Transcript of interview with Lee and Dick Igert by Robert Cannata, February 26, 1980

UNLV University Libraries Lee & Dick Igert i An Interview with Lee & Dick Igert An Oral History Conducted by Robert Cannata Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries Lee & Dick Igert ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2019 UNLV University Libraries Lee & Dick Igert iii The Oral History Research Center (OHRC) was formally established by the Board of Regents of the University of Nevada System in September 2003 as an entity of the UNLV University Libraries’ Special Collections Division. The OHRC conducts oral interviews with individuals who are selected for their ability to provide first-hand observations on a variety of historical topics in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The OHRC is also home to legacy oral history interviews conducted prior to its establishment including many conducted by UNLV History Professor Ralph Roske and his students. This legacy interview transcript received minimal editing, such as the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. The interviewee/narrator was not involved in the editing process. UNLV University Libraries Lee & Dick Igert iv Abstract On February 24, 1980, Robert Cannata interviewed his neighbors, Lee & Dick Igert about their employment agency company. The Igerts discuss the many different job opportunities outside of casino work that are available in Las Vegas, Nevada. The interview concludes with an explanation of how one finds a job in Las Vegas.UNLV University Libraries Lee & Dick Igert 1 The person I’ll be interviewing—the person I’ll interview is Lee Igert, from Igert Employment Agency. The date of interview is February 24th, 1980, and the time is two o’clock. The place of interview is 1100 East Sahara, Suite 202. The name of the collector is Robert Cannata and my address is 5201 Tamara Street, Las Vegas, Nevada. Name of the project is “Igert Employment Agency & How it’s changed in the past nine years.” Lee, may I have your name and address? My name is Lee Igert, and my place of business is Igert Employment Agency, 1100 East Sahara, Suite 202. And where were you born? In Clarksburg, West Virginia. And your members of your family? Members of your family? Members of my family is my husband and I. How long have you been living here in Nevada? Nine years, and my husband’s been here for twenty years. Why did you come here to Nevada? Why did I come here to Nevada? To get married. How is the town now, compared to when you came? The growth is phenomenal. There is so many little types of business that are coming into this place. It is not just casino work. Anyone that comes to this state does not have to just think about casino work. There are all kinds of hidden jobs—secretarial, accountants, book keepers, drivers, wholesale, public relations people, welders, apartment managers, mobile homes, and also in parks. All types of labors—skills and unskilled, such as a designer, pressman, housekeepers, swimming pool service man, cabinet makers, electronic service, computer maintenance UNLV University Libraries Lee & Dick Igert 2 installers, (unintelligible), customer service representatives, furniture re-finisher, linen & drapery sales people, apprentice locksmiths, all types of manager trainees, plant managers, tour persons, retail managers, all types of maintenance type of work. All types of receptionists, clerical, office, rental hostess’, car rental agencies, outside and inside salespersons, executive secretaries, which are very much in demand, and secretarial. I suggest that all girls get some kind of typing in their skills. Typing in this town is a must. Security guards, they have waitresses, waiters, warehouse personnel, I could just go on and on with the different type of jobs. So we must not just think of casino work when we think of Las Vegas. Alarm installers, certified public accountants, accountants, accounts payable, accounts receivable people. We have bartenders, book keepers, head book keepers, cashiers, credit clerks, a lot of credit work is in this town. And dish washers, that’s another phase that no one can think of, but dish washers for a beginning person or person that’s going to school, you can make about $33.50 a day on things like that. Engineers, electricians, fast-food related jobs, food and beverage managers, flower shop related, finance related, gasoline attendant, just—hospital related, insurance related, key-punch, jewelry sales people, all types of jobs. Let us not think of just casino work when we think of Las Vegas, Nevada. Yes, Ms. Igert, how is your company changed since you’ve started? Years ago, applicants were not aware of the different jobs that Las Vegas, Nevada, holds. They only thought of casino work. Now that all the industries and new industries are coming to Las Vegas, Nevada, they are finding that they are able to find different types of jobs. And how it has changed is that people are becoming more—they’re paying a lot of applicant’s fees, is one of the changes that we’re seeing in employment agencies, and they’re asking for a very high quality type of person. And they come to employment agencies for that type of person, and— UNLV University Libraries Lee & Dick Igert 3 Another question, have the applicants changed since you started your employment agency? Yes. One, we’re getting a lot of older applicants due to the fact that a lot of people are moving to Las Vegas, Nevada. They have quit other jobs in other cities and they come to Las Vegas, Nevada, to start life all over again. The only thing that they haven’t learned as yet, the older applicants is, that they must start over again at the bottom and work their way up to where they were originally had left their job at that position. Do applicants seem more outgoing now since it is harder to find a job? I would say, yes, they are. The students are the person, the applicant that has more skills is a person that would be more likely to get a job. Skills is the criteria to getting a job in Las Vegas, Nevada. Do you have more people working for you now in your business, or when you started? I had more people working now in the business than when I started. What is the age group that comes to your employment agency? Like the most people, what age comes to find a job with you? Like I said before, people, people are starting life, a new career by a cause that—quit one job in another state and have come to Las Vegas, Nevada, and they have to start at the beginning. Like I said before, and what the age group would be, at least, 40 years of age, although we get all ages. They start in from college, from eighteen to college, to forty-five, to fifty-seven, and some come in even at sixty-five years of age. Still trying to get a different type of job. Right now in Las Vegas, Nevada, what type of job do you have most openings for? This is a very difficult question to answer. But I would say secretarial jobs and like I said before, every job, the employer wants that person to be very versatile. If he is a secretary, if she is a secretary, excuse me, she must answer the phone, do typing, do short hand, maybe do some light UNLV University Libraries Lee & Dick Igert 4 book keeping. But the person has to be versatile. Las Vegas employers do not just ask for you to do one type of job. And another thing is, manager trainee is another big field here in Vegas, and there’s a lot of growth and potential growth from manager trainees. A lot of companies—we have a company that has about fifteen stores, and they asked us to find people that would be their potential managers for their fifteen different types of stores in Las Vegas. And what they do is, for instance, they start a person out as a salesperson, and they never give us a job order for a manager or a manger trainee—that is all promotion from within the company. This is how Las Vegas employers work. They promote from within. So I suggest that any applicant looking for a job to be sure, and to look at the company and its potentials. Put your foot in the door, don’t worry about the salary, the beginning salary, because as soon as the employer knows your qualifications, you are always, always promoted from within. They want to know about you. Do people with a college education also come to your employment agency try to find a job? Yes, they certainly do. We’re getting more people with more education than we ever had before, and we are finding these people good career jobs. Do you get more men or women that come to your employment service to find a job? It equals out about half and half, but I would say in our agency we get a lot of men, but we also get a lot of women. But men is the one because we place them in management, more management type of jobs. Do you deal with more jobs now and are there more jobs now than ten years ago when you started? Yes, there are more jobs now. Because I said before, there are more industries and companies coming to Las Vegas, and I want to say again that please, do not look at just casino work. There UNLV University Libraries Lee & Dick Igert 5 are so many small businesses that have good benefits and pay very well, and just don’t look at casino work. Say that you have secretarial job. Will you test a person first before they come, when they come before you go and send them to a job? First thing we do, is when the applicant comes into our office, we ask them to fill out an application. And this gives them their name, address, and all the particulars that it’s been on, has been on an application. And we check their work history and their experience, and we do all those other kinds of things, then from there, what we do is, we check with the employer, the previous employers about their previous employment. From there, we call, we have the job order, and we call to the employer, and we set up an interview according to what qualifications we find that the applicant has. And say that this is a secretarial job, and say that the job consists of the secretary, she must type sixty words a minute, she must have short hand, and we give her a shorthand and a typing test before she leaves the office. Plus, we have checked her references to be sure that this person is the type of person this employer wants to interview. Is there any charge for the service? When the applicant originally comes into the office for our service, there is no fee involved as far as filling out the application, being checked by us, being tested by us, getting the interview. The only time that there is a charge is after the applicant has accepted the job. And we are under the state labor commissioner and the applicant is charged at this present time a fifty-five percent of the one month’s gross wages. You say that you really don’t advise casino jobs, but you do have casino jobs in your business? UNLV University Libraries Lee & Dick Igert 6 Most definitely, we do have casino jobs. But in the previous interview, I wanted to impress on an applicant’s mind that casino work is not the only type of work that is available. We do get casino jobs like (unintelligible) runners and cage cashiering, and waitresses and waiters, and food types of jobs and food managers—it just depends on what type of job that’s available at the time. The only reason why I didn’t impress upon casino work that much was because I wanted to impress on the applicant that there are so many different types of jobs here in Vegas, and let’s not just look at casino work. That any type of skill or any type of job is here in Vegas, and although we are not a per se, a large metropolitan city, we do have the jobs, and another thing is, we must remember: even though the wages are at, are not as high as other states, we have no state income tax here in Las Vegas, first of all. Second of all, our sales’ tax is very, very minimal compared to other states. We only use one type of clothing all year round. These are all the wonderful benefits that we have here in Las Vegas, Nevada. Now, we’re going to speak to Dick Igert, Lee Igert’s husband, who started the business. I’d like to know, how did you get involved in the employment agency? Well, how I get involved in the employment agency, was, while I was going to the university, I was taking business administration courses over there, and at the time, there was an opening for a counselor in one of the agencies here in the city. At that time, I applied for the job and I had about twenty years of experience in personnel, also recruiting in the Air Force. So I applied for the job, and there was twenty-five other applicants, and I was selected out of the twenty-five to be an employment counselor for this particular agency in this city. So I went to work for this agency while I was attending university, and then I stayed on after I finished school, and I enjoyed this, working as a counselor very much, and I said, to my wife, I said, “Maybe we could get into the business ourselves.” I said that because it’s very enjoyable, and I enjoyed dealing UNLV University Libraries Lee & Dick Igert 7 with people and talking to different types of people, because employment agency business, as you might know, you meet all types of individuals and every day is a different day. And everyone with a different personality. So I really enjoyed that type of a business. Also, I place a lot of people on all types of different categories as management trainees, secretarial type of skills, and also people come in from other companies out of state, like, for instance, (Unintelligible) Williams & Tobacco, out of Kentucky. We’ve placed a couple of sales reps, I’ve placed those people myself, and the two applicant’s I’ve placed here, just two months ago, came in and said they enjoyed their job very much and they highly recommend our agency to other different people in the city. (Tape one ends) (Audio begins mid-sentence) our job. Well, in every speck, you never know because employers, they are kind of selective here in Las Vegas at times, but it just depends on the opening, if there’s immediate opening, or if they want to see several other applicants. For instance, we have dealt with a company here back in December of ’79, and they were pretty particular about who they wanted to hire, and they did take about four weeks to hire, but they got the people that they wanted to work for them. But you never know, some companies will call and they’ll have one interview with one applicant maybe, and they’ll hire right away. So you just never know how long they’ll take. Sometimes they’ll take two weeks, three weeks, or four weeks and then at times a company will call and say, “I like that person, and I’ll hire right away.” He does all the talking to them. Actually, how does a person really get a job here? Well, what they do—the first thing they do, as my wife Lee said earlier, is they come in, they fill out their application, and if they have a resume, we look over what they’ve done in the past. I UNLV University Libraries Lee & Dick Igert 8 check over the skills they’ve done. Also, another thing that’s very helpful, that I have found, if I look over the application, I’ll look at someone’s hobbies. For instance, we had a man in here about eight months ago, his hobby—he was attending the University of Reno, in Reno, Nevada, and his hobby was working with locks, which is something, some people would say strange. But he said that’s what he likes to do, take electronic locks apart, and his hobby was just, all types of locks. So he said he didn’t like electronics, so I said, “Well, would you like to work as an apprentice locksmith? I have an opening.” He said, “Yes, I would.” I placed him at this company and he started out at minimum wage, which at that time, was $2.90 cents an hour, he’s been there approximately nine months now, and this year, I talked to his employer, this year, his employer said he should make between fifteen and seventeen thousand. So the thing is, getting your foot in the door, that’s the name thing an applicant should realize. Mr. Igert, say I just got off a plane from New York and just got into the city. How would you help me to find a job? Okay, the first thing I would do is have you sit down and fill out an application and see what types of skills you have. And then if you have a resume, as I’ve said earlier, I would look over your qualifications and say for example, if you were a manager trainee at a restaurant back in New York City, and if you wanted to get into that same type of work again, I would see what you’ve done and then check your references out, and then see what types of jobs I have available for you. And then I would in turn, to see if you were qualified, talk to the employer and say, “This man has got outstanding experience, he’s worked in a certain place in New York for so many years, and would you please give him the opportunity to have an interview?” And nine times out of ten they’ll listen to me because I know what I’m talking about, and they will give you the opportunity to come in and talk to them for an extensive interview. UNLV University Libraries Lee & Dick Igert 9 Do you know a lot of the employers in this city since you do work in an employment agency? Well, yes I do. I have very good rapport with the employers in this city. I belong to the Las Vegas Executive Club. I’ve been a member now for about a year. I worked hand in hand with employers—we have 120 different business people in this city. I’m also a membership chairman as of tomorrow, which will be the twenty-seventh of February of 1980, I’ll be the membership chairman with the Executive Club. And we’re ‘gonna expand—we should have, right now we have 120 some people and within a year, we should have maybe two hundred to two hundred fifty different small businesses in this city. They consist of lawyers, doctors, and people that own booking agencies and things like that. And all types of businesses, and it’s very rewarding, and I get out and talk to these people. At least once a week we have a breakfast, and it’s a very good response from different employers. Do applicants sometimes get discouraged ‘cause it does take some time to get a job? Yes they do at times, but what I try to tell the applicants is that, if they work with us, and try to call us once a day, or at least once a week, so that we know that they’re still interested, and we can get a hold of ‘em and also give us a phone number that’s valid so that we can talk to them. They do get discouraged, which I don’t blame them at times, but if they work with us, like I say, we do come through and that’s about it. Mr. Igert, if an employer was looking for an executive secretary, just to start up his business, what would you tell him? Like how to pick a secretary out, and how much to pay them? Well first of all, I would have them tell me what kind of skills that they would need. For example, an executive secretary would probably have to type seventy-five to eighty words a minute, and in UNLV University Libraries Lee & Dick Igert 10 shorthand, at least 120. And if they ask me how much to pay the individual, I would go on past experiences working with other companies in this city and tell ‘em a realistic salary. Maybe if it was quite a big operation, I would say start ‘em at least, I would say, nine hundred to a thousand a month, depending on the experience, of course. (Audio begins mid-sentence) sit down with us and chat with us, and at times, some people, especially the young people are very nervous; they’ve never been to an agency before. So I bring ‘em back in my office, we’ll sit and maybe have coffee, I’ll go over their application with ‘em and maybe ask ‘em questions about themselves. And what they really like to do, find out what type of skills, what their position, what they desire. On our application, we have an A, B, and C for a position desired. And I usually ask ‘em, give me at least three of them that I could, I have some (unintelligible) to go on. And I’ll add, in the phonebook, our theme is quality, and I think that’s what we strive for here. We have quality people and we send qualified people out to employers. We’re trying to change the image here in Las Vegas, I guess back, way back when, the (unintelligible) wasn’t as good as the people—other agencies would just send people out whether they were qualified or not. I’m not saying they all did that, but it seemed to me that it was a trend talking to the employers. So we’re trying to send out qualified people for employees, and quality people. I think myself, it’s the only way to go. If you’re coming into a city as a—find a good employment agency, and there are a lot of good ones in this city, and sit down and talk to the people and see what their skills are, and then we can maybe find them a job, I’m sure we can. One type of a job if they work with us. (Audio ends)