Check out our review of Free Agency so you can learn about their prices and reviews and decide if Free Agency or Pathrise is a better choice to help you find a great job.
- What does Free Agency do?
- Who is Free Agency for?
- What does Free Agency cost?
- Ratings and reviews of Free Agency
- Alternatives to Free Agency
- How does Free Agency compare to Pathrise?
What does Free Agency do?
Free Agency helps both new and experienced professionals with their job search. The program is completely remote and largely self-paced.
The program assists with all phases of the job search. Their “concierge placement” program essentially puts the job search on autopilot–talent agents help professionals find the right roles, apply, and then negotiate their salary. The program also polishes candidates’ resumes, online presence, writing, speaking abilities, and personal storytelling to help them stand out in the job search. While the agency boasts an extensive network and even offers introductions at companies like Google and Uber, they focus mostly on coaching.
After joining, professionals meet their talent agent. Together, they build a customized career roadmap, which they update quarterly. Then, they go to work finding intros, identifying open roles, and coaching professionals through their job search. Professionals in the program do not work with their agents on any technical training or preparation for technical challenges or interviewing.
Who is Free Agency for?
Both new and experienced professionals could benefit from Free Agency. The program is especially helpful for those who are seeking help with job search soft skills, rather than more hardcore technical training.
What does Free Agency cost? How much work is involved?
Free Agency offers an income share agreement (ISA) so professionals in their program pay after they land a job. However, once professionals are placed in a job, they pay 5-10% of their 1-year base salary. The program also offers a 14-day trial so professionals can get a taste without committing.
While they does not require an extremely rigorous interview or technical assessment, their program is designed for current professionals with existing job skills. Applicants should have some prior work experience or at least college experience in their chosen field.
Ratings and reviews
While Free Agency is a relatively new talent agency and does not have many reviews online, they have been featured in a Tech Crunch article. One reader commented “Seems similar to Pathrise which was one of the best decisions in my life. Excited to see new companies entering the space.” However, another reader suggested professionals could probably “use them to get your pay increase” from salary negotiation and then leave the program.
Alternatives to Free Agency
If you choose not to join Free Agency, there are still a number of alternative career accelerators and resources that can help you start a career in tech.
- The career accelerator Praxis teaches students the business skills needed to launch a career. The full 1-year program is designed for young people looking to land an entry level job at a startup in marketing, ops, sales, or customer success.
- The online interview resources Pramp and Gainlo both pair aspiring software engineers with peers or engineers for mock interviews.
- Similarly, aspiring software engineers seeking mock interview opportunities can check out Interviewing.io. The platform pairs users with FAANG engineers for mock interviews and extensive feedback. Find out if Interviewing.io is right for your career goals in our review.
- The interview prep tool HackerRank has questions on software engineering, data science, and even UX/UI design.
More alternatives
- People who want to sharpen their technical interview skills can check out Coderbyte. Their platform offers a mix of 300+ free and paid challenges for software engineers. Read more about Coderbyte in our review.
- Leetcode is one of the most popular technical interview prep platforms. They also have an active community, with frequent posts on their discussion board.
- The tech bootcamp Tradecraft offers courses in sales, product design, growth marketing, and more. However, their program is designed to help students land a job at a startup.
- A tech bootcamp with full-time, part-time, and 1-day courses in a variety of topics, General Assembly is a good option for people looking to learn the fundamentals and land a great entry level job. Learn more about General Assembly
- Those interested in self-paced, remote learning can look into Udacity, an online educational platform that offers courses on a variety of topics, including business analytics, data science, software engineering, and more. Read more about Udacity in our review.
How does Free Agency compare to Pathrise?
Free Agency is a talent agency that helps people find tech jobs. Like Pathrise, professionals in their program should already have some background in their field of interest so that they can fully benefit from the curriculum and be competitive in the job search.
While Pathrise and Free Agency both offer 1-on-1 mentoring, Pathrise also includes an extensive technical curriculum. Fellows have 2-4 hours of weekly sessions to master specific technical interview skills and learn to answer tough questions. Pathrise industry mentors often work through interview challenges and exact company questions to help our fellows prepare to ace their sessions. In addition, our full curriculum includes technical training, behavioral interviewing training, resume writing, LinkedIn optimization, portfolio building, reverse recruiting lessons, and negotiation guidance.
Both Free Agency and Pathrise offer income share agreements with unlimited support available. However, Pathrise has already helped 1,000+ people land great tech jobs, usually in just 3-5 months. Fellows in our program see their interview scores double and their application responses triple. Mentors regularly work with fellows to get a 10-20% increase in compensation from negotiation alone. This often results in increases of $50-60k from their previous roles.
Pathrise is a career accelerator that works with students and professionals 1-on-1 to help them land their dream job. If you are interested in working with any of our mentors to optimize your job search, join Pathrise.
Apply today.
