2 reasons 1. There are lots of people a given company considers unemployable(rightly or wrongly) and a recruiter helps weed out these candidates.(has a degree,

2 reasons 1. There are lots of people a given company considers unemployable(rightly or wrongly) and a recruiter helps weed out these candidates.(has a degree, has 4 years of experience, and has 2 years of java, etc...) This is probably low value but a lot of companies don't even want to bother with the hassle. 2. Lots of companies don't feel comfortable poaching from other companies. This is the best way to find new candidates, because the average employed developer is a better candidate than an average unemployed candidate. So they hire out this "dirty work" and relationship building to other companies that specialize in it. But as a piece of related advice, it's easier to add "http protocol" to your resume than to fix the the very broken hiring system we have in tech.