endeavored to get in touch with all such employers
at regular intervals and their solicitation was planned with this end
in mind. For the most part, they did not find it practicable from
the point of view of the placement office or desirable from that of the
employer to rely entirely on visits to employers to accomplish this
purpose. Once a satisfactory working relationship had been estab
lished between the employer and the placement office— and this
might or might not have necessitated several visits— the relation
ship could often be maintained in other ways.
Some counselors renewed their initial contacts periodically by
sending employers letters, fliers, or monthly news bulletins reporting
the activities of the employment service. Other counselors left
with employers business cards, leaflets, blotters, or guide cards for
filing cabinets which bore printed material advertising the placement
office and served as reminders of the services available. In still
other offices, it was a practice to follow up all or some firm visits within
a week or 10 days with a publicity folder or a letter thanking the
employer for the courtesy extended the representative of the place
ment office and reminding him again of its services.
Policies and Problems of Coordination
In soliciting orders each junior counselor tended to concentrate on
employers who were most likely to have openings for the particular
type of applicant that he registered and placed. Employers seldom
use one type of worker exclusively, however, and most of them think
of the placement service as an agency able to supply them with all
types of workers. Employers are usually unaware of the distinctions
made by the placement office when it assigns to different staff members
the registration and placement of different age groups, such as juniors
or adults, or of special occupational groups, such as industrial, clerical,
or domestic workers.
Because of the light in which most employers regard the placement
service, staff members in most school and public employment offices
avoided calling on employers who had recently been visited by other
staff members and, in soliciting orders, they acted not only as repre
sentatives of their own branch of the service but also as representa
tives of the service as a whole. If a counselor was one of several in
a school office, he presented the services of all counselors in that office
to the employer; if he was on the staff of a public employment service,
he solicited orders for adult applicants as well as for the younger
group registered in the junior division. This policy called for a
m inim um of self-interest on the counselor’s part, and the degree to
which he followed it was naturally influenced by the degree to which
he could be confident that all orders suitable for his applicant group
would later be routed to him for filling.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
SO LICITATIO N OF EM P LO YE R S’ ORDERS
71
In the public-school offices visited it had not been difficult to put
this policy into practice. Except for occasional openings in which
teachers in the schools placed their pupils, no placement and no
solicitation was done by staff members of the public schools other
than the junior counselors themselves. Even where branch offices
were operated, as in Philadelphia and Detroit, the employer clientele
served by each branch was sufficiently distinct to make it unlikely
that the staff members of different branches would have occasion to
have any contact with the same employers. Hence, most school
counselors serving the same employer clientele usually worked side by
side in the same placement office and could readily keep themselves
informed about the solicitation being done by all staff members of
their offices; and since the applicant groups which each school coun
selor handled were distinguished by sex, educational background, or
the type of work for which they were registered— differences marked
enough to make it improbable that two or more counselors would hold
the registrations of persons qualified to fill a given job order— each
counselor could solicit orders for the entire office with the assurance
that he would have an opportunity to place his own applicants in
any suitable openings that might be forthcoming.
In the public employment centers visited, the districting of branch
offices in New York City and the different racial groups served by
each of the offices in Durham also made it unlikely that staff members
of one branch would duplicate solicitation done by staff members of
other branches. This was not always the case within a single branch
or center of public employment services, however. Several of the
public employment agencies visited were large organizations with
junior and adult-placement workers occupying separate quarters in
the same building. Since the junior counselors in some of these
offices had comparatively little daily contact with the staff members
of adult-placement divisions, and since both staffs served the same
employer groups it was necessary to take ¡-special precautions to avoid
duplication in job solicitation. Furthermore, many of the orders
resulting from solicitation by junior counselors could be filled equally
well by adult or by junior applicants; junior counselors could not
always be assured, therefore, that all orders which might be filled by
junior applicants and which might result from their solicitation
would be routed to them for filling.
This situation made some degree of competition for orders inevitable
whenever staff members became absorbed in the placement of their
own particular applicant group without due regard for the placement
service as a whole. It was a problem which was shared to some extent
by all junior divisions operating as complete placement units in public
employment centers. Particularly in large centers of this type, where
the volume of work w as great and where staff members in one division
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
had little informal contact with staff members in other divisions,
careful coordination was necessary in order to avoid competition for
orders and unwarranted duplication in visits to employers.
Supervisors in many of these offices have sought to unify and
coordinate the activities of their various divisions by obtaining quarters
for them on the same floor of the building and by bringing all staff
members together at regular intervals in joint meetings. In Cincinnati
and in the District of Columbia the problem of coordination has been
met by delegating major responsibility for the solicitation of all types
of job openings to special divisions of promotion or of public relations.
Junior counselors in these two functional services did comparatively
little solicitation, and the limited number of calls which they made on
employers were in all cases cleared through the special division respon
sible for solicitation. This arrangement solved the problem of duplica
tion of visits but at the same time it tended to limit the counselor’s
knowledge of local employment conditions and so deprived him of an
opportunity to acquire some of the background of information needed
for counseling. Particularly in the District of Columbia, however,
counselors kept informed about the kinds of employers’ orders being
handled by the office because they frequently selected applicants for
referral on typical junior job openings and because they also visited
employers for the purpose of obtaining occupational information in
connection with the research program carried on by that office.
Records
Two types of records were generally used to systematize the solicita
tion done by various staff members of the placement organizations
visited. Counselors maintained files containing information on firms
visited by staff members as well as other files, usually known as
“ contact files,” containing the names of employers not yet solicited
by visit.
The cards which went into the “ firm-information file” provided for
data about the physical set-up of the establishment, information about
employment policies and personnel, and a description of the work per
formed with particular emphasis on work done by young people. All
the public employment offices visited, with the exception of those
located in the State of New York, used a standard United States
Employment Service card prepared for placement offices handling
applicants of all ages; other offices had adopted special forms expressly
suited to the kinds of openings usually handled by junior counselors.
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SOLICITATIO N OF E M PLO YE RS’ ORDERS
73
These special forms differed from the standard United States Employ
ment Service form in that they provided more space for items which
seemed particularly important in connection with openings for young
workers, such as the employer’s preferences in regard to education,
experience, and personality traits, and his attitude toward employ
ment of part-time workers and continuation-school pupils. The forms
used in New York State (see pp. 74-77) are somewhat more detailed
than the forms used in other offices visited but they serve to illustrate
the kinds of information that that office had found particularly use
ful in this connection.
Information obtained on the first visit to an establishment was
entered as completely as possible on the firm-information card.
Further entries were made on the same card whenever job orders
were filled for the establishment or whenever it was again visited.
Each card thus provided a running record of the placement office’s
contact with each employer visited or served.
Firm-information cards were usually filed centrally where they
were accessible to all staff members in the junior office who might
have occasion to consult them. In public employment offices they
often contained information on establishments visited by adultplacement workers as well as by junior counselors. In most cases
these cards were filed alphabetically; less frequently they were filed
numerically, industrially, or occupationally, with alphabetical cross
files for finding purposes. Counselors in some offices coded or tabbed
the cards in such a way that they served as a guide in planning revisits
and letters of solicitation that would coincide with the season of the
year when a contact would be most likely to result in job orders.
The cards in the second type of file, the “ contact file,” contained
the names of employers who had not yet been canvassed by repre
sentatives of the placement service. In several large offices this file
was arranged according to the location of the establishments in order
to assist counselors in planning visiting schedules that would involve
a minimum of time spent in transportation; in other offices cards were
filed industrially, to facilitate plans for soliciting specific types of job
openings; and in some of the smaller offices these records were kept as
alphabetical lists. Particularly in the large offices, the contact records
sometimes carried notations of busy seasons or of the types of work
for which orders were most likely to be forthcoming.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
F IRM -IN FO R M A TIO N C ARD— IN D U STRIAL ESTABLISHM ENTS
<1
[Actual size: 8 b y 5 inches]
R E C O R D OF IN D U S T R IA L P L A N T
Date of visit
Name
Address
Phone
Floor
Product
Refer applicant to
T y p e ........ ...................
Grade________
Building (type):
W orkroom (general comment):
K ind of stairs------—----------------------------------------------------________ Elevator.
Space------------------- ----------Lighting------- -— . . . _______ Ventilation_______
N oise.
Total
daily
Total
weekly
Begin
A. M .
Lunch
time
End
P. M .
................. ........... Safety appliances............................... Cleanliness.
Liability to accident------------------------------T o poisoning___________________
Hours of employment
End
Sat.
Over
time
Part
time
Union shop: Y es----------------------- N o _______________ W hat union.
Impression of management
Seasons: B usy m os.................................. ........... .M ax. force.
D ull mos............................... «........ ........ M in. force.
N um ber of employees
Total
Male
(all ages)
Female
(all ages)
Boys
14-20 yrs.
M inim um age-----------------------------------Predominating age.
Predominating nat........................................Nat. refused....
Handicapped..................................................... Cont. SchoolColored----------------- ....S o u r c e of labor supply___________
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Girls
14-20 yrs.
Part-time
workers
Impression of workers
J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
Fire protection______________________________________
Sanitation (wash rooms, etc.)____________________________
CReverse side)
212235'
General description (machines used, etc.):
D E S C R IP T IO N OF PR O C E SSE S
Occupations for adults Gist):
Num ber
employed
M
F
Wage
M in.
Max.
Description of job
Qualifications
Opportunity for advancement
H eavy, light, clean, dirty, standing,
sitting, lifting, monotonous, method
of training, etc.
Age, experience, education, height,
neatness, manual dexterity, etc.
(In occupation or in wages)
SO LICITATIO N OF EM P LO YE R S’ ORDERS
Name of junior
occupation
Visitor______________
Form (developed b y the N ew Y ork State Em ploym ent Service) used in N ew York City, Rochester, and Rockland County
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Ot
M
05
F IRM -IN FO R M A TIO N CARD— OFFICES AND STORES
[Actual size]
R E C O R D OF O F F IC E
Name
Address
Phone
Business
Refer applicant to
Floor
T yp e of building
General comment:
Office conditions
General comment:
Elevator: Pass.
Freight
Stairs: Stone
W ood
adequate
Ventilation
Hours
A. M .
artificial
Normal office force
P. M .
Lunch
Predom. nat.
Sat.
Total weekly
M en
M in. age
Cont. sch.
Impression of employer
W om en
Part time
Juniors
Total
Handicapped
Colored
Impression of workers
Wages
K ind of work
M
F
Possibilities for advancement
M in.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Max.
Special qualifications desired
J U N IO R PLA C E M E N T
Light: Natural
(Reverse side)
Remarks (bonus, vacations, overtime, welfare, education, and plant cont. sch.):
SO LICITATIO N OF EM P LO YE R S’ ORDERS
Visitor
Date of visit
Source of inform
Form (developed b y the N ew York State Em ploym ent Service) used in N ew York C ity , Rochester, and Rockland County
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Position
RECEIPT AND FILLING OF EMPLOYERS’ ORDERS
Most job orders placed with employment offices did not materialize
until some time after they were solicited and often they called for
various kinds of workers. Coupled with the necessity for locating
openings suitable for junior applicants, therefore, was the necessity
for instituting within the placement office procedures for routing
orders to the various staff groups who handled different types of
registrants and for selecting and referring to the employer the regis
trant best qualified to fill the opening in question.
It was fully as essential for the entire placement organization to
handle all incoming orders as a single placement unit as it was for it
to handle solicitation in that fashion. As in the case of solicitation,
this was made necessary by the fact that most employers were unable
to specify the particular division or staff member with whom their
orders should properly be placed.
The procedures followed in filling orders for junior applicants were
of immediate concern only to junior divisions that functioned as
complete placement units. It has already been noted that the junior
offices in Cincinnati and the District of Columbia, both of which were
organized as functional junior divisions, had little or no direct contact
with employers in connection with the receipt and filling of orders.
In Cincinnati selection of applicants to fill orders was always made by
staff members of the placement divisions from a central registration
file containing the records of applicants of all ages, and all referrals of
applicants to employers were made by the same staff members. In
the District of Columbia also, where counselors occasionally selected
applicants to fill employers’ orders, direct contacts with employers
were almost always made by placement workers in the operating divi
sions of the employment center. In both these offices, then, the pro
cedures of selection and referral were basically the same for applicants
of all ages. The following discussion of the special procedures devel
oped by junior counselors for the receipt and filling of orders suitable
for junior registrants is based, therefore, on the experience of the
remaining 10 junior-placement offices visited, which were operating as
complete placement units.
Receipt and Routing of Orders
With the exception of a limited number of job orders which coun
selors obtained at the time they solicited employers or which employers
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placed in person at the employment office, orders were usually tele
phoned to the office. Whenever possible, the employer’s specifications
for each opening were taken by the staff member who would eventually
select a qualified applicant for referral. Telephone operators and
receptionists, therefore, transferred each call directly to the placement
worker who would be responsible for filling the order.
Incoming orders could be routed without difficulty in the few cases
in which employers were sufficiently well acquainted with the per
sonnel of the placement office to know the name of the division or of
the individual with whom they wished to place their orders. When
this was not the case, definite policies governed the allocation of all
incoming orders. Any placement worker to whom an employer
happened to be referred could of course make a record of his require
ments and relay the order to the proper staff member, but such an
indirect relationship between the placement worker filling the order
and the employer whose preferences and wishes were to be considered
was avoided whenever possible.
Within the junior office itself, the allocation of telephone calls from
employers seldom presented difficulties. In most offices where two
or more counselors were responsible for placement, each was assigned
exclusively to the registration and placement of a specified juniorapplicant group and consequently each tended to handle only certain
types of employers’ orders. In the New York City public employment
service, where the staff was too large for responsibility to be divided
among individual staff members in this manner, orders received by
each branch office were handled by having counselors take turns
at acting in the capacity of order taker and placement worker for the
office. In the case of certain types of openings, chiefly those received
from large department stores, there was provision for allocating orders
among the several branch offices within the New York City placement
system, regardless of whether the establishment was located within
the district served by the branch office to which the order was routed.
The allocation of orders between junior- and adult-placement divi
sions of public employment services was considerably more difficult
than their allocation among the several counselors or branch offices
of a single junior service. Inasmuch as junior applicants were distin
guished from adults chiefly on the basis of age and degree of experi
ence, orders had to be routed between junior and adult divisions on
that basis. This distinction was sometimes a difficult one to make.
Job openings clearly calling for beginning workers, such as orders for
messengers and mothers’ helpers, could of course be easily identified
as suitable for junior applicants and routed to the junior division
accordingly. Other orders, such as those for certain kinds of opera
tives in industry and for office workers, were considerably more diffi
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
cult to route to the proper placement worker, inasmuch as some of
them could be filled satisfactorily by applicants registered in either
junior or adult division. The allocation of such calls sometimes
required exceptional judgment on the part of switchboard operators
and receptionists routing incoming telephone calls. Age, when it was
specified, frequently covered a range served by both junior and adult
divisions; experience, on the other hand, was subject to a variety of
interpretations. Most public employment offices found it difficult to
apply any hard and fast rules to the allocation of orders of this sort.
Insofar as possible, public employment offices attacked the problem
of allocation at the point where incoming telephone calls were first re
ceived by the office. Switchboard operators and receptionists were
instructed to make brief inquiries about the requirements for the
opening before referring an employer to the proper placement worker.
The age and experience desired were most commonly the deciding
factors; frequently general inquiries were made also about the type
of work involved. Only seldom did telephone operators and reception
ists inquire about the wage offered, usually only when they were
unable to come to a decision on the basis of other information. Most
counselors felt it undesirable to route orders on the basis of wage
unless absolutely necessary. Their experience had been that all too
often this information tended to direct to the junior division only
those openings which were substandard in this respect.
In practice, most of the orders which telephone operators and
receptionists found difficult to route on the basis of brief general
inquiries were referred to adult-placement workers, who used their
own discretion in filling them or in relaying them to the junior coun
selors. Where staffs were small, worked closely together, and had
a clear understanding of the function of each division of the public
employment center, an informal arrangement for transferring orders
in this way was entirely satisfactory to both divisions. But in some
of the larger employment centers, where divisions were less closely
unified, such informal arrangements tended to direct to the junior
division only those orders that adult-placement workers were unable
to fill from their own files.
Some placement services have attempted to meet this situation by
maintaining central order files containing a copy of every order re
ceived by the employment center, so that, whenever they wished to
do so, both junior- and adult-placement workers might suggest
qualified applicants to the staff member in charge of filling the order.
It was partly because of the difficulties encountered in working out
procedures to govern the allocation of orders that some junior coun
selors had cross-referenced the names of their applicants in the files
of adult-placement workers. The use of secondary registration cards
in the adult files was an assurance that junior applicants possessing
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
RECEIPT AND F IL L IN G OF E M PLO YE RS’ ORDERS
81
the necessary qualifications would be considered in connection with
all orders filled by adult interviewers.
Records of Employers’ Orders
In most of the offices visited, information about each order received
was entered by the junior counselor on an employer’s order card
and this card was kept on the desk of the counselor responsible
for filling the order until the opening was either filled or canceled;
thereafter the order card was usually filed in an inactive-order file,
arranged alphabetically according to the name of the employer.1
Counselors in most of the public employment offices visited used
the standard United States Employment Service order card. (See
pp. 82-83.) The public employment offices of New York State used a
similar form developed for the same purpose for use throughout the
State. Many of the forms used in public-school offices were consider
ably less detailed than the United States Employment Service card,
but all of them covered essentially the same information. Two 2
provided space for additional data on whether the job offered full
time, part-time, or vacation work; others 3 called for information on
whether the employer was willing to consider handicapped applicants
or applicants who were still attending continuation school.
The Detroit public-school office simplified its order-taking procedure
by using lists on which employers’ orders were entered chronologically
as they were received by the office. Each counselor kept a separate
order list and entered on it all orders calling for workers within the
broad occupational fields with which he dealt.4 Information obtained
on orders listed in this way was necessarily less detailed than that
entered on separate cards and was somewhat less convenient to analyze
for statistical purposes. The procedure had been adopted chiefly
because it made possible a considerable saving in time that counselors
would otherwise have had to spend in record keeping.
Investigation of Establishments
In filling employers’ orders, the needs and the protection of the appli
cant who is to be placed deserve the same degree of consideration as the
requirements of the employer. Insofar as the wages, hours, and duties
outlined by the employer were concerned, the specifications of each
order enabled the counselor to judge whether the opening itself was
suitable for a young applicant. These data did not by any means give
1 In one branch office in New York C ity all filled orders of a given employer were filed with the firminformation card for his establishment; in Essex County filled orders were filed occupationally.
1 Essex County, Atlantic City.
8 N ew Y ork State offices.
4 Several offices reporting b y questionnaire indicated that all orders were listed according to the name of
the employer placing the order and that a separate order card was used for each employer.
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to
EM PLOYERS’ OR D E R CARD
[Boys—white card; girls—buff card]
[Actual size: 6 b y 4 inches]
P O SIT IO N O PEN
E M P L O Y E R O R F IR M
ADDRESS
TEL. NO.
APPLY TO
H O W R E A CH ED
DUTIES
1
NUMBER TO APPLY
IN D U S T R IA L C L A SSIF IC A T IO N
SEX
M
W
CODE
D U R A T IO N
AG E RANGE
J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
WHEN
ADDRESS
N U M B E R O F O P E N IN G S
W O R K IN G U N D ER W H A T CO D E
CODE HOU RS
CODE W AG ES
HOURS
W KLY.
D A IL Y
TO
SAT.
SUN .
W AGES
P ER
IN D U S T R IA L D ISP U TE E X IS T IN G O R T H R E A T E N E D ?
ED U C AT IO N A N D E X PE R IE N C E REQ U IR E D
W H IT E
NEGRO
OTH ER
P E R S O N A L IT Y , P H Y S IC A L , A N D O TH E R R E Q U IR E M E N T S
M A R R IE D
L IV E A T W O R K
SIN G L E
L IV E O U T
T IM E L IM IT T O FILL
O RD ER TAKEN B Y
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
C.
N A TIO N A LIT Y
DATE
J.
P.
(Reverse side)
NAME
RESU L T
VER IFIED
REM ARKS
****
A C T IO N S U M M A R Y
REN EW ED O PE N IN G S
Form (developed b y the United States Employment Service) used in Cedar Rapids, Cincinnati, Concord, and Durham
RECEIPT AND F IL L IN G OF E M PLO YE RS’ ORDERS
PLA C E M E N T A N D R E F E R R A L R E C O R D
D AT E R E F E R R E D
00
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
a full picture of the conditions under which the applicant would be
required to work, however. Other considerations, such as sanitation,
policies in regard to overtime work, and the general character of the
surroundings were equally important in protecting the applicant from
unsuitable working conditions. Much of this information could be
obtained by the counselor only through a personal visit to the estab
lishment in question in order to observe working conditions and to
inquire into the policies of the concern.
In the case of those establishments that had been visited previously
for solicitation purposes, conditions of work had already been ascer
tained by the placement worker and noted on the firm-information
cards on file in the placement office. It was only in connection with
the comparatively small group of establishments that had never been
visited that there was need to make any special investigation of
working conditions.
In the smaller communities, where virtually all employers had
already been visited or were known personally to staff members of the
placement office, there was seldom any need to make a special investi
gation of the establishments in which applicants were placed. On the
other hand, in some metropolitan districts, where visits by the staff
of the placement office were likely to be confined to large firms, many
orders were received from employers about whose establishments the
placement office had little or no direct knowledge. In actual practice,
counselors in large offices filled most openings of this sort without
making any preliminary investigation of the establishments in ques
tion because, under most circumstances, orders would have been
canceled if applicants had not been referred promptly. Special in
vestigation was considered essential only when there was good reason
to suspect, from the information supplied by the employer when he
placed the order, that working conditions might be undesirable.
Considerably more investigation of working conditions was under
taken after the applicant had been placed on the job than before
placement. In Atlantic City the counselor checked every placement
made by calling at the employer’s place of business the day after
placement; and in New York City and in Essex County all placements
made with employers unknown to the office were checked as soon after
placement as possible by a visit to the establishment from a staff
member of the placement office. In offices where sufficient time was
available for checking placements in this fashion, these visits provided
a fairly satisfactory although somewhat delayed method of checking
on the suitability of the placement from the applicant’s point of view.
Even though counselors in some of the offices visited did not in
vestigate all establishments in which they placed junior applicants
and which were unknown to them, it should be emphasized that those
with whom the matter was discussed were in entire agreement with
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the principle that young people should not be sent out indiscriminately
to work for employers under conditions unknown to the placement
office. It was clear that pressure of work, rather than lack of concern,
was responsible for preventing many placement workers from putting
this principle into more general practice.
Substandard Jobs
Counselors were occasionally asked to fill openings that fell below
their standards of acceptability. Usually these were openings offering
low wages or requiring long hours or hazardous work illegal for young
persons. Some of them could be identified by unreasonable demands
made by the employer when he placed the order or by the employer’s
record of failure to live up to his promises to workers; a few were
openings about which counselors felt doubtful and which, upon in
vestigation, they found to be unsuitable.
In justice to their applicants, some placement offices refused to
accept such orders. In the interest of maintaining satisfactory rela
tionships with employers, however, the number of orders refused out
right was usually kept at a minimum. Particularly within public
employment services, it was a policy for counselors to accept orders
of this kind, at the same time explaining to the employer that the con
ditions outlined were such as to make it improbable that any qualified
applicant would be interested in applying for the opening. Inasmuch
as most counselors made little or no effort to locate qualified applicants
for orders of this sort the treatment given them in this respect was
tantamount to refusal to accept them. Some counselors stated that
although they did occasionally fill orders offering substandard wages
they did so only when the training the young worker would receive
outweighed salary considerations or when the applicant was faced
with an acute personal problem that would be relieved by his obtain
ing any kind of work regardless of the wage offered.
Selection of Applicants
It is a generally accepted policy of employment offices that each
applicant should be assured consideration for every kind of work
that he is willing and able to perform. The placement worker who
is filling an employer’s order must first identify the records of all
registrants meeting the basic requirements outlined by the employer
and then select from among this group of qualifying registrants the
applicant who is best able to do the work required and who is inter
ested in the opportunities it offers. The first process, known as
initial selection, involves a brief inspection of the records of a fairly
large group of registrants, and the second, or final selection, involves
a careful examination of the entire registration record of each applicant
thus found to be reasonably well qualified for the opening.
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Initial Selection.
Initial selection was intended to single out from the entire applicant
group those who might be qualified to fill the order and to eliminate
from further consideration all those classified in other occupational
categories and those who, although classified in the desired category,
were obviously not qualified for the opening because of sex or other
factors specified by the employer. Much of this first part of the
selection process was routine, and in many offices it was performed by
clerical workers acting under the instructions of the counselor.
Counselors in Atlantic City, Cedar Rapids, Concord, and Rockland
County made their initial selections directly from their registration
files. After inspecting the occupational or descriptive classifications
assigned to each registrant they withdrew for closer examination the
cards of those whose classifications indicated that they possessed the
qualifications necessary for the order that was being filled. When no
qualified applicants were listed in the proper classification, related
classifications were usually consulted.
It was evident that this procedure was satisfactory chiefly because
the registration files in those four offices were small; seldom did the
number of cards in their active files exceed 350, and in all cases the
occupational classifications were entered near the top of the record
so that the brief initial inspection could be accomplished quickly.
Furthermore, counselors seldom needed to inspect more than half of
these registration cards in connection with any one order, for their
files were already separated according to the sex of the applicant, and
this was an item almost always specified on the employer’s order.
In Rochester, where the placement office was somewhat larger,
counselors also made their initial selections directly from the regis
tration file. Inasmuch as scanning the entries on the rather large
number of cards in this file would have been unduly time consuming,
tabs were attached to each registration card, their color and position
indicating to the counselor the broad occupational group or groups
to which each applicant was classified for placement. Thus the
counselor was provided with a quick means of identifying all regis
trants classified within a specific occupational field, among whom he
could locate by further inspection of each record all those classified
in the desired occupational category.
The active files of the other placement services visited were too
large to be used for initial selection in either of the ways that have
been discussed. Some of them contained the records of more than a
thousand applicants, and even a brief inspection of the classifications
assigned to so many applicants would have taken too much of the
counselor’s time to be a satisfactory procedure in filling employers’
orders. Furthermore, the group of registrants thus selected on the
basis of classifications would often prove to be too large for practical
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RECEIPT AND F IL L IN G OF E M PLO YE RS’ ORDERS
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purposes of final selection and would include many obviously not
qualified for the order held, because employers in large communities
specified much more frequently than did employers in small com
munities the age range, training, or nationality that they considered
acceptable. Counselors in large, offices found it necessary, therefore,
to develop procedures that would speed up the process of initial
selection and at the same time narrow down to reasonable proportions
the number of applicants whose records were to be given final con
sideration for the opening being filled.
In one large placement office, the Long Island City branch of the
New York City public employment service, selections were made
directly from the registration file also, but the work was done by a
machine. The office used special registration cards, each of which
was notched along the edges according to the applicant’s occupational
classifications, age, training, and other qualifications. These cards
were passed through a selecting machine, which could be so adjusted
that it automatically singled out the records of all registrants meeting
the basic requirements for the job order to be filled.
Counselors in other large offices6 made their initial selections by
means of the separate classification records which have been dis
cussed. (See pp. 51-54.) Where these records were kept as lists or in
visible-index holders initial selections were usually made by scanning
the occupational categories and the special qualifications noted op
posite each registrant’s name and by then withdrawing from the
registration file the records of all those who met the employer’s
specifications. Where supplementary classification records were kept
as occupationally arranged classification files, counselors had only to
consult the names and other data entered under the proper section of
the classification file in order to determine which of their applicants
met the basic requirements for the job order to be filled.
Final Selection.
The final selection of the applicant best qualified to fill an employer’s
order was made by comparing all specifications of the order held with
the full registration record of each of the applicants who had been
identified by the process of initial selection. Many counselors con
sulted not only the order at hand but whatever information about the
firm and previous orders from the employer was available in the office.
In making final selection counselors considered not only the specifica
tions of the order but also the special interests of the applicant.
Just as an applicant not fully equipped to meet the demands which the
job makes upon his training and abilities will probably prove to be an
unsatisfactory worker, so an applicant will be likely to prove equally
unsatisfactory if his qualifications, even though they fit him for work
• Detroit, Durham, Essex C ounty, N ew Y ork C ity (Brooklyn branch office), Philadelphia.
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in the same occupational field, are definitely superior to the opportu
nities which the job holds for him or if his interests are such that he
will not be satisfied in the job.
Under all but the most unusual circumstances junior-placement
counselors followed this policy of basing their final selections on the
individual’s ability to do the job and the likelihood that the job
would, in turn, prove to be in line with his interests. Nevertheless,
there has undoubtedly entered into junior-placement work a recogni
tion of the need to help the inexperienced applicant to see the value
of a beginning job and to assist him through his work experience to
develop his potentialities to the highest degree possible. Occasionally,
when the most promising applicant available for an opening under
consideration has failed, at the time of placement, to measure up to
the employer's specifications in characteristics such as poise, or even
in some phases of his preparation or previous work experience, junior
counselors have sought to enlist the employer’s cooperation in working
out necessary adjustments. Still other young applicants come to the
placement office specially trained for work in which there is very small
chance o f‘obtaining positions and counselors have found it desirable
sometimes to consider such applicants for referral on beginning jobs
which, although they are in the same occupational field, require a
somewhat lower level of performance. Considerations such as these
occasionally entered into the junior counselor’s decisions in selecting
the applicant to fill an employer’s order.
In most large communities the counselor’s selection of the applicant
best qualified to fill an employer’s order was usually considered final
and the applicant thus selected was referred to the employer. In
many small communities, however, the family connections of the
applicant and the firms for which he had previously worked sometimes
played an important part in determining whether he was acceptable
in all respects to the employer. Accordingly, counselors serving small
communities often found it desirable to check their tentative decisions
with the applicant or with the employer or with both before taking
any final action in regard to the referral.
Most counselors referred to the employer the same number of appli
cants that the order called for. This might or might not be the same
as the number of positions available, for employers frequently asked
to see several applicants for a single opening. Most counselors dis
couraged this practice whenever possible, however, feeling that the
competition involved often placed young persons at an undue dis
advantage and that the procedure was at best inefficient.
Occasionally the best selection a counselor was able to make from
the registration records narrowed his choice down to two or more
applicants who seemed equally well qualified for a single opening.
Sometimes such applicants were called into the office for reinterviews
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in order that the counselor might check information previously re
corded and make a more careful evaluation of qualifications. Less
frequently counselors left the final decision up to the employer,
either by discussing the matter with him over the telephone or by
referring to him all applicants who seemed equally well qualified so
that he might interview them personally and state his own preference.
Counselors in other offices made it a policy to select from equally
well-qualified applicants those who had been in most frequent or most
recent touch with the placement office; still others gave precedence
to applicants whom social agencies in the community had referred
to the office and for whom employment offered a solution to urgent
personal problems.
Other Methods of Selection
The procedures already discussed were designed by counselors to
help them to handle selections in which the most important requisite
was the occupational classification assigned to the applicant. Most
selections were made in this manner. Nevertheless, all counselors
had occasion to use other methods from time to time. Occasionally
a job order had to be filled immediately or it offered temporary
employment with such limited opportunities for the applicant that
it did not justify the time necessary for the usual selection procedures.
Sometimes the classification into which the order fell was not so
satisfactory an index for selection purposes as were personal charac
teristics such as height and weight or special talents and abilities;
in other cases counselors were unable to find qualified applicants in
the active registration file at the time the order was received.
Until a few years ago employment offices frequently made selec
tions, not after a consideration of all qualified applicants who might
be registered, but from among those who happened to be in the
waiting room when the order was received. At the time of this
study this practice was by no means so prevalent as it had once been.
The limited number of selections made in this way were usually for
those orders that came within the lowest limits of acceptability, and
applicants considered for referral in connection with them were often
young persons of limited ability.
At other times it was necessary for counselors to base selection on
special characteristics and abilities rather than on the occupational
classifications assigned’ to the registrant. To some extent initial
selection for orders of this type could be made by consulting classifica
tions stated in descriptive rather than in occupational terms. Often,
however, the specifications of the employer’s order were such that
selection could be achieved only by examining all cards in the entire
registration file in order to locate applicants who had the desired
combination of characteristics.
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Many counselors eliminated a considerable amount of this laborious
work by keeping special lists and index files of the names of applicants
who possessed special characteristics not related specifically to any
one occupational classification but nevertheless important in filling
certain types of orders for inexperienced workers. Probably the most
extensive use of records of this kind was made in the District of
Columbia public employment center, where junior counselors made a
limited number of selections and for this purpose used a special-quali
fications file, as it was called in that office. Applicants whose names
were entered in this file were those who owned bicycles; who possessed
special aptitudes as demonstrated by unusually high scores on psycho
logical tests given at the employment center, who were exceptionally
tall, who were proficient in one or more foreign languages, and who
possessed other special qualifications. With the help of these records,
selection for some kinds of openings— for example, openings for gradu
ates of the eighth grade who possessed bicycles or for receptionists who
would be required to give information to foreign-speaking clients—
could be made more quickly and efficiently than would have been
possible by inspecting each card in the entire registration file.
When inspection of the records of all active registrants failed to
produce any applicant qualified to fill an order, other records, chiefly
those of inactive registrants, were consulted. The inactive file usually
contained the names of some applicants who were still available for
employment but whose registrations had lapsed because they had
neglected to keep the office informed of their employment status.
In a few offices preliminary registration data and school records
assembled on young persons not yet interviewed for registration pur
poses represented another source of potential applicants which might
be tapped to fill an order for which there were no qualified registrants
in the active files. When these data revealed the name of a young
person who had not as yet been registered but who appeared to
possess the characteristics desired by the employer, the counselor
got in touch with him and completed his registration without further
delay; if he was found to be interested and qualified, he was then
referred on the opening available.
Clearance of Orders
When counselors failed to locate qualified applicants within the
confines of the junior office itself, they often turned to other juniorplacement services, to adult-placement divisions with which some of
their junior offices were affiliated, and to other employment agencies
in their communities. It was evident that this clearance of orders
occurred only rarely between schools or school placement offices on
the one hand and public employment offices on the other, but within
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their own organizations counselors in each type of junior-placement
service reported that they frequently cleared orders and succeeded
in finding qualified applicants in this manner.
Clearance with other- agencies, as well as within the placement
service itself, was usually undertaken informally over the telephone
or by personal conference, since the size and the number of the place
ment organizations in most of the communities visited were relatively
small. Only the offices in a few large metropolitan centers visited
had adopted regular procedures for clearance. One of these, the
public employment center in Rochester, circulated a daily clearance
sheet among its various divisions, and in this way each division was
kept informed of unfilled orders held by other divisions. In Durham
staff conferences were held each morning for the same purpose. In
metropolitan New York a number of public and private nonprofit
making placement services had set up a central clearance office to
serve the same purpose. This central office issued and circulated
daily bulletins containing job specifications for all unfilled openings
referred for clearance by member agencies, together with the name of
the agency holding the order. Participating placement organizations
that had qualified applicants could then get in touch with the agency
holding the order in which they were interested. The final decision
on the applicant’s acceptability rested with the office holding the
Older, and in most cases that agency assumed responsibility for com
pleting the transaction with the prospective employer.
The service for the New York City area was the only district clear
ance system encountered in the course of the field study. State-wide
and interstate clearance systems, organized by the United States
Employment Service along the same lines, were quite widely used
b7 public employment offices, however. These systems were par
ticularly useful in clearing openings for highly skilled and specialized
workers not generally handled by junior-placement offices, but coun
selors reported that occasionally they too cleared unfilled orders
through these channels and placed their young applicants in jobs
that came to their attention in this way.
Notification of the Applicant
Once the counselor had selected an applicant who met the employer’s
specifications the machinery for referral was put into action immedi
ately. Counselors in metropolitan centers found it particularly im
portant to take prompt action because business usually moved at a
rapid pace and there were often competing employment agencies in
the community. Delay by the placement office might mean the loss
o the order under these circumstances. In the smaller communities,
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where the tempo of business was somewhat slower, this pressure was
less evident.
Counselors usually got in touch with the applicant selected for
referral by the quickest means available. In most cases this was a
telephone message either to the applicant's home or to a neighbor
through whom he had previously informed the office he could be
reached quickly. Occasionally telegrams were used. The expense of
these was eliminated in one office by sending them only to those who
had signified their willingness to pay the small charge of a collect
message; another office reduced the cost by using a standard message
which the telegraph company had agreed to handle at a minimum
rate. Less frequently, office boys, clerical workers, and counselors
themselves delivered the message in person. Finally, in some of the
smaller communities, where communication facilities were least satis
factory and where it also seemed least likely that an order would be
lost through a day's delay in filling it, applicants were notified through
the regular mail or by special-delivery letter.
Referral
Ordinarily the notification sent to applicants requested them to
report immediately to the placement office, where they were inter
viewed by counselors before being sent on to see the employer. Oc
casionally a junior applicant was referred directly to the employer
without a preliminary interview with the counselor, either because
the counselor already knew that applicant well enough to be sure that
he could manage the interview with the employer satisfactorily or
because the time that would have been spent in reporting first to the
placement office would have seriously delayed the service to the
employer.
It was difficult to estimate the extent to which interviews held at
the time of referral were intended for purposes of final selection and
the extent to which they were for the purpose of informing the appli
cant about the order and preparing him for referral. Inasmuch as
only one applicant was usually called into the office for each position
being filled it would seem that selection was not the primary purpose
of interviews taking place at this time, although there was undoubtedly
some element of decision about the applicant’s acceptability to the
employer.
Once the counselor had satisfied himself about the applicant’s
ability to do the work required, the preparation for the interview with
the employer assumed major importance and most of the conference
was given over to this subject. For many young persons an interview
with a prospective employer is a momentous undertaking, and most
junior counselors recognized this fact by giving the applicant a special
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R E C E IP T
AND
F IL L IN G
OF
EM PLOYERS’
ORDERS
93
kind of guidance at this time. They have found that many young
persons need preparation for the kinds of questions employers ask
them as well as general information about the work they may be
required to do and advice on dressing suitably for a business interview
and on the importance of courtesy and a businesslike attitude. It is
true that employers who understand young people do not expect a
great deal from them in these respects, but it is also true that many
employers do not have such an understanding. Counselors have
found that a little coaching at the time the young applicant is referred
to the employer often gives him needed encouragement and helps him
over some of the difficulties connected with applying for a job.
Applicants sent to interview employers were usually given referral
cards (see below); less frequently letters of introduction were mailed
to applicants referred to employers without a preliminary interview
at the placement office or else the office telephoned to the employer
and gave him the name of the person who was being referred. These
procedures served to protect the placement office against other
applicants who might overhear details about orders and misrepresent
themselves as having been referred by the placement office. Letters
and cards of introduction also provided applicants with the feeling of
assurance that credentials can afford.
R EFER RA L CARD
[Self-addressed post card]
T e le p h o n e
T o : ______
I n R e spo n se to Y o ur R eq u est
W e A r e I ntroducing
A s A n A pplicant
R esu lt
E m plo yed :
Y e s .. . . .
N o .........
of
fo r
P o sition
I n t e r v ie w
D a te to
St a r t W o r k
R e a s o n ____
of
W e A p p r e c ia t e Y our U s e of O u r S e r v ic e and
H o pe T h a t Y ou W i l l C a l l U s A g ain . P l e a s e
C h e c k t h e R e s u lt of T h is R e f e r r a l . S ig n and
M a il . N o P o stage is R e q u ir e d .
Y ours T r u l y ,
M a n ager.
A pplicant I ntro d uced
by:
E m p lo y e r ’s S ig n a t u r e .
Form (developed b y the United States Em ploym ent Service) used in Cedar Rapids, Cincinnati, Concord
and Durham
’
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Verification of Placement
All counselors followed up their referrals to employers until they
had ascertained whether the applicant had been found acceptable or
whether the opening was still unfilled and the employer wished to
interview other candidates.
Placements were verified through the employer or, when that was
not feasible, through the applicant himself. Many of the introduc
tion cards used were printed on return post cards which furnished the
employer with a means of reporting to the placement office on the
outcome of the referral, and applicants were usually instructed to
leave these introduction cards with the employer for this purpose.
Applicants themselves were also asked to inform the office whether
they were engaged as a result of the referral.
Counselors stated that the great majority of placements were satis
factorily and promptly verified in either of these two ways and that it
was necessary to verify only a small proportion of placements in some
other manner. Occasionally, when the employer or the applicant
failed to return the report requested by the placement office or when
the counselor felt it desirable to verify the placement without waiting
for the routine report to reach the placement office, the outcome of
the referral was checked by a telephone call, usually to the employer,
less frequently to the applicant. Sometimes this verification was
made within an hour or two of the referral; at other times counselors'
allowed a week or 10 days to elapse. In all cases they tried to fit
their procedure to the employer’s convenience and to the circum
stances under which the referral had originally been made.
Although these were the usual procedures followed in verifying
placements they were by no means the only methods used. In
Atlantic City and Cedar Rapids counselors verified many placements
by calling personally at the employer’s place of business, at the same
time renewing contacts for solicitation purposes. Counselors in the
Detroit office, accustomed to handling orders for many applicants
from large industrial concerns, reported that they often verified
placements by mailing to employers check lists of the names of all
applicants who had been referred.
Much of the work connected with the routine verification through
the employer or the applicant was handled by the clerical staff of the
placement service. Whenever it was necessary for the placement
office to take the initiative in getting in touch with the employer,
however, counselors usually found it preferable to make the contact
themselves. If the applicant referred had not proved satisfactory
to the employer and the job was still open counselors were then in a
better position to get further information on the employer’s needs
and to interest him in considering other registrants.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
FOLLOW-UP OF PLACEMENTS
An inquiry into the work histories of any representative group of
young persons produces convincing evidence that the junior applicant’s
employment problem is by no means completely solved once he has
een placed. Many positions held by young workers require a
minimum of skill and experience. They are the easiest for employers
to fill and among the first to be discontinued during periods of business
inactivity. Other openings, such as orders for some types of garmentfactory work, are seasonal and are filled temporarily by inexperienced
applicants only because more experienced workers cannot be obtained
at such times.
statistical reports of the offices visited reflected this situation.
More than one-third of the placements that counselors made during
1936 were reported to be in positions which emplovers estimated
would be termmated within a month of the time of placement. More
over, the few records that are available on the actual duration of these
jobs indicate that an even greater proportion than this did actually
terminate within a month. Of 7,000 placements made during 1936
by the two branch oflices visited in New York City, 52 percent lasted
less than a month and only 13 percent lasted 6 months or longer
The Rockland County office, located in a rural area of the Stated
reported a stability of employment not much better. Of 250
openmgs in which this office placed its applicants during 1936, 46
percent lasted less than a month, and 22 percent lasted 6 months or
onger. Although located in the same geographical area, these two
communities represented the extremes in economic development
withm which most of the junior-placement services in the country fell.
Under these circumstances placement agencies concerned with the
welfare of their young applicants have little reason to believe that
their services will no longer be needed by the applicant when he has
been placed in a job, even though the job shows promise of being
permanent at the time the placement is made. As a result, many
junior offices have developed special procedures for following up the
progress of the young worker after placement.
Follow-up of placements should be distinguished from the verifica
tion of placement previously discussed. The distinction may seem
obvious, but it was apparent from the questionnaire survey that
preceded the field study that placement workers themselves sometimes
confused these two aspects of the placement program. The follow-up
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procedures discussed here entail an investigation into the youth’s
adjustment to the job after he has worked in it for a substantial
period of time. Obviously it is not possible to make this investigation
when the placement is verified, because there has not been sufficient
time for the problems with which follow-up is concerned to manifest
themselves.
Purpose of Follow-up
Follow-up has been for some time an activity common to employ
ment offices serving applicants of all ages, but many agencies espe
cially charged with the placement of junior applicants have changed
the emphasis hitherto given to this phase of placement work. Adultplacement organizations that have undertaken follow-up have dealt
almost exclusively with the employer and have been concerned prima
rily with his satisfaction in the transaction. While a few of the juniorplacement offices visited did little more than this, there were among
them a substantial number that considered the services rendered to
the young worker through follow-up to be of quite as much import
ance as the services rendered to employers.
This concern with the progress of the applicant himself has come
to be characteristic of the junior-placement office. Many times a
job is lost to a young worker because of a situation that need not have
developed. Young people new to a work situation must inevitably
make certain adjustments if they are to become satisfactory em
ployees. When counselors interviewed applicants before referral,
they sought to forestall some of the difficulties that might later arise,
but they could not of course anticipate all contingencies. Sometimes
the youth’s lack of experience as an employee gave rise to misunder
standings that needed to be clarified; sometimes his experience on
the job indicated the advisability of further training in night school
or continuation school in order to prepare himself better for the work
he was expected to do. The young worker’s chances of making the
most of his opportunities could often be greatly enhanced by the
well-timed advice and counsel of an experienced placement worker.
Moreover, by keeping in touch with the young persons placed, coun
selors were in a position also to evaluate the worth of the job from the
applicant’s point of view. Sometimes their inquiries in this connec
tion pointed to the wisdom of the applicant’s seeking a new position
which would afford him a better opportunity to develop his abilities.
While the adjustment of the individual to the job was usually the
principal concern of follow-up, it was by no means the only purpose
served. By continuing to keep in touch with employers and appli
cants after placements had been effected counselors also were able to
add to their own fund of information about the policies and attitudes
of individual employers and about job specifications for beginning
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PLACEM ENTS
Follow-up Interview Report
Date___________
Firm-------------------- :--------------------------------
Department____
Address-------------------------------------------------
Job held________
Supervisor----------------------------------------------
Supervisor’s title
Exact nature of work
W a g e s ------------ Other compensation
.___ Job expenses
Daily schedule________________
Lunch period____
Hours Days per week________________
Overtime________
Vacation or time off___________
Chance to learn on the jo b ___________
Advantages__________________________
Disadvantages_______________________
Age of applicant-------
E ducation________ Height ______ Weight
School record_____________________________________________
Testing Division report________________________
Outstanding qualifications for job _______________________________
Experience________________________________________
Date registered------------------- Date p la ced ______________Date le f t ____
Report on placem ent________ :_______________________________
Recommendation
Held b y ______ ______________________
Classification_______________
-
-
-----
——
>
Junior counselor.
Form used in District of Columbia
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workers in their communities. Sometimes information so obtained
was analyzed and recorded in such a way as to constitute a valuable
source of information on opportunities for junior workers in the com
munity. In the District of Columbia, for instance, information
about jobs in which junior applicants were placed was recorded in
the course of follow-up on a special form (see p. 97) and filed occupa
tionally so that it might be available to all counselors in the junior
office.
Methods of Follow-up
Nine of the junior placement offices visited had developed their
own special procedures for making a routine follow-up, through the
applicant or the employer or both, of almost all placements made.1
In other offices the same follow-up procedures were used in connec
tion with placements of both adult and junior applicants or else the
young persons whose progress was checked made up only a small
proportion of the total number of junior applicants placed by the
office. It is with the policies and methods developed by placement
services with special follow-up programs for junior applicants that
the present section deals, for they typify the somewhat unique emphasis
that junior counselors have come to place on this phase of their work.
Methods of follow-up varied considerably in these nine offices,
depending largely on the size of the group placed. In the smaller
offices the volume of work was such that counselors could usually
remember most of the placements they made over a brief period of
time as well as any special problems of follow-up that they might
present. In connection with their follow-up work, counselors in these
small offices often took advantage of incidental contacts with employ
ers and even with friends of the young persons who had been placed.
In most cases they needed no carefully organized system for making
these contacts. By contrast, large centers serving thousands of
applicants and employers annually found it necessary to conduct
their follow-up in a much more systematized fashion and gave special
treatment to comparatively few cases.
Follow-up Through Employers.
In all nine offices placements were always followed up through the
employer, provided the office had not been notified that the job had
terminated. Some offices made it a policy to follow up all placements
regardless of the expected duration of employment at the time the
order was filled;2 others confined their follow-up to placements with a
probable duration of a month or more, sometimes including also a
limited number of temporary placements that had presented good
1 Atlantic City, Cedar Rapids, District of Columbia, Durham, Essex County, New York City, Phila
delphia, Rochester, Rockland County.
1 Atlantic City, Essex County, New York City, Rochester, Rockland County.
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99
possibilities of permanency.3 Counselors who followed up temporary
as well as permanent placements pointed out that the information
they obtained was sometimes useful if the office later had occasion to
consider the applicant for placement; moreover, temporary placements
did occasionally develop into permanent jobs.
The customary procedure for handling follow-up through employers
was to mail to them form letters inquiring about the progress of the
person placed. (See p. 100.) Employers were asked to fill in and
return to the placement office the brief questionnaires that were
either appended to these letters or enclosed in them.
In Cedar Rapids and Atlantic City counselors reported that they
achieved their best results by personal calls on the employer rather
than by letters. In both these offices the group served was small
enough to make this plan practicable and acquaintanceships existing
between many employers and the junior counselors helped to make this
procedure effective. Visits made in this connection were useful also
in renewing contacts for solicitation purposes. Similarly, when
counselors in larger offices solicited openings from employers, they
occasionally availed themselves of the opportunity to follow up the
progress of applicants placed with the employer. They could check
on only a small proportion of their placements in this way, however,
because of the time required to do so.
Much less frequently, counselors obtained follow-up information
over the telephone. This was generally considered an unsatisfactory
means of getting the desired information, however, and the offices
visited used it only when employers happened to call the office in order
to place further orders or when counselors had been unable to follow
up the placement in other ways.
Special files were usually set up to serve as a guide to the office in
preparing the communications necessary for follow-up. In some
offices the cards used in these follow-up files were registration records
that had been transferred from the registration file at the time each
placement was made; other offices used special follow-up cards giving
brief information about each opening filled. In all cases follow-up
cards were filed chronologically by date of placement, their position
in the file determining the date at which follow-up should be under
taken.
The time at which counselors in the offices visited got in touch with
employers for purposes of follow-up varied from 1 week to 6 months
after placement. In small offices4the circumstances surrounding each
placement frequently determined the exact time at which follow-up
was undertaken. Larger offices, on the other hand, usually observed
clearly defined follow-up procedures and much of the work was handled
3 Cedar Rapids, District of Columbia, Durham, Philadelphia.
4 Atlantic City, Cedar Rapids.
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Follow-up Letter Sent to Employers
was placed in your employ through
this office o n ___________________________
The junior counseling service is interested in knowing how this placement
has turned out from your point of view.
We shall appreciate your filling out the brief form below and returning it
to us in the enclosed franked envelope, since such cooperation will enable
us to render y o u . more satisfactory service. The information will be
regarded as confidential.
Very truly yours,
Junior Counselor.
Is ____________________________
still in your employ?
Yes ------------
N o ________
At what job is employee working at present?----------------------------------------Present sa la ry ?__________
Has there been any advance in position or
salary?_______________________________________________________________
Has employee’s work on the whole been ou tstan din g----------------------g o o d __________ fair____________poor------------------Outstanding good p oin ts----- ----------- ------------------------------------------------------Outstanding faults------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------Write in any recommendations you would like us to suggest for improve
ment: night school, e t c .---------------------------------------------------------------------
(If no longer employed, date of leaving
Reason
>
Additional comments:
Form used in District o f Columbia
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101
by clerical workers according to an established routine. In some of
them follow-up letters were sent to employers approximately 1 or 2
months after placement;6 in others, after a 6-month interval.6 Many
counselors were still experimenting in regard to the most effective time
to check on placements in this fashion and they were in general agree
ment that each of these intervals had its own peculiar advantages.
Since a large proportion of young workers are discharged or laid off
from their jobs during or shortly after the first month of employment
the end of the first month may well be considered an opportune time
for the counselor to get in touch with the employer. If difficulties on
the job have arisen or seem imminent, counselors can then try to fore
stall them by a word of advice to the applicant; even if the applicant
has already been discharged because the job has terminated or be
cause he has proved unsatisfactory, the office nevertheless has a
valuable check on its own placement work and on the applicants
adaptability. On the other hand, a period of time considerably
longer than a month is usually necessary for any reliable demonstration
of the applicant s adjustment to a work situation, and placement offices
have little measure of this unless follow-up covers a period of several
months’ employment.
Where relationships between the placement office and the employer
were entirely impersonal, as they were in most communities, counselors
generally found it desirable to get in touch with employers only once in
the course of following up each placement. If follow-up was under
taken more frequently, the desired information was less likely to be
forthcoming; the Detroit office, which had for a short time checked
through employers at 1-month and again at 6-month intervals after
placement, had discontinued the practice partly for this reason. This
situation did not usually prevail in the smaller communities, however.
The counselor in Atlantic City reported that he followed up each
placement through the employer at least three times during the first 6
months and found this arrangement quite satisfactory to the employer.
Follow-up Through Applicants.
Counselors in all nine offices also followed up some or all of their
placements through the applicant. In Atlantic City, Cedar Rapids,
and Durham this aspect of the follow-up program touched only a
limited number of young persons, chiefly those who returned of their
own accord to the office in order to report progress on the job and
those whom employers indicated to be in need of further training or
practical advice on attitudes and work habits. Counselors in the other
six offices 7 either got in touch with all applicants placed, regardless
» District of Columbia, Durham, Philadelphia.
' Essex County, N ew York City, Rochester, Eockland County.
7 District of Columbia, Essex County, N ew York City, Philadelphia, Rochester, Rockland County.
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of the probable duration of the job at the time of placement, or else
with all those who had been placed in permanent employment. Some
placement services not following up applicants placed in temporary
employment, as was the case in the District of Columbia, continued to
keep the registrations of such applicants in the active file; should those
applicants fail to get in touch with the office after the prescribed
interval for keeping their registrations active had elapsed, an inquiry
about their employment status was sent them which was the equivalent
of a follow-up regarding the outcome of the temporary placement.
In Philadelphia, New York City, Rochester, and the District of
Columbia, follow-up through the applicant took the form of an in
vitation to come to the office to discuss the job during evening office
hours that had been established for that purpose.8 In most offices it
was a policy for the counselor who had originally handled the appli
cant’s registration to see him at this time. Counselors in Rockland
and Essex Counties got in touch with all applicants placed by means
of a letter with a questionnaire appended. (Seep. 103.) In this way
each applicant placed by these two offices was asked to report on the
status of his job and was invited to discuss it with the counselor if
there was any further way in which the office could serve him. The
counselor in Rockland County reported that she frequently had
occasion to interview such persons at her home in the evening; in
Essex County, staff members of the placement office remained on
duty in the late afternoon whenever former applicants indicated a
desire to confer with them.
Most counselors who followed up placements through the applicant
stated that they felt these personal interviews were essential for
effective work with at least some young persons. They had found that
telephone conversations, interviews at the applicant’s place of work,
or information obtained from him by questionnaire often failed to clear
up difficulties or even to bring them to the surface. Personal inter
views were necessary if the counselor was to discover the applicant’s
true reaction to the job— a reaction that sometimes brought to light
problems of which the employer was unaware or which he had neglected
to report when the placement office communicated with him. When
ever the follow-up report from the employer was available at the time
of this conference with the applicant, the counselor was in a position
to know both sides of the placement situation and to discuss things
from the employer’s point of view as well as from that of the young
worker.
s The Durham office was planning at the time it was visited to institute a similar procedure.
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Follow-up Letter Sent to Applicants
Several months ago we placed you w ith _______________________________
a s ______________________
We are very much interested in learning how you are progressing in
your work, and will appreciate your answering the following questions:
1. Are you still employed with the above firm?
answer No. 5 and No. 6, below.
2. What was your starting salary?
salary?
________ _
_________
If not, please
What is your present
________ _
3. Have you been promoted or transferred?
explain.
_________
If so, please
4. Have you considered that further education or training might help you
toward greater efficiency or advancement in your work?
5. If you are no longer employed with the above-named firm, when did
you leave?
_________________
Why?
6. Are you now working elsewhere?
------------If not, I would suggest
that you come in and renew your application.
If there are any problems in connection with your work, we may be
able to help you with them. Through our knowledge of employment
conditions and opportunities, we are in a position to offer advice or sug
gestions which you may find of value. Should you be interested in further
education or training in preparation for advancement, we shall be glad to
advise you regarding the educational and vocational courses which are
available in this area.
Will you kindly use this form and the enclosed stamped, self-addressed
envelope for your reply? You may also use the reverse side of this letter
for additional remarks.
Cordially yours,
Chief of Placement.
Form used iu Essex County
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As in the case of follow-up through employers, counselors who
followed up placements through applicants felt that there were
advantages to be gained by getting in touch with them a few weeks
after placement and again after a longer period had elapsed. The
first few weeks after placement, they felt, was the most critical time
at which to give whatever advice and encouragement might seem
necessary and to establish the counseling relationship desired in this
connection. On the other hand, a longer period was necessary before
the counselor could be in a position to make a reliable estimate of the
qualities displayed by the applicant on the job and the opportunities
that the job had to offer the applicant.
The usual procedure followed was for counselors to communicate
with each applicant about a month after placement, and the response
that they received to their inquiries indicated that this was a welcome
procedure from the applicant’s point of view. Counselors in New
York, Philadelphia, and the District of Columbia, all of whom main
tained evening office hours, reported that at least half these young
persons responded to their invitation to return to the office for con
ference. Where questionnaires were sent to applicants, as in Essex
County, the proportion of replies received was even larger.
In many cases the interview held after the first few weeks of employ
ment was followed by conferences at intervals that varied according
to the needs of individual applicants. It has already been noted that
in Philadelphia an effort was made to have subsequent follow-up
interviews coincide with the registration period for night-school
terms so that additional training might be considered and planned
if it seemed desirable. Counselors in the offices visited in New York
State made a routine follow-up of all applicants 6 months after
placement, which was similar to the one made after 1 month. Appli
cants who failed to respond to this second invitation to return to
the office during evening office hours were later sent a questionnaire
on which they were asked to report briefly about their progress on
their jobs. One branch office in New York City reported that 80
percent of the applicants placed in 1936 responded at the time of the
6-month follow-up either by calling at the office or by returning the
questionnaire. Where the follow-up program reached such a large
proportion of the young persons placed and where their experience
over so long a period was reviewed, counselors were in a position to
form a reliable opinion of the effectiveness of their placement work
from the applicant’s point of view as well as from that of the employer.
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
SPECIAL APPLICANT GROUPS
Most applicants served by junior-placement offices were handled
according to the procedures outlined in preceding sections of this
report. These usual methods of registration and placement did not
suffice for taking care of all types of young persons, however. At
least a few of those who registered with the junior-placement offices
visited presented placement problems which counselors felt called for
special handling. Included among them were applicants with serious
health problems, applicants placed with the Civilian Conservation
Corps or in positions as houseworkers and apprentices, and young
persons whose recent or current association with the public-school
system made it advantageous for the placement office to work closely
with that agency. Usually some applicants made up only a small
proportion of the total applicant group in any one office, but never
theless they presented special problems that were common to all
offices and that required adjustments in standard placement pro
cedures.
Programs for special applicant groups varied considerably among
the offices visited. They were influenced to a large extent by the
character of the agency supervising the work in each office and by the
types of service agencies available in the community. Close associa
tion with public-school systems had imposed upon some juniorplacement offices special responsibilities in connection with the place
ment or follow-up of special groups of former school pupils; in other
cities, the presence of other agencies in the community had caused
counselors to adjust their procedures in such a manner as to avoid
duplication of work and to utilize to the fullest extent the facilities of
those other agencies; in still other cities, the very lack of these facilities
had made it necessary for counselors to include in their programs
special services which were only remotely connected with the place
ment function itself but which were indispensable if placement was
to be satisfactorily achieved for the applicant group in question.
Applicants for Housework
Household service often makes unreasonable demands upon the
time and energy of the worker and is for the most part poorly paid;
the result is that many persons feel it gives a low social status to the
worker and that placement offices often find themselves with more
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orders for houseworkers than they have applicants able and willing
to accept positions of this kind. Frequently these orders are sub
standard in regard to wages or working conditions or both, and
counselors do not feel justified in recommending that applicants
accept them. On the other hand, the employer who does offer satis
factory employment conditions often requires experience and personality characteristics that make it difficult for counselors to find wellqualified candidates for the opening.
Because of the scarcity of applicants who are willing to accept
employment as household workers and who are qualified to do this
work, some placement workers have found it desirable to centralize
the registration of all applicants classified as houseworkers and the
filling of all orders of this type. Such an arrangement has made it
possible for one placement worker to consider all registrants classified
as houseworkers for the most desirable openings received by the office,
and to leave unfilled openings offering less satisfactory working condi
tions. It has also eliminated the possibility that some employers of
houseworkers might place orders with several different staff members
of one placement organization in the hope of obtaining houseworkers
at a lower wage from one than from another.
In the public-school offices, where all registrants were juniors,
there was no need to make special provision for centralizing the place
ment of houseworkers, since the division of responsibility among
counselors in each of these offices was such that in practice each staff
member usually handled all orders for houseworkers and registered all
applicants classified in that field. Of the eight public employment
offices visited, the usual procedures followed by the functional junior
divisions in Cincinnati and the District of Columbia also resulted in
centralizing the placement of adults and juniors registered for house
work, inasmuch as in these two offices the placement of all applicants
in a specified field of work was handled by one operating or placement
division.
The remaining six junior divisions of public employment offices
operated as complete placement units, with junior- as well as adultplacement workers registering applicants and filling employers’ orders.
Of these, the three offices in Cedar Rapids, Rochester, and New York
City had developed special procedures for centralizing housework
placements.1 In each of these offices all placements in household
service were handled by the adult-placement divisions responsible
for this type of applicant, and the registrations of all juniors classified
as houseworkers were, therefore, made available to those adultplacement divisions. This was done either by referring the applicant
i Special domestic-placement procedures, which were standardized for use throughout N ew York State,
were not followed b y the complete junior-placement unit visited in Rockland County, because at the time
of this study the public adult-employment office in the county was making only a limited number of place
ments in private employment.
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Qi^oAAi-' applicant groups
2Q7
directly to the proper adult-placement division for registration or bv
giving him a secondary registration card, or cross-reLnce m hat
division Such action was in all cases preceded by an ¿tervTew
between the junior applicant and the junior-placement counseteand
3
Z
X
,
cou n selor^
Applicants referred for registration and placement in adult domestic
divisions were generally those who were qualified for and interred
n housework only After their referral, junior counselors ceased to
have responsibdity for the registration or placement of such apXtnte
Young persons who were classified for housework as well as for work
egularly handled by the junior division were provided wiffi reriX l^ d W h A iUnl0r',aS 7 “ as in-tbe Pr»Per adult-placement dfvision
and both divisions shared responsibility for their placement. Usually
he primary registration card was held by the junior division and the
duplicate card, or cross-reference, was filed with the adult-placement
orker for consideration in connection with orders for houseworkers
e records of applicants in whom both junior- and adult-placement
thaian ^
ftTl“™*mterest were sighaled or coded in such a wa
that any further transactions that either division might have with
these applicants would be cleared with the other.
In many of the other offices visited where junior counselors t h e m
selves registered and placed junior applicants in housework, orders of
this type were handled somewhat differently from ordem for o t h e r
types of workem. Counselors obtained considerably more ffifoLation
bout the job at the time the order was placed with the office than they
order forms. These forms provided for the usual data identifvimr
the employer and giving information about hours and wages and if
addition included a somewhat detailed description of the dfties “f th“
aCC°mmodations’ and *>“ - of the employees f ^ i
in
he ^ W iderable
nUmbercounselors
°f y°U n ghave
who
areP
W b le
n housTholdts
household service,
many junior
been
esDeciallv
concerned with the need to raise standards in this type of employment
Whenever a prospective employer offered wages such as « « T » ,
and a good home ” as they sometimes did, or 3 e f L Un r l 0naMe
demands, counselors often handled the request as a substaXdorder
and made httle or no effort to interest qualified app“
in th
212235°—40----- 8
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J U N IO R
108
PLACEM ENT
Domestic Order Card
[Actual size: 6 b y 4 inches]
U
____ D a t e ------------------_ _ T ra n sp orta tion ---------------------H o m e telep h on e------------------
Ü U S D£111CI S DUSlIlCfoo----- ——-------
_
A d u lts __________ A ge o f ch ild
Single resid en ce-------------- F la t .
C on d itio n o f h om e: E xcellen t
R e ligion : C ---------- J-----------
A p a rtm e n t.
_ - N o . o f r o o m s -------------
C om forta b le _ —
— P 'oor-------------G irls a tten d ch urch : Y e s ---------N o _ ------No
C lass: A ------ P ------- F ------- N igh ts: Y e s .
_______H o u rs ---------------
lim e o n ----------------------------------
___
W a g e s -------------------------------------
C h ild ca re ----------------------------
JLlUlies: w u c i a i
-------------Iro n in g -------------- C o o k in g -------------------------W a sh in g ________ m a cn u ic—
_______
—
Im p ression ---------------------------------------------(Reverse side)
Tvr>e o f girl_____________ N a t i o n a l i t y - - - -N e g ro : Y e s -N o _ _ A g e E xp erien ce______________________ Personal qualities------------------------------------------R eferred
D a te
By
R esult
__
—
--------- -
“
—
—
—
—
------- '
Form used in Detroit
The counselor in Atlantic City, in his capacity as a school official,
had made a beginning in regulating working conditions for young
persons still attending school and taking part-time jobs as houseworkers. Before any such part-time placements were made, employ
ers in Atlantic City were asked to subscribe to standards for house-
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S P E C IA L
A P P L IC A N T
GROUPS
109
hold service which were set forth by the placement office in a schedule
of wages, hours, and duties.2 Counselors in other offices visited usually
confined their efforts to attempts to interest individual employers in
offering better conditions at the time they requested assistance in
obtaining domestic workers.
Most junior counselors, even though they themselves made no
placements in openings of this kind, did include in their follow-up
activities all young applicants placed as houseworkers. Accordingly,
staff members in adult-placement divisions who placed junior appli
cants as houseworkers reported those placements to the junior coun
selors who had originally referred the applicants to them.
Because counselors were doing follow-up through housewives rather
than through businessmen, many found it necessary to modify thenusual follow-up procedures. Counselors with whom the matter was
discussed reported that letters addressed to employers of domestic
workers often were unanswered. Some had achieved more satisfactory
results by following up housework placements through telephone calls
to the employer or by getting in touch with the applicant himself.
And since the turn-over in this type of work is relatively high, follow
up of domestic placements was sometimes made after a briefer interval
of employment than was the case with other types of placement.
Handicapped Applicants
Handicapped applicants made up another group that was often
given special handling by the placement office. In determining suit
able occupational classifications for such young persons, it was neces
sary' for the counselor to have a thorough understanding of the
limitations that their handicaps imposed on their sphere of activity.
Before making a placement, it was often necessary also to enlist the
employer’s cooperation in accepting a handicapped applicant and in
safeguarding his health on the job. Applicants whose disabilities
counselors felt were severe enough to warrant such consideration
included those with visible handicaps, such as facial disfigurements,
amputations, or deformities, as well as those with nonvisible handicaps,
such as epilepsy, heart disease, or serious eye defects.
Inasmuch as handicapped persons make up only a small proportion
of all young persons, only in the largest offices was the number of
handicapped applicants great enough to warrant the introduction of
special placement procedures for them. The junior offices in Cin
cinnati, the District of Columbia, New York City, Philadelphia, and
1 A similar attempt to encourage better working conditions was reported b y the junior-employment
department of the Milwaukee Vocational School, one of the offices that returned the questionnaire. This
office furnished prospective employers and employees with a summary of the Wisconsin minimum-wage
law as it affected domestic workers, together with suggestions of points to be considered in connection with
providing reasonable standards of work.
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J U N IO R PLAC E M E N T
Rochester found themselves in this position and each maintained
specialists on their staffs who were responsible for at least part of
the work with handicapped applicants. Many counselors elsewhere
frankly admitted that their organizations were not equipped to deal
with the special placement problems of handicapped applicants and
that they were able to do little more than refer severely handicapped
persons to other agencies, such as State rehabilitation agencies, for
prosthetic appliances or for retraining and placement.
The relationship between the specialists responsible for handicapped
applicants and the junior counselor in the five offices maintaining
this special service varied somewhat. Four were public employment
services in which these specialists served adult as well as junior
applicants. In one of these, the District of Columbia office, the
specialist served in an advisory capacity to the junior-counseling
service and to the operating divisions responsible for placement; in
the other three public employment offices— Cincinnati, New York
City, and Rochester— the placement as well as the registration of
handicapped persons was handled by a special division of the employ
ment service to which handicapped registrants of all ages were
referred. In the fifth office— Philadelphia— the junior-placement
service, operated by the public-school system and affiliated with the
United States Employment Service, had on its staff one specialist
who divided her time among the four branch offices in the city and
handled the registration and placement of all handicapped juniors
referred to her for service.
Because of the exceptionally large number of handicapped regis
trants that it handled, the public employment service in New York
City had set up well-defined policies and procedures for their regis
tration and placement. Other offices with special programs for
handicapped applicants were considerably smaller and had less need
to adhere to formal procedures. Nevertheless, in most respects all
five offices observed the same general principles in their work with
handicapped applicants, and the program of the New York City
service illustrates these basic policies.
Junior counselors in New York City were responsible for singling
out all handicapped applicants, including those whose disabilities ap
peared to be slight, and for referring them to the specialists who were
better able than junior counselors to determine the manner in which
each applicant’s disability might limit his employability. For much
the same reason that applicants in need of special counseling were
referred to consultants only after they had been to the office several
times, most handicapped applicants also were referred to the division
for the handicapped only after they had returned to the office for
reinterview and were somewhat accustomed to its procedures.
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SPECIAL A PP LIC A N T GKOUPS
111
The specialist for the handicapped, after conferring with the ap
plicant and investigating any medical records which might be available
through doctors and clinics, was responsible for deciding which appli
cants so referred had health problems serious enough to warrant
special consideration in connection with placement. All those regis
trants whose handicaps were found not sufficiently grave to interfere
with placement— for example, those with slight heart murmurs and
those with defects in vision that had been properly corrected— were
referred back to the junior division. A second large group with some
what more serious disabilities, such as some types of orthopedic handi
caps and heart disease, was also referred back for placement through
the regular channels; in the case of each of these applicants, however,
the specialists made the assignment of occupational classifications in
which they felt placement could be made without injury to health,
and they kept in touch with the applicant’s progress by holding in
their own files a secondary registration or cross-reference for him.
he registrations of a third group of handicapped applicants, whose
placement was likely to require a great deal of care and judgment,
were retamed by specialists for intensive work. This group included
deaf mutes and those who used crutches, suffered from progressive
myopia, or had other serious disabilities. Staff members working with
handicapped applicants made every effort to keep this last group at a
minimum, feeling that it was undesirable to emphasize the handicap
m the applicant’s mind by singling him out for special treatment.
The registration of an applicant with a serious handicap frequently
necessitated a careful study of his physical condition and special
abilities and the development of plans for retraining him in suitable
work before he could be considered ready for placement. Inter
viewing records of and supplementary data assembled on most handi
capped applicants in New York City were therefore more detailed
than in the case of other registrants, and special registration forms
providing additional space for this information were used.
Unlike most of the solicitation done by junior counselors, solicitation of openings for handicapped applicants was usually done with
the individual applicant in mind. Specialists for the handicapped
spent considerably more of their time in solicitation than did other
placement workers and, since their placements were made with a
relatively small group of cooperating employers, they also made
greater use of the telephone in soliciting openings from employers who
had accepted handicapped applicants in the past.
Placements were never made until exact conditions of work had been
ascertained, usually by visit to the establishment. Thereafter, parti
cular emphasis was placed on follow-up, because of the possibility
that the job might prove eventually to include duties that were not
stipulated by the employer at the time he placed the order and that
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112
it might be unwise for the employee to undertake. Consequently,
specialists working with handicapped applicants did much of their
follow-up by means of personal visit to the employer’s place of
business and by conference with the applicant.
Applicants Associated W ith the Schools
Most junior counselors have regarded the services of the juniorplacement office as a sequel to the training and guidance given to
young people in the academic and vocational schools. As such, one
of its greatest fields of usefulness is in assisting young persons to
make the transition from school to employment. The common
interest of school systems and employment services in the progress
of this particular applicant group has led many counselors to cooperate
with the schools by instituting special procedures for handling the
registrations of young persons at the time they leave school for work.
High-School Graduates.
Graduates of academic high schools and of vocational schools were
accorded special treatment by the offices visited more frequently
than any other group of young persons associated with the schools.
As has been noted, most of the applicant recruiting being done by
counselors at the time of this study aimed to encourage this group
of young persons to use the services of the placement office.
High-school graduates presented something of a registration problem
to almost all placement offices because they generally became avail
able for employment in large numbers at those times of the year
when the schools were graduating their senior classes. Thus some
placement offices had found themselves overwhelmed periodically
with high-school graduates seeking to register for placement, and m
order to cope with this situation they had found it necessary to make
certain adjustments in their registration procedures.
Almost all the offices visited readjusted interviewing schedules m
order to allow counselors a greater amount of time for the registration
of prospective graduates before the end of the school term. In
Rochester, for instance, the junior counselors went to the public and
parochial high schools to explain the services of the placement office
to school officials and senior classes a month or two before the close
of the school year. Through the cooperation of teachers and voca
tional advisers in these schools, appointments for registration inter
views at the placement office were arranged for boys and girls who
were planning to register for employment after graduation, and coun
selors readjusted their interviewing hours at the placement office so
that these young persons could be interviewed on Saturday mornings
and on weekday afternoons before the end of the school year.
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SPECIAL A PP LIC A N T GROUPS
113
Counselors in Atlantic City, in Essex and Rockland Counties, and
in Durham handled the registration of many prospective graduates
in a similar manner, but instead of interviewing registrants at the
placement office they registered applicants at the school during the
u0*10!?
some of the branch placement offices
handled this heavy applicant load by furnishing supplies of thenregistration forms to teachers and advisers in the high schools, who
assisted in the registration of prospective graduates by conducting
preliminary interviews with pupils who were planning to go to workapplicants registered at the schools in this way were later reinter
viewed at the placement office. Counselors in other offices prepared
the way for a quick registration of high-school graduates by obtaining
before graduation, the results of psychological tests given to members
of senior classes and by assembling teachers’ estimates of the abilities
and qualifications of young persons about to be graduated.
Aside from using these special procedures, most offices handled the
registrations of high-school graduates in the same way that they
handled those of other types of applicants. Only a few offices con
tinued to treat graduates as a special applicant group once the initial
registration had been completed. Counselors in these few offices
undertook.special follow-up for this group of applicants after place
ment, and in order to facilitate this follow-up some of them dis
tinguished the registration records of high-school gradutes from those
of other applicants by means of separate classification fists or differ
ently colored registration cards. Where this was done, special reports
based on this follow-up were usually submitted at regular intervals
to the schools concerned. In Rochester, for instance, placements
effected for each graduate were reported at monthly intervals tp the
director of guidance and, through his office, to the school from which
each applicant had graduated. And in Philadelphia, Atlantic City
and Essex County counselors followed up not only graduates placed
by the employment office but all other graduates of prescribed courses
regardless of the channels through which they had obtained theff
jobs, sometimes continuing the follow-up until the applicant reached
21 years of age. Placement offices in these cities were thus able to
furnish the schools with information about opportunities for young
workers in their communities and the progress of their former pupils,
and with a means of evaluating the training they were offering young
Pupils Enrolled in the Schools.
School authorities and junior-placement workers in a few of the
communities visited, notably in Detroit and Rockland County, under
took some special placement programs for pupils who were still attend
ing school. For the most part these were high-school seniors who
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
were offered an opportunity to gain practical experience for brief
periods at Christmas and during spring vacation periods. Placementoffice counselors and advisers in the public schools worked together in
selecting qualified pupils and in conducting brief training classes for
those interested in obtaining temporary jobs of this sort. These jobs
were looked upon as a part of the training given to these boys and
girls during their senior year in high school, and a careful report on
the performance of each employee was in most cases returned to the
school by the employer.
Aside from applicants placed through these special programs, young
persons registering for part-time or temporary work were usually
handled according to the regular procedures of the junior-placement
office. In most offices such applicants made up only a very small
proportion of the total number of registrants. Employers looking for
young persons to work outside of school hours were in the habit of
telephoning their requests directly to the schools, where teachers and
principals who were in daily contact with young people looking for
openings of this kind selected candidates to fill them. Some of the
placement workers interviewed felt that this was undoubtedly the
best way to handle orders of this kind, provided, of course, that
school officials based their selections on ability to do the work required
rather than on other considerations such as the need for a job. Place
ment workers pointed out that school officials possess a more extensive
knowledge than the placement office of the school pupils available for
part-time work and that they also know which pupils will be able to
fill such jobs without jeopardizing their school work.
Applicants Placed as Apprentices
The school office in Detroit made a considerable number of appren
ticeship placements and accorded this applicant group special hand
ling. Apprenticeship training in that city was sponsored by industrial
ists who, through their manufacturers’ association, employed a repre
sentative giving full-time to the selection of suitable candidates. The
counselors in the placement office worked closely with this agent,
making preliminary selections from among their registrants for his
consideration. Their selections were in all cases based upon a con
sideration of the individual’s interests and home background, his school
achievement, ratings on tests of general intelligence and mechanical
ability, and teachers’ recommendations in regard to his suitability for
apprenticeship training. This information was included on the schoolinformation blanks submitted to the employment office for all grad
uates of the Detroit public schools. For all candidates recommended
for apprenticeship by the placement office a summary of this informa
tion was forwarded by the placement office to the selection agent
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SPECIAL A P P L IC A N T GROUPS
115
of the manufacturers’ association, who interviewed and made final
decisions in connection with those to be accepted for apprenticeship.
In addition to the apprenticeship placement program in Detroit
similar but less extensive programs were carried on in Essex County
and Philadelphia, where counselors also cooperated with local manu
facturers or union officials in selecting applicants for apprenticeship.
Counselors elsewhere reported that they had no occasion to make
placements of this type or else that they did so very rarely. Although
preliminary selection of apprentices is obviously a service that place
ment offices are in an excellent position to give, many employers who
might have been in a position to use the facilities of their local place
ment offices for this purpose showed little disposition to do so, pre
ferring to obtain their apprentices through other channels.
Applicants Placed in the Civilian Conservation Corps
Many young persons registering in junior-placement offices v ere
encouraged to enter the Civilian Conservation Corps until such time
as their prospects for obtaining employment should improve. This
was particularly true in public employment offices, many of which
were in rather close touch with the program of the C. C. C. because
of their national affiliation.
In Cincinnati the public employment office had developed a special
program for handling this type of applicant. All young men in
Cincinnati seeking to enroll in the C. C. C. were first instructed by
enrollment officers to report at the public employment office. There,
if they had not already done so, they registered for employment with a
junior counselor in the placement office, who then sent them to apply
for enlistment at the local office of the C. C. C. Shortly before each
group of enrollees was scheduled to leave for camp, C. C. C. officials
sent to the placement office a list of the names of those who had been
accepted. Junior counselors checked the registrations of these young
men and returned to the enrollment officer a report containing infor
mation about their special aptitudes and interests, together with
information about the type of work for which each enrollee seemed
best fitted. The Cincinnati office, which maintained an extensive
program of psychological testing, was in an especially good position
to supply this kind of information. It was made available in order
that each enrollee might be assigned, insofar as possible, to the camp
where he would have an opportunity best to develop his abilities.
At the close of each enrollee’s enlistment period, the camp adviser
forwarded to the placement office a form on which he reported the
date of discharge, information about work experience and training
acquired at camp, and recommendations regarding the enrollee’s
future plans. Counselors in the Cincinnati placement office, in re-
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
newing their contacts with these young men, often found this infor
mation valuable in reclassifying them for employment.
Other Types of Applicants
Applicant groups other than those already discussed were occasion
ally given special handling, although for the most part no extensive
programs had been developed for them. Such groups included
applicants registering as laborers in Cedar Rapids and as farm laborers
in Rochester. These applicants were first interviewed by junior
counselors and then referred for registration in adult-placement divi
sions. This arrangement had been adopted because there were usually
more openings than applicants for these types of work and a centrali
zation of placement made the best openings available to all registrants
interested in obtaining them. Moreover, selection of a worker to
fill job orders of this kind depended more on the applicant’s physical
ability to do the work involved than it did upon his temperament or
intelligence, and it was not so essential for the junior counselor to give
the special care in selection that was necessary for other types of job
orders.
Applicants referred to the placement office by social agencies also
were handled somewhat differently from other registrants in a few of
the offices visited. Social agencies made such referrals to junior
counselors informally over the telephone or, in a few cases, communi
cated by letter or on prescribed forms, giving the reason for the referral
and furnishing supplementary information about the applicant re
ferred. In the placement office the registration cards of these appli
cants were often coded or tabbed for identification, and some offices,
including those in the District of Columbia, Cincinnati, and Essex
County, regularly reported back to interested agencies on any action
taken or suggestions they had to make for the applicant so referred.
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SERVICES OTHER THAN PLACEMENT
The procedures that have been discussed had been developed pri
marily because they increased the efficiency of the placement service
that counselors offered to applicants and to employers. All these
procedures were more or less closely related to placement and occupied
a major part of the time of junior counselors.
While placement activities are the main concern of all placement
workers, most counselors interpreted the program of* the juniorplacement office in a considerably broader sense. The problems of
most young persons cannot be catalogued arbitrarily as problems of
placement, or training, or recreation and handled separately; a co
operative relationship between youth agencies of all kinds is essential
if the program of any one agency is to be fully effective. Just as the
placement office has been able to do a better job when it has had access
to the records and the special services of other agencies in the com
munity, so junior counselors, in their turn, have been of material
assistance to those same agencies by sharing with them the experience
of the placement office. It has already been noted that some
activities directly connected with placement, such as follow-up, were
so conducted as to furnish data useful to other agencies as well as to the
placement office. Other services, often further removed from the
placement function of the junior office, also were extended to agencies
working with young persons in some of the communities visited.
Services in Regard to Curriculum Changes
Most school systems include in their curricula vocational courses
that are directed toward preparing their pupils to earn a living. If
this vocational education is to be effective, it is important that the
school should know in what ways its program may be serving or falling
short of serving this purpose. A junior-placement office is in an
excellent position to furnish the public schools with this kind of infor
mation. From its contacts with employers it knows the particular
fields of work in the community in which opportunities for young
workers exist; from its examination of the abilities and aptitudes of
registrants and from its follow-up of placements it is able to judge how
well the schools are preparing their pupils for the kinds of positions
open to young workers and to point out the shortcomings they may
reveal when placed on jobs for which they have been trained by the
schools.
117
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
Almost every office visited reported cases in which junior counselors
had been at least partly responsible for changes in school curricula.
Where placement offices were a part of their local school systems,
schools undoubtedly made greater use of the experience of counselors
than did schools in communities where junior-placement offices
operated as separate divisions of public employment systems; never
theless the same cooperative relationship between school administra
tors and counselors in public employment officers was found to exist.
In some cases lack of employment opportunities for certain groups
of applicants as reported by the junior-placement office led to the
elimination of vocational-training programs, as in Atlantic City, where
a commercial course offered by a vocational school for Negro girls was
discontinued; in other cases the facilities of the public schools were
extended to pupils previously excluded from them, as in Cedar Rapids,
where arrangements were made at the suggestion of the junior coun
selor for a selected group of parochial-school pupils to make use of the
industrial-arts equipment in the public schools and thus acquire needed
training. Again, in Atlantic City and in Rockland County the prog
ress of young persons placed in office positions as reported by the
junior-placement office led the schools to devote more time to instruct
ing commercial pupils in spelling and in developing speed in shorthand
and typewriting.
Similarly, the opinions of junior counselors were sometimes sought
by school authorities who were considering the addition to the school
curricula of new training units. Thus, before deciding to initiate a
course in ornamental horticulture in one of the Rockland County
high schools, school authorities consulted the counselor in the local
public employment office about the demand for trained workers in this
field; and in Philadelphia a large part of the summer-school program
was built up each year on the basis of suggestions made by the place
ment office from its knowledge of the kinds of work in which there was
a current demand for trained young workers.
The Essex County Board of Vocational Education, which supervised
the work of the county junior-placement service as well as that of the
vocational schools, probably made greater use of information obtained
from the placement office in developing training programs than did the
school authorities in any other community visited. At the request of
the county board, counselors of the Essex County placement service
spent an estimated 15 percent of their time during 1937 in research
and investigation into industrial conditions that might have a bearing
on vocational-training programs. Some of these investigations were
conducted independently by counselors of the placement office, others
were undertaken in cooperation with teachers from the county voca
tional schools; findings were usually submitted as formal reports with
recommendations to the County Board of Vocational Education.
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SERVICES O TH ER T H A N PL A C E M E N T
119
Many of these investigations were made for the purpose of determining
whether changes were desirable in the subject matter covered or in the
equipment used in connection with courses being given in the voca
tional schools; others were preliminary to the establishment of new
courses of study. Especially when investigations were made for the
latter purpose, trends in selected industries throughout the country
were studied, and employers were visited in order to obtain informa
tion about the need for specific types of workers, the types of young
persons who should be accepted for such training and the level of
ability required, and the units of instruction and kind of equipment
necessary for the projected course.
Special Guidance Services
Guidance was another field in which placement offices supplemented
the work carried on by other agencies. Indeed, some of the place
ment offices visited gave the only kind of guidance service available
in their communities, and the experience of the junior counselor in
placing young applicants gave him a knowledge of current employ
ment trends and practices which was often of practical value to school
advisers and other youth workers as well as to young persons them
selves. As a result, counselors in a number of offices were called
upon to give group and individual guidance to young persons who
in many cases were still attending full-time school, and they also
served as a source of guidance information to school advisers whose
opportunity for obtaining first-hand information about local business
and industrial conditions was often limited.
Many counselors, when addressing school groups on the subject
of their placement services, also discussed the importance of vocational
planning and the relationship of aptitudes to occupational success.
For the most part these talks were addressed to members of highschool graduating classes who would soon be going to work; less fre
quently, as in Cedar Rapids, counselors also discussed occupational
opportunities and vocational and educational planning with those
eighth- and ninth-grade pupils who expected to leave school for work
or who were planning their high-school courses of study. In Atlantic
City and in Rockland County this employment counseling was offered
regularly to graduating classes in a series of class discussions held in
the schools by the counselors themselves. At these class meetings
the services of the junior-placement office were explained to prospective
graduates, and ways and means of job hunting were discussed.
To a lesser extent guidance information was given through mimeo
graphed bulletins addressed to school authorities and through articles
for the general public appearing in local papers. In Essex County, for
instance, the school placement office was occasionally called upon to
answer questions received by the editor of a query column in one of the
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J U N IO R PL A C E M E N T
local papers; it made available to school advisers the resources of its
library of occupational information, kept them in touch with current
articles and publications in the field of guidance, and furnished them
with information about occupational opportunities in the community
which came to the knowledge of its counselors through their solicitation
of openings from employers. And in Cincinnati a publicity worker
on the staff of the public employment center prepared for the school
page of one of the evening papers a series of articles on the facilities
of the employment office and on the vocational courses available in
public and private schools of that city.
Assistance to Law-Enforcing Agencies
The employment of many of the applicants served by junior-place
ment offices was subject to regulation by State child-labor and schoolattendance laws. Counselors who placed these young persons in
employment and kept in touch with their progress thereafter were in
a position to aid materially in promoting the observance of these laws.
Thus the counselors in Rochester had prepared for the use of other
agencies in the community mimeographed summaries covering workpermit laws and hours of labor permitted for minors.1 It has already
been noted that in many other offices proof of age was required from
all registrants, who were thus protected from illegal employment.
Counselors in Philadelphia and in Rockland County were directly
responsible for issuing the employment certificates required by their
State child-labor laws. Even though many of the young persons
applying at these offices for certificates already had promises of em
ployment and so had no need to register for placement, counselors
considered it advantageous to have the issuance of certificates handled
by the placement office since it afforded them an opportunity to
counsel young persons leaving school for their first jobs and to know
which employers in the community were using young workers in their
establishments.
Other offices, although not directly responsible for any part of the
administration of State laws and regulations, made it a policy to
report to the proper authorities any violations coming to their atten
tion and to ascertain whether applications for work certificates had
been made by all registrants who were required to have them. In
Essex County and in Cincinnati the names of registrants of certifica
tion age were reported regularly to the authorities in charge of issuing
certificates. Counselors in several other offices stated that they had
had occasion to report to the enforcing authorities serious violations
of State labor laws, particularly when these violations involved
excessive hours of work.
i The school placement offices in Los Angeles and Milwaukee reported by questionnaire that they had
issued similar material.
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THE COUNSELING STAFF
A junior-placement program demands exceptional judgment and a
background of information on the part of the counselor. The coun
selor in charge of the program must be a person with insight into
the problems of young persons and ability to win their confidence and
evaluate their abilities. He must be able to work harmoniously with
school authorities and with representatives of other agencies. He
must know where job opportunities for young workers exist in his
community and be able to present the services of the placement office
convincingly to employers. He must also be capable of so organizing
the junior-placement program that it forms an integral part of the
broader program of the agency sponsoring it.
Because the capacities and the personality of the counselor play
such an important part in the program of the placement office, the
caliber of the counseling staff is in many respects even more important
than the merit of the basic procedures followed. A knowledge of the
background and training of the counselors in the offices visited is
therefore essential to a full understanding of the programs of those
offices.
In order to obtain this information about the staff members of the
offices visited, standards governing the selection of counselors were
discussed with managers and supervisors in each office, and informa
tion about training and experience was obtained from a total of 60
counselors on their staffs.1 Twenty-five were counselors in the 4
public-school offices and 35 worked with junior applicants registering
in the 8 public employment centers. With a few exceptions their
appointments were governed by the merit systems of the State employ
ment services and public-school systems in which they worked. In
some of the largest placement organizations,2 the competitive exami
nations on which they qualified had been set up specifically for the
position of junior counselor; counselors in a few public employment
offices were appointed from among candidates qualified as employmentoffice interviewers or, in the case of counselors in school offices, as
teachers.
i This total represents all members on the counseling staff in each of the offices and branch offices at the
time they were visited. The number of counselors for whom information was obtained was as follows:
Public-school offices—Atlantic City, 1; Detroit (1 branch office), 5; Essex County, 4; Philadelphia (4 branch
offices), 15. Public employment offices— Cedar Rapids, 1; Cincinnati, 3; Concord, 1; District of Columbia,
3; Durham (2 branch offices), 3; New York C ity (2 branch offices), 18; Rochester, 5; Rockland County, 1.
8 New York State Employment Service, North Carolina State Employment Service, Philadelphia Junior
Employment Service.
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Personnel
Most appointing authorities were of the opinion that junior coun
selors should be college graduates, preferably with some undergradu
ate or graduate courses in vocational guidance. In this respect, coun
selors in public employment offices and counselors in public-school
offices reported similar backgrounds of training. Forty-nine of the
sixty counselors for whom information was obtained were college
graduates and approximately half of this number qualified also in
respect to training in guidance. Many other counselors reported col
lege and university training in related fields, such as personnel admin
istration and social work. Of the 11 counselors who were without
college degrees— 9 in public employment offices and 2 in public-school
offices— all had completed at least some course on a college level,
The background of previous work experience acquired by counsel
ing staff members before their appointment also was considered im
portant in qualifying them for work with junior applicants. Coun
selors in both types of placement services reported such experience in
a wide variety of professional and business fields. Counselors in
public employment offices were a comparatively young group of work
ers, however; three-fifths of them were under 35 years of age, while
all but 1 of the 25 public-school counselors were 35 years or over. The
previous work experience of counselors in public employment offices,
although equally varied, had therefore covered a considerably shorter
period of time than had the experience of school placement workers.
Supervisors placed particular emphasis on professional experience in
placement work or in related fields like personnel management and
vocational guidance as a valuable background for positions on their
counseling staffs. In some public employment offices this type of pro
fessional experience was considered an acceptable substitute for col
lege training. More than half of the 60 counselors in the offices vis
ited had had such experience, having held positions as placement
workers with other employment agencies, as training supervisors and
personnel workers in department stores and industrial establishments,
and as vocational counselors in public-school systems. Some appoint
ing authorities also considered teaching experience a desirable prereq
uisite to counseling in the placement office; approximately one-half of
the counselors in public-school offices and a somewhat smaller propor
tion of those in public employment offices reported this type of
experience.
In addition to this professional experience almost all of the 60 coun
selors had acquired practical knowledge of occupations and industrial
processes based on actual experience in work not directly related to
counseling and placement. They had held positions in the fields of
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C O U N S E L IN G
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STAFF
business management, engineering, and labor-law administration, and
had done various kinds of sales, clerical, and factory work.
Most appointing authorities considered the personality of the coun
selor to be fully as important to his success as his training and ex
perience. Even where merit systems governed the appointment of
new staff members almost all supervisors were permitted some degree
of choice in selecting from among candidates whose training and
experience met prescribed standards, those whose personalities and
interests served best to qualify them for work with junior applicants.
Salaries
In view of the fact that the backgrounds of the counselors in the
offices visited were similar in many respects, the difference in the
salary scales maintained by the two types of offices visited was striking.
School salaries were, on the whole, much higher than salaries in public
employment offices. Of the 35 counselors in the 8 public employment
offices visited, only 4, all of whom were in supervisory positions, re
ported salaries of $2,500 or more a year, whereas salaries on this level
were reported by 18 of the 25 counselors in the 4 school offices. Of
the 7 school counselors who received less than $2,500 a year, 5 were
paid from funds allocated to school offices by Federal agencies, but
all received $1,500 or more a year. By contrast, 3 counselors in public
employment offices were paid less than $1,500 a year.3
This difference in salary scales may be due in part to the fact that
most of the school offices visited were operating in large urban centers
where salary levels tend to be higher than in small communities such as
were served by several of the public employment offices visited. This
fact by no means accounts for the entire discrepancy in salary scales,
however. Even in cities of comparable size, salaries in the school
offices visited outranked those in public employment services. The
3 Annual salaries reported b y questionnaire for counselors in public-school and public employment offices
throughout the country showed the same contrast as did salaries in the 12 offices visited. T hey were re
ported for a total of 226 counselors as follows:
Annual salary
Total_____________ _____ _____ _____ ____ . ________
Less than $1,500_____________________ _____,
$1,500 and less than $2,000___ ________ ____________
$2,000 and less than $2,500_________________ _____
$2,500 and less than $3,000.................................
$3,000 and less than $3,500.......... _ ................. ..................
$3,500 or m ore_______ ____________ ____ __________
212235°—40-----9
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Counselors
in public
employment
offices
Counselors
in publicschool offices
164
58
76
62
16
4
6
5
u
13
2
13
14
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JUNIOR PLACEMENT
difference in salary scales may be at least partly explained by the
fact that a large proportion of counselors in public employment offices
had come to their jobs during the depression years when there was little
difficulty in obtaining well-qualified workers at comparatively low
salaries. Five-sixths of them had been appointed within 5 years of the
time their offices were visited in 1937 and early 1938, while only onehalf of the public-school counselors had served for so brief a period.
In-Service Training
Whatever the experience and training of counselors when they are
appointed to the staff of the placement service, some plan of training
for their new work is necessary. Newly appointed counselors need
information not only about their duties as placement workers and
about the procedures and policies of the office with which they have
become associated but about the schools and other agencies in the
community as well. Particularly in public employment offices it is
necessary for counselors to have an understanding also of the functions
and interrelationships of the various divisions of the office serving
other types of applicants.
Only in New York City, the largest placement service visited, did
newly appointed counselors participate in an organized in-service
training program. Elsewhere there was comparatively little need for
formal training procedures since counseling staffs were considerably
smaller and new appointments were made at infrequent intervals. In
most offices visited, therefore, the program of the placement office was
explained informally to new staff members, and the instruction which
each received was adapted to his background of training and experience,
to his particular responsibilities as a member of the staff of the place
ment service, and, at least to some extent, to the amount of time that
his supervisor and his coworkers found available for this instruction.
Irrespective of the manner in which training programs were con
ducted, there was similarity in their content and in the practice work
they provided. The usual procedure was to have trainees observe
other staff members at work and gradually, under supervision, to
have them take over the same duties. In many of the smaller offices
this constituted the backbone of the instruction given to counselors
after their appointment. Often it included not only the registration
of applicants and the filling of employers’ orders but the solicitation
of job openings. In some public employment offices it included obser
vation of the work done in divisions placing other types of applicants
as well. ;
The amount of time devoted to this process varied from a very few
days in some services to at least a month in New York City, where
trainees spent time in each of several branch offices of the city place
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STAFF
125
ment service, working under the direction of junior- and adult-place
ment workers who served as training supervisors.
Observation and practice work were supplemented by frequent
conferences with supervisors to afford the new staff members an
opportunity to discuss the general policies and procedures followed,
the development and the function of the placement service as a whole,
and the school-attendance and child-labor regulations affecting the
work of the office. In New York City, where there were usually
several trainees receiving instruction at one time, many of these
discussions took the form of group meetings.
Supervisors in several of the offices visited also made an effort to
provide time for new staff members to make contacts with employers
and with other agencies in their communities. In the District of
Columbia particular emphasis was placed on visits to employers in
order that new counselors might obtain occupational information and
thus acquire familiarity with business and industrial conditions in the
city. Newly appointed counselors in this and in other offices also
visited and observed the work of schools and other agencies with
which their work brought them in contact. Thus some of the coun
selors in New York City spent a part of their in-service training period
working in the offices of the Junior Consultation Service, to which
many junior applicants were referred by the public employment
service for special counseling.
While most of these training and informational programs were
designed expressly for new employees they were not always confined
entirely to this group. In the District of Columbia all counselors and
adult interviewers on the staff of the employment center were par
ticipating in an in-service training program at the time that office was
visited. Begun during 1936, the course of training was intended for
new employees only, but in its initial presentation it was extended to
all staff members. In a series of group discussions held once a week,
division supervisors reviewed the functions of the various divisions of
the employment center, problems related to the coordination of the
work of those divisions, and the development and philosophy of the
public employment service in the District of Columbia and in the
country at large. As the course progressed, a summary of each topic
presented was prepared in mimeographed form as an aid to class dis
cussion. In this way each staff member assembled a body of material
that served as a manual of office procedure and policy. In addition
to these discussions, guest speakers, many of whom were personnel
workers, addressed selected groups of staff members on economic and
industrial problems relating to employment.
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This was the only organized training program in which all place
ment staff members were participating at the time the 12 offices were
visited. In almost all the other offices, however, staff conferences
were held at regular intervals, counselors were encouraged to take time
to attend occasional conventions and training institutes, and they
were kept informed of new publications and university extension
courses related to their work. Most supervisors with whom the matter
was discussed considered it essential that there be continued training
of staff members after their appointment and exchange of information
among all staff members in order to keep the program of the ëntire
placement organization coordinated and operating in the most
effective manner possible.
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THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM AND THE PUBLIC
EMPLOYMENT OFFICE IN A PROGRAM
OF JUNIOR PLACEMENT
As it has become more and more difficult during the past few years
for young persons to find suitable employment, attention has become
focused on the need for a program of guidance that will help the
young worker find his proper place in occupational life, and there has
been a great increase in the number of offices providing specialized
placement services for junior applicants. Chief among the agencies
responsible for the development of this work have been public-school
systems, public employment services, and the National Youth Admin
istration. The two former types of agencies hitherto have been con
cerned primarily with somewhat different phases of the occupational
adjustment of youth— the schools with the education and the voca
tional preparation of young persons, the public employment office
with the placement of workers in business and industry. Particularly
during recent years the pressing need of young persons for assistance
in finding suitable employment has been bringing together more and
more closely the functions of these two agencies. A placement service
for young job seekers operated by either one of them finds that, by
making use of the resources of the other, it can greatly improve the
quality of its service.
The account which this report gives of the junior-placement pro
grams of public-school systems and public employment services offers
abundant evidence of the interdependence of these two agencies.
Experience in junior-placement work suggests that the development
of a cooperative relationship between public-school systems and public
employment services may well be of far more significance in a success
ful placement program than can any answer to the much-discussed
question whether one agency may be in a more advantageous position
than the other to undertake junior-placement work. Given the same
high quality of personnel and this presupposes the financial resources
necessary to maintain adequate salary standards and a staff large
enough to meet the needs of all young persons who may require as
sistance in finding work through the placement office— a junior-place
ment program sponsored either by the public-school system or by the
public employment service has the basic equipment for effective work.
But such a program fails to reach its full effectiveness if undertaken
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J U N IO R
PLACEM ENT
by either one of them without the cooperation and assistance of the
other.
The school placement office has much to gain from the knowledge
of employment opportunities and trends that is acquired by a Nation
wide public employment system, from the pooled experience in juniorplacement procedures as developed by public employment offices
throughout the country, and from the standardization in reporting
methods that a national organization makes possible.
In communities in which junior placement is done not by the
schools but by the public employment service, the schools can be of
assistance to the public employment office by explaining to pupils
withdrawing and graduating from the schools the facilities available
through the public employment center. The junior division of the
public employment center can greatly improve the quality of its
service by making use of the records of achievement and ability that
the schools may have assembled on applicants and by obtaining the
recommendations of teachers, principals, and vocational counselors.
Thus the public-school system and the public employment office
are in a position to make a valuable contribution to a program of
junior placement. The interchange of services and information
between these two agencies makes possible a junior-placement program
that is based on the guidance program of the schools and that, by
making use of the knowledge and experience of the adult-placement
agency, helps the young applicant to become oriented in the working
world that he is entering.
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SUMMARY
The function of a specialized junior-placement service is to counsel
inexperienced young persons in search of employment and to help
them find jobs suited to their interests and abilities. The nature of
the placement problem for such junior applicants differs from the
placement problem of adults chiefly because young applicants have
little if any occupational experience that can serve as a guide to types
of work they are fitted for and interested in and are therefore under a
serious handicap in getting a job.
This study deals with juniorrplacement services conducted under
the auspices of public employment services and of public-school
systems in which the program was sufficiently specialized to require
the full-time services of at least one junior-placement worker. It
touches upon the extent of such programs in operation in the United
States during all or part of the year 1936 and studies more closely the
work done by a selected number of junior-placement offices in 1937.
Junior-placement programs of the type with which this study is
concerned were reported to the Children’s Bureau to have been
operating in only 66 cities in 1936, notwithstanding the expansion in
this field of service in recent years.1 Two-thirds of these cities had a
population of 100,000 or over; even so, young job seekers were offered
such specialized assistance in placement in less than half the cities of
this size in the country. Much more rarely did employment offices
and school systems in cities smaller than this offer the same kind of
assistance to junior applicants.
The major part of this report is concerned with the problems met
by counselors in junior-placement work and the ways in which coun
selors have dealt with them in the 12 offices visited during the course
of the study. The following summary reviews briefly the methods
and procedures found effective in serving the young applicant group
in the offices visited.
The most characteristic feature of junior-placement procedure is
the interview between applicant and counselor in which the applicant’s
job interests and qualifications are discussed and evaluated. This
interview initiates the process of registration with the placement office
and in it the counselor seeks information about the applicant which is
needed later in order to make a good selection for an opening from
among all applicants registered. The interview, which is conducted
with as much privacy as possible, includes a discussion of the appli1 The results of a later survey of the extent to which junior counseling and placement services had been
developed within public employment offices are given in appendix A , p. 133.
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PLACEM ENT
cant’s school experience, previous jobs, and interests, the kinds of work
available in the community for which the applicant may be qualified,
and perhaps also his health and his hobbies.
This interview and subsequent ones, in addition to serving the needs
of registering and maintaining the registration of an applicant, are
the means of counseling the young person who needs help in under
standing his own interests and abilities, who needs information on
occupations and work likely to be available in the community, and
who needs assistance in making vocational plans for himself that are
in line with his abilities and with employment opportunities.
In serving as guidance as well as placement workers, junior coun
selors do not always have the time and resources necessary to render
the intensive guidance assistance that is needed by some applicants.
A few large junior offices found it possible to give specialized consulta
tion services to a limited number of applicants who presented difficult
problems in vocational planning or who seemed especially difficult to
place. In some offices such services operated as part of the placement
organization, and in others the services of outside agencies were avail
able to the placement office.
It is often desirable for both registration and counseling purposes
to supplement the information obtained through the interviews by
using records on the applicant’s abilities and background and by
consulting other agencies that have worked with him. Counselors
frequently consulted scores of psychological and other tests. Several
of the junior offices visited in the course of this study had available
testing services under the supervision of a trained psychologist and
were, therefore, able to use tests to measure aptitudes and abilities.
Other junior offices confined their testing programs to tests for pro
ficiency in typing and stenography. Many counselors found the
school records of applicants useful in helping them understand the
abilities, interests, and personalities of young applicants. Other
records used by some offices were proof of age, employer references
when certain types of jobs were under consideration, and health
records if available.
In addition to obtaining as much information as possible regarding
an applicant’s qualifications for placement, it is essential that a
record-keeping system be maintained that makes such information
on an applicant available in the office in written form and that also
makes it possible to locate quickly the record of any applicant both
according to his name and according to his qualifications.
In most of the junior-placement offices visited, junior-placement
counselors not only handled the registration and counseling of young
applicants but also referred applicants to employers requesting the
services of the placement office. This arrangement of work was found
in all public-school offices visited and in most of those operating
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SUM M ARY
131
within public employment centers. A few of the junior services oper
ating as units in public employment centers, however, specialized in
the registration and counseling of junior applicants only, placement
being made by units handling placement of adult applicants also.
In order to find job opportunities for its young registrants, junior
offices find it necessary to determine which employers in the com
munity have employment opportunities for relatively inexperienced
young persons and to interest them in utilizing young applicants.
Most junior counselors therefore spend a certain amount of time at
regular intervals visiting employers’ places of business. Through
these visits counselors learn the kinds of jobs that are available in an
establishment and the types of applicants preferred by the employer.
This background, in addition to facilitating placement, helps counsel
ors give young applicants counseling assistance that is geared to
actual job opportunities in the community.
The selection of a worker for referral to an employer in response to
an order calls for careful judgment by the counselor of the kind of
worker that will be satisfactory to the employer and also of the quali
fications of the applicant and of his probable interest in the job. At
the time of referring an applicant to a job junior-placement counsel
ors do more than is usually done by placement offices for adult appli
cants in preparing the selected applicant for his interview with the
employer. The junior counselor discusses with the candidate the kind
of work the employer offers and the type of questions the employer is
likely to ask him, gives advice on how to dress for and how to conduct
himself in a business interview, and generally encourages bim for the
momentous undertaking of applying for what may be his first job.
The assistance of a well-functioning junior office to a young appli
cant does not cease with placement. Many junior offices arrange their
office hours to allow a period outside of usual working hours when
young workers who have been placed on jobs can conveniently call
for follow-up consultation. Junior counselors have found that after
the applicant has been on a job for several weeks it is advantageous to
discuss his problems of adjustment to the job, his interest and satis
faction in the job, and the possible need for further training or a shift
in jobs. Consultation with the employer as to his satisfaction with the
placement is also part of the follow-up procedure, but it is secondary
in importance to follow-up through the applicant.
Throughout junior-placement work emphasis is placed on the indi
vidual and his needs and interests. This stress on service to the indi
vidual entails constant revision and refinement in junior-placement
office procedures, modification in ways of dealing with special groups
of applicants, and a brancing out of activities in a variety of ways.
Many junior-placement offices also give certain services that are of
benefit to youth by rendering assistance to other youth-serving
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PLACEM ENT
agencies. In some offices considerable work is done in helping voca
tional schools to set up vocational-training programs adapted to indus
trial needs and employment opportunities in the community. Services
relating to vocational guidance also are extended to schools and other
agencies. In addition, many junior-placement offices keep in close
touch with the work of agencies enforcing child-labor and other labor
laws and with officials issuing employment certificates. Most of the
offices visited made it a policy to refrain from placing young appli
cants on jobs offering conditions and wages below an established level
of acceptability, and some reported to the proper authorities condi
tions in violation of legal labor standards that came to their attention.
Throughout the field of junior-placement activities the ability of
the junior-placement counselor himself is the key to the effectiveness
of the service that the office renders to junior applicants. It is there
fore of vital importance in the development and expansion of juniorplacement services to develop and maintain personnel standards at
a professional level both as to qualifications and as to salary levels.
In the offices included in this survey the position of junior counselor
was generally recognized as calling for special qualifications in person
ality, training, and experience, and the counselors, in the offices
visited, both those in school systems and those in public employment
centers, were generally well prepared for the work; but salaries, es
pecially in the public employment offices, were often at such low
levels as to endanger seriously the future development of juniorplacement service at a desired high level of performance. Further
more, the full realization of the possibilities in junior-placement
service calls for provision of a staff large enough to handle the volume
of work pressing to be done. Quality of service is seriously sacrificed
when efforts to give some service to all comers result in insufficient
time for counseling and for contact with employers and community
agencies.
Special junior-placement services in this country have developed in
response to a special need. Good social planning demands that
community resources for the immature and inexperienced applicant
for work be different from those for the adult out of a job. The
junior-placement office is dealing with immature youths and with
their developing individual abilities and personality characteristics.
The junior-placement counselor, through the vocational counseling
and placement assistance he gives the young applicant, can make a
vital contribution to the solution of the problems the young job
seeker encounters and can help him find a field of work that will be
satisfying. By increasing that chance of finding satisfaction in work,
the junior-employment office has an unequaled opportunity to con
tribute to the social usefulness of the individual and to the social
progress of the community and of the State.
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APPENDIX A
Junior-Placement and Counseling Services W ithin
Employment Offices, 1937-39
Public
At the close of 1936, when this survey was undertaken, public em
ployment offices throughout the country with the assistance of the
National Youth Administration were in a period of expansion in
their special programs for junior applicants. A questionnaire survey
made in the fall of 1939 by the Employment Service Division of
the Bureau of Employment Security (formerly the United States
Employment Service) shows that during the 3 years after 1936 the
number of special programs for junior applicants in public em
ployment offices, similar to those discussed in the present study, had
more than tripled. On October 1, 1939, there were 177 cities in which
public employment services had on their staffs counselors giving full
time to work with junior applicants. Of this number, 166 were cities
of the size covered by the Children’s Bureau study; that is, cities with
a population of 10,000 and over; 11 were cities with a population of
less than 10,000.
During the past 3 years many public employment offices have been
developing a somewhat different type of special service for junior
applicants in addition to these full-time junior-counseling and place
ment services. Particularly in small communities, where the number
of junior registrants does not justify the appointment of special staff
members to give their entire time to that group, public employment
managers have been assigning one of their regular interviewers to give
a part of his time to work with juniors and to handle the registration
of all applicants in this age group. Eighty-seven of these part-time
programs were in cities of the size discussed in the present survey; 23
were in cities with a population of less than 10,000.
The following table gives detailed information about the distribution
of these full- and part-time junior-counseling and placement services
as of October 1, 1939.
Junior-counseling and placement services established by public employment offices by
size of city, Oct. 1, 1.9S9 1
Cities with counseling and placement services
Size of city
Number
T otal............................
100.000 or more population.
25.000 to 100,000 population.
10.000 to 25,000 population
Less than 10,000 population
Having full-time
counselors
Total
Having part-time
counselors
Percent
Percent
Percent
distribution Number distribution Number distribution
287
100.0
177
100.0
100.0
76
119
58
34
26.5
41.5
20.2
11.8
74
76
16
11
41.8
43.0
9.0
6.2
1.8
39.1
38.2
20.9
omces in L,os Angeles, Philadelphia, and Providence, whei
appropriations for junior-placement work were supplemented by State and Federal funds.
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133
APPENDIX B
List of Selected Readings on Junior Placement
A tkinson, R aymond C., O dencrantz, L ouise C., and D eming,
B e n : Public Employment Service in the United States. Public
Administration Service.
Chicago, 1938.
B entley, Jerome H . : The Adjustment Service; a report of an experi
ment in adult guidance.
tion. New York, 1935.
American Association for Adult Educa
C ulbert, Jane F. and Smith, H elen R .: Counseling Young Workers.
Vocational Service for Juniors.
New York, 1939.
F itch, John A.: Vocational Guidance in Action.
Columbia Uni
versity Press, New York, 1935.
I nternational L abor O ffice : Problems of Vocational Guidance.
Geneva, 1935.
O ccupations—-the
Vocational Guidance Magazine.
Published
monthly from October to June by the National Occupational Con
ference, New York.
U nited States E mployment Service : A Counseling Program for
Public Employment Offices. St. Louis, 1939.
W hite H ouse C onference on C hild H ealth and Protection,
1930. Subcommittee on Vocational Guidance: Vocational Guid
ance. Century Co. (now D. A. Appleton-Century Co.), New
York, 1932.
134
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