The recruitment industry has reacted with horror to last week’s tragic events in New York and Washington, DC.

Recruitment agencies were among the businesses destroyed by the terrorist attacks.

According to New York’s business listings, at least seven agencies operated from the World Trade Centre’s twin towers, which were demolished when two hijacked jets smashed into them.

At press time, however, it was still unclear exactly how badly these businesses had been affected.

Adecco subsidiary Lee Hecht Harrison had offices in the south tower. All of Adecco’s New York and Washington employees, including those employed at Lee Hecht Harrison, are safe, a company spokesman said.

Tony Goodwin, chief executive of Antal, said his company shut its offices in the World Trade Centre when its New York operations ceased in March. Commenting on his organisation’s lucky escape, he said: ‘We have called all the people that used to work for us and they are OK.’

Simon Gee, managing director of Heywood Associates, which has a New York operation, said: ‘We managed to get hold of our people, and discovered they were not affected by this horrible tragedy.’

Heywood’s offices are on the Upper East Side of New York, well away from the scene of the catastrophe.

Gee said: ‘From a purely mercenary perspective, recruitment might benefit because financial companies have lost many people. But it is not nice to make money out of something like this.’

Meanwhile, there was uproar in the recruitment community last week when a consultant at Mortimer Spinks placed an advert on Jobserve for a loss adjuster in New York, entitled ‘American Pie’.

David Singer, managing director of Mortimer Spinks, apologised and said the member of staff had been suspended pending a disciplinary hearing.

Robbie Cowling, managing director of Jobserve said: ‘We check our adverts but this one slipped through the net because it came on four hours after the incident, at which time the proofreader was unaware of the events.’

Cowling added that proofreaders had removed similar adverts from other recruiters relating to the terrorist raids.

Another recruitment consultant was rumoured to have contacted a New York IT company affected by the disaster, trying to make placements.