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Comment on How To Disrupt Technical Recruiting - Hire an Agentparent

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Author of the article here, and I agree that the problem is the bad recruiters. My business is doing quite well, but I could see where job seekers question the motives of recruiters mainly because of the fact that recruiters get paid by companies, and only get paid (generally speaking) when they take the job. So recruiters have the short-term incentive of convincing candidates to take jobs, and not necessarily to do what is right for their career.

Long term requires recruiters to be fully ethical or lose credibility. If I send you for an interview and it isn't the best fit for you, I'm financially motivated to try and get you to take it anyway. As your agent, I would tell you not to since you are my client.

The agent model would be advantageous to the tech community, but obviously more costly to them. Whether or not it would be sustainable is something I would be curious to find out. I'm not sure if an agent would only get paid during a job search, as there could be advising going on during your entire career that has some value (how to negotiate a raise for yourself, what is hot/not, trends) - some of this engineers are good at, and some they are not.

"Long term requires recruiters to be fully ethical or lose credibility. If I send you for an interview and it isn't the best fit for you, I'm financially motivated to try and get you to take it anyway. As your agent, I would tell you not to since you are my client."

That doesn't make any sense. My agent is still financially motivated to get me to take the job.

That depends on how you pay your agent. If you pay an agent an annual fee not tied to a job change or activity, that agent would not be financially motivated to have you move. I think the model works best with a long term relationship with annual fees instead of just some tax when you change jobs. There is quite a bit of guidance in between job changes that could be of great value in getting to that next job.

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