It sucks that you've dealt with bad recruiters and bad HR. I hope you get to work with really good ones someday, because it can be incredible. One of the best

It sucks that you've dealt with bad recruiters and bad HR. I hope you get to work with really good ones someday, because it can be incredible. One of the best things a former employer did was hire an in-house recruiter who was actually good at the job. Because he wasn't working on commission, he cared a lot more about getting the right person for your team rather than just a butt in a seat. He had enough technical background to talk intelligently about the position when I was interviewing to work there, and a year later when I ended up writing a job description, he was able to do a very good job walking me through how and why each part was there. Recruiting is really hard to do well, and lots of companies do it really poorly. But it can be done well, and it's a real pleasure to work with a good recruiter both as a candidate and a hiring manager. HR as well, to a point. Yeah, it's to protect the company and control costs. But it can be done well or poorly, and when it's done well it can be reasonably pleasant to deal with.