In a 25 year career I concluded they basically don't exist. 99.9% are professional salespeople - commission driven, and nothing much else matters. Understandi

In a 25 year career I concluded they basically don't exist. 99.9% are professional salespeople - commission driven, and nothing much else matters. Understanding that clarified much of the cliche recruiter behaviour. Your needs are secondary to their commission and sales funnel. The couple of exceptions who were truly professionl and mde real efforts on the candidates side were in one case a guy with some dev experience too, at an agency that also had an IT division. The other was an extremely niche firm, tightly focussed on a specific area of banking, started by an ex developer. Having also had experience of dealing with agencies and recruiters from the employer side I ended up having no idea at all of the attraction of using them. They didn't save time, they didn't achieve any better candidates, and some were basically dishonest.