If you're on OPT, you've almost certainly been pitched by more than one company promising to get you placed. The number of people in that search grew fast: 194,554 F-1 students held OPT employment authorization in 2024, up 21.1% from the year before, and 165,524 of them were on the STEM OPT extension specifically, built for exactly the technical fields most of these agencies target. Nearly half of all STEM OPT participants come from India, another fifth from China.

More demand brought more agencies. Not all of them do the same job, even when their websites use identical language.

Three different businesses, one marketing page

"IT job placement" covers at least three distinct business models, and knowing which one you're talking to changes what you should expect to pay and what you're actually buying.

  • Career services, direct to employer. Resume rebuild, LinkedIn optimization, interview prep, and recruiters who apply on your behalf to employers' own open roles. You're typically a W-2 hire of whichever company extends the offer, not the agency.
  • Bench sales / C2C staffing. The agency itself becomes your employer of record and "markets" you, often as a contractor, to other staffing firms and end clients in a chain. You may be paid hourly only when "on a project," with gaps unpaid.
  • Resume marketing only. Your profile gets sent out in bulk with limited visibility into where, how often, or with what success rate.

None of these is automatically the wrong choice, but they're not interchangeable, and a company that doesn't clearly say which one it is should be your first question, not your last.

Questions worth asking before you pay anyone

  • Will I be a W-2 employee of an actual employer, or a 1099/C2C contractor passed between vendors?
  • Who is the employer of record, and can I see their actual office address?
  • Is the company enrolled in E-Verify? (Relevant directly to STEM OPT, where your training-plan employer is required to be.)
  • What exactly am I paying for — training, resume marketing, active recruiting, or a mix — and what happens if I don't get placed?
  • Can I see a real, current job description and the employer's name before my resume is submitted?

Why this is under more scrutiny than it used to be

This isn't just due diligence for its own sake. DHS's Student and Exchange Visitor Program has said it is actively investigating fraud tied to STEM OPT employment, and it specifically named IT recruitment firms, consulting companies, and staffing agencies as the business types most often involved — not because every company in those categories is problematic, but because that's where the pattern has shown up. We've written a separate, more detailed breakdown of exactly what DHS flagged and what you legally cannot be charged for.

The bottom line

A legitimate placement service should be able to answer every question above in plain language, in writing, before you sign anything. If a company is vague about who employs you, what model it runs, or where its office actually is, that vagueness is the answer. Our own process is built to survive exactly this kind of question: real W-2 placement, named offices in Sheridan, Wyoming, Sydney, and Ahmedabad, and a resume-to-offer process you can see before you pay for it.