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In the luxurious situation of having a rare and sought after set of skills, one might get contacted by multiple recruitment agencies.
From one particular (very large) city, I have been contacted by three separate recruitment agencies, all with different job offers.
Specifically since they are in the same area, I'm wondering if it would be considered un-professional or otherwise negative, to let multiple agencies represent me?
Not on its face, no. The problem generally comes when both you and the hiring company are working through multiple recruiters, and the recruiters aren't talking to each other about the candidates they're submitting. The end result is multiple copies of your resume on the desk of the hiring manager. This wastes time (he has to recognize your name and confirm that it's a dupe), and reflects badly on you, especially when a recruiter has padded your resume without your knowledge (and thus the hiring manager has resumes with two different skillsets and job experience sections with your name on them; which one's accurate? As the hiring manager I might just circular-file them both).
To avoid this, you can either not work with a recruiter, work with only one recruiter, or tell all recruiters you work with that you must be contacted and give approval before the recruiter sends your resume to an employer, and they must tell you the company, department and hiring manager they are working with on the other end. That allows you to keep track of who has been sent your resume and by whom (of course you must keep these records) thus avoiding having multiple recruiters hired by the employer each sending them your resume; first to get you the scoop gets the credit should you be hired.
Recruiters are often reluctant to part with this information; they usually get their money by referring you to the employer, not by telling you who's hiring. However if you tell them why, and make it a strict condition of their representing you, you may make them more willing to play ball, and more importantly you establish the working relationship between yourself and the recruiter and avoid having your reputation tarnished.
There is nothing wrong with having multiple agencies represent you to potential employers.
The only issue is if 2 (or more) agencies submit you at the same time. You have to keep tabs on who is submitting you. This is an issue because the employer has to pay a fee to an agency. If 2 recruiters submit you to the same job, which one gets the fee? Many times, companies don't want the headache.
