Engineers: How much would you pay me to be your talent agent?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6549885

by GeorgesJanin • 13 years ago

12 22 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm a tech recruiter. The system is obviously broken, and many people have thrown around the idea of somebody representing them. A technical talent agent if you will.

So how much would you be willing to pay to get those services?

Here is what I would imagine doing:

Career advice: helping you make job choices based on your goals. Connecting you with more senior engineers to help you figure out what you want to do.

Presenting you with potential companies you may have overlooked.

Fielding all incoming recruiting emails/calls

Interview Prep. Walking your through each step.

Performing due diligence on company's financials

Interviewing past employees for reference checks. Check for crazy turnover or horrible bosses.

Negotiating your salary

Making sure you don't get screwed on equity

Follow up: make sure the job is what they said it would be.

Gafka• 13 years ago

Any can fit

nostromo• 13 years ago

Could it be based on the hiring salary?

If structured as pay for performance, I can imagine it being quite popular.

hashtree• 13 years ago

Agreed, pay per performance. Heck, I'd consider this as a freelancer with a scout that has high enough quality/paying connections. Most of what is suggested isn't of too much interest, but top-notch connections that are intelligently matched... well I'd pay a lot. I very much doubt too many have these niche connections, that it would scale very well, etc.

bonemachine• 13 years ago

How much would I pay? Nothing.

Recruiters are a big part of what's deeply wrong with the current process. The vast majority I've dealt with seem to be congenitally dishonest. I really don't see any light at the end of the tunnel in working with them.

AlexeyMK• 13 years ago

Interesting! This is similar to what we're working on at threesat.com, though focusing on new grads. I'm an engineer myself, so the "advice" part is covered.

My intuition is, you still have to charge companies rather than talent for the service on a contingency basis, because the model is established and because as a candidate the market is strongly enough on my side that this approach works.

Curious to see how you do, though. There's definitely more room to take a cut from the talent side if they're working as consultants/contractors, a la 10xmanagement.com.

callmeed2• 13 years ago

I have recently started working with a technical talent agent for consulting projects I do on the side. He takes 15% of the price of the gig. It is absolutely worth it.

His background is in law and sales. Therefore, he can (and has):

- Negotiate higher fees than I initially ballpark

- Handle all the contractual/legal/financial minutiae that I abhor dealing with

For example, the last Rails consulting gig I did went great. He negotiated a fixed-bid fee that was 40% above my initial hourly estimate. The client also had some specific legal requirements (related to patents) and it was nice not having to deal with it. The client was more than pleased and is coming back for more work. So, giving up 15% of that is a no-brainer.

Now, your question seems more related to placement of long-term/permanent positions. It's hard to speak to that because I haven't had a "real job" in 10 years. I'm not sure if or how I'd be willing to pay. The key parts, IMO, are negotiating salary and reviewing equity terms. If you could really deliver there, I don't see a problem with giving up 10-15% for the first year or two (can someone tell me if that's similar to what a recruiter takes from the company?).

Really, it all comes down to numbers & value. I'll give you X% of my pie if you can make my pie > X% larger.

pbnjay• 13 years ago

Wow. I would absolutely love this setup. Where/how did you find that guy?

I've been consulting for a while as well, I hate dealing with all the negotiations and legal crap. Would be great to just be handed a reasonable contract and not have to constantly "sell" all the stuff they want but don't want to pay for...

egor83• 13 years ago

Looks extremely interesting, thanks for sharing!

Sent you an email with some questions.

techdragon• 13 years ago

Don't suppose you know anyone else who works like this... or would share your mystery man with the world. He sounds pretty much perfect for any freelance worker.

callmeed2• 13 years ago

Drop me an email (in my profile) and I'll get you an intro.

RogerL• 13 years ago

Zero. They are hard to find, but there are good recruiters that already do all that for free. That you charge for it does not automatically put you in the 'good recruiter' category :)

If I was a consultant probably my answer would change - I hate the job search, and if you could keep the work coming in it might be worth it. But, you would have to have better resources and charge less than just signing up with a consulting shop would provide.

Realistically, for you to be my "agent" you really need to take the time to get to know me. I've had a few recruiters do that, but they pretty much worked for the financial HFT companies that have obscene amounts of cash to throw at hiring (where 250K is a modest baseline salary). I have trouble thinking that you can afford the amount of time and work that it would take for you to represent me better than I can represent myself. I'm in the valley, I have friends, I can go to meetups if I want to network in a tech area, I can read reviews on glassdoor, and I can let my cell phone go to voice mail. That seems to cover most of what you offer, for free. The rest I can get from other recruiters, for free.

GeorgesJanin4• 13 years ago

Those are good points.

One of the main reasons why mediocre recruiters don't get to know the candidate is that they are completely focused on the job to fill. They need to know you only as much as it would take them to sell it to you.

An agent would get paid no matter what company he ends up placing you at, so there is a much higher incentive to understand what you really want to do.

I also think there is a lack of objective information on how a company is doing. They pump out information on how they are "crushing it" and how everything is going great. And Glassdoor is usually filled with bitter employees with an ax to grind. So some thorough checking through backchannels would be incredibly helpful. Not to say you couldn't do it, but as a recruiter I have never seen a candidate do it.

dieselz• 13 years ago

I would go about it by setting a realistic market salary for my skill set, and then share with you 50/50 any salary over that number. Curious to hear your thoughts on that model.

GeorgesJanin4• 13 years ago

That sounds interesting. Although unscrupulous agents would try to lowball you on your current salary so that they get a bigger cut.

evadne• 13 years ago

If I really would like to work on something, I will start a company and hire people.

Talent agents exist because there is no good way to vet a large amount of people within months; there is no common standard. Or that they are required to poach heavy duty supercharged engineers who are already swamped by other recruiters. In both cases they may get paid 10% of their candidate’s first year’s salary as commission for a successful hire, so they may optimize for fast instead of good.

The services outlined here are standard. Unfortunately some recruiters punch below their weight…

There is an oversupply of people who can code, but seemingly still an under supply of great ones in my opinion. Therefore, an agent needs to profit on the paranoid and the desperate because they also work month to month.

I will possibly not pay more than a few hundred bucks for such a service as a candidate for a “permanent” job as I am not desperate enough yet (because I like to negotiate my own contracts without intermediaries), but hiring managers seem to like to chase folks with checkbook in hand. ;)

hkarthik2• 13 years ago

If you could deliver on all of those things, I would be willing to pay 10%-20% of my annual salary for it.

However, much like executive search, this is the kind of service that would need to essentially pay for itself.

E.g. If I could get a $100K salary on my own, I would expect you to find me similar positions for $120K to justify taking a 10% finders fee from me and not from the company.

Also this would need to have contingencies built in for a poor fit. A minimum 3 month tenure with a prorated amount payable over the remaining 9 months would probably be enough for me.

GeorgesJanin4• 13 years ago

Yes, you would have to assume a 90 day guarantee, similar to the classic recruiting model. One of the issues with charging an individual is that they often don't have $25k in extra cash flow. That would require a payment plan of sorts. In any case, I appreciate the feedback.

hkarthik2• 13 years ago

Yeah, a payment plan would be key to making this work.

Another option may be more of a subscription model where there is a monthly service fee associated with this, much like an Accountant would charge someone to do their books.

smith11235• 13 years ago

I'd like to say I got to where I am, so I'm leery of just spending money.

But if it was based on our success... As my salary increases I would start paying a % of my yearly. This would be a long term relationship. We both want continual improvement.

Based on Entourage, this could be 5-10% of yearly income.

Generally I like the idea. Coming out of college, there was a lot I missed out on. And a lot I'm looking forward to doing.

andremedeiros• 13 years ago

My question is: how would I get in touch with someone like yourself? ;-)

GeorgesJanin4• 13 years ago

georges dot janin at gmail dot com

workhere-io• 13 years ago

I'd pay for someone to find me well-paid freelance gigs. But not for someone to find me a full-time position.

Engineers: How much would you pay me to be your talent agent?

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