I was actually hired in my current role by a competent technical recruiter. He's not a technical person but he sure knows how to find good technical people. His

I was actually hired in my current role by a competent technical recruiter. He's not a technical person but he sure knows how to find good technical people. His trick is to get good people to come to him by setting up events, conferences and pub meetups around interesting topics (e.g. the latest JVM language or Agile development practices). Of course, 90% of the people who go there aren't looking for jobs but I expect he does pretty well out of the 10% that are. I think this is actually the right way to go about recruitment. Don't spam 100s of people on the off chance they're currently unhappy and looking to move. Just set up an environment which attracts the best people in the industry but also allows them to consider new opportunities. Not only that but as a recruiter you are immersed in the world you are recruiting for and cannot help learn and understand more about it (e.g. this morning I got an email on the list mentioning a possible talk about Jaskell - a language I hadn't even heard of but apparently, my recruiter has :)).