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184 Chris BennerThis service is often provided through a formal placement program, such asthat provided by a temporary agency or contractor broker, in which the intermediarytakes responsibility for ensuring the best match of skills, experience,and interests. The function may also be provided through more informalnetworking opportunities. In this context, the intermediary provides the organizationalinfrastructure that brings employers and workers together, but theemployer and worker must still directly negotiate the conditions of employment.The role of some intermediaries may stop once a placement has beenmade – again, leaving the employment contract in the hands of the employerand worker to negotiate. In many cases, however, intermediaries will havesome continuing involvement, such as in the case of temporary agencies andprofessional employer organizations.Intermediaries can also play a critical role in shaping the work process,through facilitating rapid changes in work demand, shaping skills developmentover time, and shaping the reflexivity of work tasks. Clearly, the use oftemporary agencies and contractor brokers by firms, for instance, allows themto rapidly ramp up or ramp down the number of workers in response to rapidlychanging work demands. Some workers also use temporary agencies andbrokers to find work fast. Intermediaries can play a critical role in shapingskills development. This may be done in a formal manner, through trainingand certification programs and responding directly to employer or workerdemands. It may also proceed in more informal ways in which the intermediaryprovides the organizational infrastructure for building the social networksthat are so essential for continuing learning. These learning networks fundamentallyshape work practices on a day-to-day level, building communicationacross work sites. Intermediaries also provide important information onchanging work demands in the labor market, amongst different firms anddifferent industries, providing signals to both workers and firms of the need torespond to these changing work demands.There are three broad types of intermediaries that operate in Silicon Valley:private sector, membership-based, and public sector (Benner, 2002).Private-sector IntermediariesPrivate-sector intermediaries, such as temporary agencies and contractorbrokers, are the largest and most prominent category of labor market intermediary.They place workers with many different skill levels across a range ofoccupations and industries, and thus cannot be simply categorized as a costcuttingstrategy pursued by firms in an effort to shrink the size of their “core”workforce and reduce labor costs for non-core positions. Firms use intermediariesto find and employ people for many purposes, including many “core”functions within the region’s high-tech industries. Temporary employees do