Agency ask this question "Have you being interview by any agency"

I have went to couple of agency such as Robert Half, Teksystem,etc and pretty much all agency ask me this question. I am little surprise when they ask me this question. I don't know why they want to know but in my mind, I get kind of suspicious. and sometime I don't know what to reply them.

Some of my suspicious are:
for example, I went to Teksystem and got interview. for some reason, Teksystem might think I am not very professional or some kind of criteria they think I am not a good fit. They will ask me "have you interview by anybody or by any agency?" Sometime, I say this is my first time.

Now, I go to Robert Half and they ask me the same question "have you interview by anybody or by any agency?", If I answer yes, I went to Teksystem.

Does Robert Half call Teksystem about me, what do they think about me? if Teksystem say "he is not very professional, etc, etc, something bad", then Robert Half will say, ok he is not that great, not professionally so I won't make contact with him or something like that. Do agency talk to each other about their candidate?

or they want to know you went to all these agency and you couldn't get a job so they might think he is not a good candidate.

I thought they should focus on you to find a job and not focus what agency you went.

I am just kind of new to the contract agency

I am a recruiter who has worked for numerous staffing agencies and can shed some light on this question for you.

This is a very simple question and I'm sorry you didn't feel comfortable just asking the Recruiter you met with this question. As you should feel comfortable with the recruiter your working with, if you have questions you should ask, if you felt they did something wrong, ask to see a supervisor. There are a lot of people who have never been to a staffing agency before and I know its a little different compared to going to a company directly and interviewing.

Our services are not the cheapest in the world, our clients definitely have a sense of trust in our judgment when we send candidates to them. Most companies have an HR department that can do basic recruiting, but companies come to the Robert Half's/Tek Systems of the world because they know they can potentially get much better candidates, who are screened, potentially proven consultants, that are referenced checked and some cases background checked also. This is what clients pay us for is to have all this done on the front end.

So Teksystem and Robert Half are very big competitors. They would never call each other to do a direct reference or anything like that. I've been in staffing for over 7 years and I've never done that.

The main reason why we ask is once a company has received your resume, whether it be by you sending it to them directly, or a staffing agency with an agreement in place sending it in. Once it has been submitted the general rule is the first person who sends it (ie. Corporate HR, Tek Systems, Robert Half) gets the potential referral fee. It makes an agency look very bad when they sell a service that provides thoroughly screened candidates that we supposedly have strong relations with and didn't even know he/she submitted their already. It makes the agency look bad, and we loose complete credibility with our clients.

Hope this helps.

Actually this is a trick recruiting firms do. They will ask you to list all recruiting firms you have contacted. Later during the interview they will ask you what companies you have been submitted with, reasonable question as not to double submit you. The recruiter will then pass this information off to an account manager and they will solicit business from that company. By asking you these questions they will know what technologies and position descriptions the company is looking for.

It is dangerous professionally to give this information up. A few years ago I provided this information to a recruiting firm and was purposely double submitted to have my resume thrown out.