Another issue is that open jobs become protected secrets to the extent that it becomes hard to find positions without a recruiter. It's some type of strange cyc

Another issue is that open jobs become protected secrets to the extent that it becomes hard to find positions without a recruiter. It's some type of strange cyclic dependency where companies turn to recruiters because the employees have given up looking for openings on their own--which leads to job opening info residing only with recruiters (and, yes, an about us -> jobs page buried on the corporate web site), which in turn fuels the employees turning to recruiters. I feel the glut of job boards hurts this as well. Everyone is so eager to start a site to get their own $20 job posting fee that employees are overwhelmed over where to spend their money. Postings are broadly scattered across dozens of sites, and as a result job postings get worse results than recruiters. So, companies turn to recruiters, which helps start the whole cycle up. Then there's a different form of blacklisting--if you get hired via a recruitment agency, sometimes you can't get access to their exclusive jobs if you go looking again, for fear that the hiring company will fire them. Of course the agency will choose a portfolio of jobs over one hiring fee if the land the right company. I was shocked to find out that in other industries, the workers pay the recruiters to find them a job.