Not that I am an expert in this, but one of my agents has a backstory that isn't dependent on his coming from Not World One, although that is where he's from and it helps him a bit during his interview with the Marquis de Sod.

...my agents just got recruited on a "Yeah, you'll do." basis.
Seriously, the PPC is always understaffed. There doesn't really need to be a reason.

I've got two agents, and they were recruited each in a different way. The first one, Sergio Turbo, was intended to be the main character of an original fiction that got cancelled, and so he joined PPC in order to have something to do and avoid to disapppar. Corolla, instead, got recruited by Sergio, that officially found her in a badfinc still alive when she was supposed to have died with some other background characters. Officially, because in fact that badfic does not exist (however, if I find a suitable one, I can use it as a sort of flashback)

Well, the others have mostly covered it, so I'll just add that you don't always have to specify - my Agent Sedri, for example, definitely came from World One at some point, but has been a PPC agent for so long that her pre-PPC life is all but irrelevant. On the other hand, I'm getting quite bored with that storyline, so I may well go and flesh out her background a bit more - as you say, it helps a great deal to know that sort of thing.

My Agent Miah followed Allison and Tasmin to HQ when they did a mission on the fic she was reading. (Actually, Miah is the avatar that I have used for years, and was originally a near Sue character in a story that I almost wrote. I read a mission by Indemaat, and followed her links back to the PPC.)

Agent Cali fell through a plot hole, and the story of his arrival is detailed in the first story I wrote for the PPC. Miah shot him with a tranquilizer dart, and dragged him through the halls of HQ wrapped in a sheet trying to get rid of him. :D

Agent Kelok was rescued from the first mission Miah and Cali did, when they decided that his only real crime was existing.

Agent Unger was another plot hole traveler. Kelok and Unger met as roommates in FicPsych.

They're recruited because their authors say they are.

There are two possible perspectives on who an Author is in the PPC. First possibility: Authors are people who can tap into parallel universes and write about them. That would mean the characters have free will, but their Author is basically spying on them through the power of imagination. Second possibility: An Author can actually create parallel universes. In that case, a character is like a sub-program running inside the mind of the Author...

In any event, most PPC agents from World One drop into HQ through plot holes. World One is special precisely because of its numerous plot holes and the many Authors who take advantage of them, writing anything from legendary epics like "Lord of the Rings" to legendary badfic.

So, yeah. They drop in through plot holes. A few have somewhat more elaborate recruitments; my agent, Jason, answered a classified ad for a custodial worker and found himself working at HQ Janitorial, but like most World One agents, he walked into HQ through a plot hole.

As the others have said, there are plenty of methods used to recruit new Agents. Some of the more common are:

- rescuing abused or ignored bit-characters.
- people stumbling into the PPC through plotholes, most often from World One but not infrequently from canon worlds.
- people outright applying for jobs at the PPC, and being brought in for interviews and inevitable hiring.

A less common, but still viable, method of recruitment is to have active Agents going home and recruiting friends or family.

I find that developing my Agents' backstories and personalities can help a lot with writing them. This questionnaire in particular has proven itself very handy, and I've used it for a good number of mine.

Hope all that helps.

Agents have come here from being outright offered a job, stumbling into HQ through plotholes, and all sorts of other methods. Generally, it's pretty safe to play around with.

... Laburnum was an OFU student turned teenage runaway, as detailed roughly here: http://rc88.dreamwidth.org/7017.html

I'm going to work on a bit of backstory for Foxglove which I don't really want to spoil too much, but she was also an OFU student who decided that PPC life looked more fun than Real World life and joined up. Her parents and siblings know where she is, and tell anyone who asks that she got a scholarship to an overseas boarding school.

But my Agent(s), as well as that of my little sister, were recommended to check out the PPC as a potential career opportunity by a teacher at our highschool, whom we currently suspect might be a former Agent himself. Especially given his tendency to talk about having tutored Julius Caesar.