One more piece of the problem: There are headhunters who have low probability of success, and try to make it up on volume. They find your resume, and they fin

One more piece of the problem: There are headhunters who have low probability of success, and try to make it up on volume. They find your resume, and they find a job opening, and they say "Oh, hey, this guy does something technical, and that job needs something technical. Let's try it!" No, 40 years in embedded software does not make me a good candidate for a VHDL job that wants 5 years of experience. Stop wasting my time with your incompetence. (That sounds harsh, but a competent headhunter should know better than that.) The way I did it was, over the years I built a curated list of headhunters that I respected. They weren't just low-effort people - they really knew what they were doing. When I was ready for a new job, I broke out the list. Half of the names on it weren't valid any more, but one of the ones that was came through for me. I'm not sure that scales, though...