The friends thing he's talking about is taking your reference contacts and then using them as future leads. And there is a fixed cost to sending a resume and c

The friends thing he's talking about is taking your reference contacts and then using them as future leads. And there is a fixed cost to sending a resume and cover letter. Sure, the first one isn't such a pain, but if you're unemployed and sending out 30 resumes, it's sort of a pain if 10 of them are fake, and another 5-10 are duplicates of different recruiters trying to fill the same position. It increases the work I have to do, and provides an awful lot of false hope. Again - one recruiter doing that amid a sea of legit openings isn't all that bad, but in larger markets it's not just one recruiter misbehaving.