I had expected this to be related to using recruiters to find jobs. I've found that to be primarily a complete waste of time as well, but I suspect the reasons are the same. To most recruiters, it's just a numbers game, as the article points out; they simply "throw engineers at companies in the hopes that one or two will stick and they’ll get their commission". In my experience, it's quite rare to find a recruiter that will spend even a little bit of time actually matching candidates to the position in a meaningful way. It's also possible that, like the author, I've only ever dealt with really bad recruiters before.
I'll often get calls from recruiters telling me they've found a position for which I'm a perfect match. And then they explain it's a senior developer position requiring 5 years of experience, when it's very clearly stated on my resume that I'm a college student looking for an internship.
I've gotten similar e-mails and calls recently, based on a resume I posted to a job site 5 years ago, trying to match me to positions with requirements I don't remotely match. Further, I'm now a full time stay-at-home parent, which is my dream career. What's sad is, when I tell recruiters this, on occasion they'll still try to convince me of what a great fit their position would be.
Sort of. Remember they have two sides of the database: positions need filling and candidates available. If you reply to whatever they send you, they can drop you into the second bucket. So there's benefit to them (maybe even to you) even if the position isn't a fit.
One recruiter reached out to me when I was fresh out of college, and brought me in for a meeting. He then suddenly stopped responding in an email thread and I never heard from him again.
Then again, that's a one-time experience. But my time with the recruiter was as wasteful as time spent posting my resume on Monster and other job sites.
Recruiters use face to face meetings to gauge how well you would do in an interview. Your best use of that time is to ask the recruiter for valuable interview advice, what questions to expect, and how to answer those questions.
Yes. The one valuable ability that is exclusive to a recruiter (and any other deal broker, like real estate) is to abuse their position as a trusted mediator to slyly violate confidentiality agreements to help the deal close: tell the company what salary what employee will accept and any competing offers, tell the employee about what the interviewer wants to hear, etc.
That is a double-edged sword, though, so be careful with it.
The recruiter (or any mediator) is a valuable tool to help the weaker side of a negotiation close a deal. Know which side you are.
