The Talent Market

The mechanisms that price, distribute, and analyze financial assets are being retooled for the softest and most important asset of all: your talent. As more and more people declare free agency, a genuine market - with brokers, exchanges, and an evolving set of rules - is emerging for their talent.

Market makers are connecting buyers with sellers. Talent underwriters and investment bankers specializing in human capital stand ready to take you public. A new breed of investment advisers is helping companies to manage their portfolios. On the market floor, the traders are talking about you. On the ticker tape, the numbers reflect your price. That price can soar one day - and crater the next.

There's a bull market for talent, and we're all in it.

If you think of yourself as talent and you're looking for an agent, you need to meet the people at MacTemps Inc. - they can help you manage your career.

If you think of yourself as a stock and you're looking for a broker, you need to meet the people at M2 Inc. - they can help you get a good price.

And if you think of yourself as an investor and you're looking to put some money into the human-capital market, you need to meet the people at IMCOR - they can help you devise an investment strategy.

The opening bell for another day of trading is about to sound, the ticker will soon be tracking the shifting prices for human capital - and on the big board of business, a raging, restless talent market is about to replace the quaint, quiet employment transactions that marked the old economy.

I. The Opening Bell Sounds

It's Monday morning, and the nation's newest market is about to sound the opening bell. In Dallas, six brokers have assembled around a conference table piled with blueberry muffins. It's time for their "unfilled-orders meeting." They each eye a sheet that lists who's buying, who's selling, and who'll be on the market next. Blazing through the list like cattle auctioneers, they bark out orders in a rapid-fire language that is barely comprehensible to an outsider.

"Just got a phone order from Ecco Design," reports one broker. "They want Stacey back."

"That'll be a quick fill," snaps a second broker.

"A great rollover," adds a third.

This is what it sounds like at MacTemps - perhaps the most robust and fully articulated example of a company that's reckoning with a world in which human capital functions like financial capital. What MacTemps does is relatively simple: It connects companies shopping for talent with free agents selling talent. If you need a Web developer to build a new site or a graphic artist to design a new brochure, MacTemps can help you find the right person at a fair price. In a sense, that is what the $50 billion temporary-staffing business has always done. But MacTemps, a global company headquartered in Boston, has become a $100-million-plus operation by morphing out of that creaky industry. Three things set it apart from the temp-agency pack.

First, unlike a typical temp agency, MacTemps doesn't take all comers. Forget Manpower Inc. Think NASDAQ. Individuals must qualify to be "listed" on the MacTemps exchange - a process that involves written tests, computer simulations, two intense interviews, a careful analysis of past work performance, and an assessment of likely future work performance.

Second, MacTemps is not just a temp agency; it's a talent agency. The company takes a keen interest in the free agents it welcomes into its fold. "Think Jerry Maguire," says Aimee Youngblood, 28, an assignment manager at MacTemps in Dallas. "I help them help me help them. I help them find assignments. I manage their careers." Like their sports and entertainment counterparts, MacTemps talent agents tend to specialize. Some represent free agents who are skilled in applications like Quark and PageMaker. Other agents - those at a unit of the company called Portfolio - represent free-agent art directors, copywriters, and graphic designers. The WebStaff team represents independent Web designers, HTML specialists, and Web-site managers. And at the company's 1-800-NETWORK division (soon to become part of WebStaff), the agents represent computer-networking experts. It is all very organized, very professional, and very well managed.

Third, MacTemps is the HR department for Free Agent Nation. It soothes many of the headaches that accompany free agency. If you work enough hours for the company, MacTemps offers you health insurance, a 401(k) plan, even vacation pay - benefits rarely available to workers who have untethered themselves from traditional jobs. If you get work through MacTemps, you don't have to worry about wresting your paycheck from a slow-paying client: MacTemps does that dirty work for you - and pays you on time. Nor do you have to keep track of your 1099s or pay quarterly estimated taxes: MacTemps gives you a W-2 - and withholds the taxes for you.