One of my main gripes with external recruiters are the in-person meeting. One external recruiter contacted me on Linkedin and said they knew of open positions

One of my main gripes with external recruiters are the in-person meeting. One external recruiter contacted me on Linkedin and said they knew of open positions I might be a fit for, but insisted, like most of them do, that I come in and meet them. So I wasted an afternoon meeting them. Then I hear nothing for months. Then I get an e-mail from the same firm. The last guy I met moved on from the company, a new person is now handling me there. They know of some positions I might be a fit for. But since this was a new person handling my account, they wanted me to come in for another meeting before they referred me to any of these clients they theoretically had. Of course I didn't go. Once when I was on the other side of things, when we were dealing with recruiting firms for a hire, my boss said he wanted to phone screen interviews before bringing them in. One of the recruiting firms was unhappy with this, and was insisting its interviews come in without a phone screen. Luckily I had a good boss, he insisted on the phone screen and they gave in. Who benefits from no phone screen? As an interviewee, I don't want to a waste an afternoon, maybe a whole day going in to interview for a position which I am unqualified for, or which has some requirements (50% travel, whatever) that I do not want to go along with. As an interviewer, why waste my time, and my co-workers time, and their time bringing in someone who can't answer the most basic technical questions I can ask? I wonder how many people who gave those recruiters their resumes knew the recruiter was pushing against phone screens and for in-person interviews only.