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Except most candidates don't have the (perceived) star power they need for this model to work. E.g., if the Yankees thought all first basemen were pretty much

Except most candidates don't have the (perceived) star power they need for this model to work. E.g., if the Yankees thought all first basemen were pretty much the same, there's no way Scott Boras could have convinced them to spend so much on Mark Teixeira last winter. No recruiter is going to do the work of an agent (which requires a totally different focus & commitment to the candidate) for Joe Average programmer.

alanthonyc 17y ago
You don't need "star power" to have an agent, just marketable skills. Almost all pro athletes (with a few notable exceptions like Daunte Culpepper) have agents, from Texeira's backup all the way down to the guys in double and single-A. (Okay, not sure about how far down it goes.) And your point about recruiters not doing the work of agents is correct. Recruiters recruit, ergo they work for the hiring company. Agents represent the talent. In this case, I'm guessing an agent would pound the pavement looking for programming jobs while the programmer sits at home waiting for a phone call. At this point of the analogy, it's starting to sound a little ridiculous, but who know.
- thwarted 17y ago
  It wouldn't be ridiculous if the programmer is working full time with constant work coming in while the agent is out pounding the pavement. There's no reason the two tasks of "finding work" and "doing work" need to be done serially. And what you've just described is what consulting firms do. The sales people are out pounding the pavement hitting up prospective customers to bring in work for the programmers (or whatever positions the sales people have claimed they have bodies for). This obviously isn't an ideal situation, for the customer or the programmer, but it seems to be reasonably successful, at least with large consulting firms. It could work better with a customer centric salesman and a small team of developers -- I'm sure there's small 4 or 5 people firms that work like this, with a "sales agent" in house.

alanthonyc 17y ago

You don't need "star power" to have an agent, just marketable skills. Almost all pro athletes (with a few notable exceptions like Daunte Culpepper) have agents, from Texeira's backup all the way down to the guys in double and single-A. (Okay, not sure about how far down it goes.) And your point about recruiters not doing the work of agents is correct. Recruiters recruit, ergo they work for the hiring company. Agents represent the talent. In this case, I'm guessing an agent would pound the pavement looking for programming jobs while the programmer sits at home waiting for a phone call. At this point of the analogy, it's starting to sound a little ridiculous, but who know.

thwarted 17y ago
It wouldn't be ridiculous if the programmer is working full time with constant work coming in while the agent is out pounding the pavement. There's no reason the two tasks of "finding work" and "doing work" need to be done serially. And what you've just described is what consulting firms do. The sales people are out pounding the pavement hitting up prospective customers to bring in work for the programmers (or whatever positions the sales people have claimed they have bodies for). This obviously isn't an ideal situation, for the customer or the programmer, but it seems to be reasonably successful, at least with large consulting firms. It could work better with a customer centric salesman and a small team of developers -- I'm sure there's small 4 or 5 people firms that work like this, with a "sales agent" in house.